When the Russian missiles fly, Ukraine draws a lottery. Some people will end up in the blast radius. On 16 April, it was a 12-year-old Kyiv boy, along with at least 18 other people. Over a hundred more were injured.
Russia launched its biggest attack in months on Thursday, which involved hundreds of drones and dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles. While Ukrainian forces consistently shoot down over 80% of Russian weapons, the country’s anti-ballistic capabilities are close to empty. Moscow’s attacks are poised to increase, on a nightly basis.
People will die, somewhere and some time.
These terror strikes, which were shocking in 2022, are by now gruesomely familiar to Ukrainians.
In survivors who lose their loved ones, they strike anguish; in the rest, they arouse a sinking feeling, freezing dread, numb apathy, or just irritation for interrupted sleep. Some people still seek shelter. Some don’t even bother anymore. Some have to weigh the pros and cons of each trip — which choice might kill you faster, with how much pain.
Here is what that feels like from the points of view of Euromaidan Press’s journalists.
Olena Mukhina, journalist
The death and fear — I can’t get used to it.
I wish I could say that the only thing I feel during attacks is frustration that I won’t get a good night’s sleep or be able to be at my best for work tomorrow. But that is not true.
The last time, I couldn’t fall asleep and saw a notification: a ballistic threat from Bryansk.
“F**k,” I thought. That hadn’t happened in a while. And when it does, it doesn’t just mean that air defense is on alert. It means real missiles are incoming.
Your body reacts before your mind does. There’s this dull, physical pain because you already know what comes next. They say you won’t hear the missile that hits you. But survivors say they heard everything.
I have one minute to find my headphones and another minute to find a song. Over time, I’ve built a playlist for moments like this. Nothing drowns out the sound of a missile like dream pop, shoegaze, or post-punk.
I turn on my favorite song, loud enough to cover the noise. But this time it doesn’t help. The explosion is too close. Then another. Then a third. It sounds like two trucks crashing into each other at full speed in the sky.
Monitoring channels report that only one of four Russian launchers fired. Each launch cycle takes 10–15 minutes. Then, a message appears on Telegram: “Russia has killed a 12-year-old boy,” half an hour away from me and there’s nothing I can do.
Another salvo comes in, louder. The whole space vibrates. The fear is so intense it freezes me. I crouch down. But then I remember what people say — lying flat might be worse, that the blast wave can pass straight through your body.
Where to go, then? Downstairs? You could be buried under rubble. Upstairs? Maybe they’ll find you faster, and if there’s a fire, an upper floor is the worst place you can be.
And then there’s the dread that rescuers will arrive and a follow-up strike will kill them. You catch yourself praying: if you die, let it be quick. Because once a building is hit, torn wiring and gas lines become threats too.
Human beings get used to a lot, but I can’t get used to genocide. Living through this war has been the scariest, most painful thing I’ve endured in my life.
Daniel Thomas, journalist
My partner and I huddled in an armchair in our apartment. We knew that ballistic missiles were inbound, but we stayed put rather than venture out to the shelter and risk being caught in the open.
As the attack continued, dark doubts began to descend. Maybe it would be better to go to the shelter?
After all, if a missile hit the ground near us, there would be a flash and a split second of pain, nothing more. Better than waiting for the building to be hit, the floors to give way, and the weight to settle in, condemning us to a slow, crushing death.
After three or four missiles, we took our chances with a quick death. We strode to a shelter across the street from our apartment and hid the rest of the night there.
We shuffled out of the shelter between 5 and 6 in the morning, as the sun began to beat back the night, the sky paling into thin blue. A garbage truck rolled past us, as if the attack never occurred. We returned to bed, losing much of the day to sleep.
Later, we found out on Telegram that a missile had destroyed an apartment complex roughly a kilometer from us. Fragments scorched black the building’s green facade and riddled a neighboring structure with hundreds of punctures.
Why the Russians decided to destroy this area in particular is still a mystery to us. Their explanations never hold much water, elastic as they are. For them, all of Ukraine can be made to appear as “military infrastructure.” Its cities and homes can be recast as legitimate targets, folded into the logic of punishing the so-called “anti-Russia” for its mere existence.
So it goes, from night to night.
Benjamin, journalist
First come the sirens.
They are so common that I barely react anymore. But subconsciously my anxiety always rises, even just a little bit. The sounds last a few minutes, then the silence that follows feels normal. Like everyone else, I just carry on with what I was already doing.
Until the first loud explosion. There’s a moment of shock for about half a second, when I just stop moving. Then I get up and go into the corridor in the middle of my apartment. I stay there until I hear silence again. Then I go back and grab my laptop and whatever else I need, and settle into the corridor for a while to wait out the attack.
If the attack lasts long into the night, I have a mattress I can set up by my front door, in the narrowest part of the corridor, closer to the center of the building.
It’s important to be as far away from windows that may shatter and spray shards of glass, to be away from outside walls that are the first sponge of the shockwave, and to be between two walls that are close together, increasing the likelihood that the ceiling will not collapse above you.
That’s what I’ve heard, at least. It still all depends on where the drone or missile impacts. None of this will protect me from a direct hit.
Sometimes, the explosions interrupt my dreams. The loud ones wake me up for a moment, but then I realize I am alive so I just return to sleep. Nothing else I can do.
Peeter Helme, business journalist
Having been in Ukraine since 2023, my attitudes towards air alerts, Shaheds, and missile strikes have changed and keep changing. The war evolves. I change. Become more numb, perhaps. More cynical. Or just more used to it. Humans tend to get used to everything.
In Lviv, drone and missile attacks are rare. That rarity makes them scarier.
I have spent several nights in the basement of an apartment building, standing in the half-darkness smelling of concrete and dust, and listening to mothers reading their children a fairy tale from a book they grabbed with them or hearing people making nervous jokes about how and what they would like to eat at four o'clock in the morning.
At least once, the basement really shook and rattled from a terrible blast. A building 200 meters away was hit. I visited the next day to find half of the wall of the Elektron factory demolished.
Now I live in the old town, in an old building with a courtyard. I can barely hear the air alarm here. I do not have one of those air alarm apps. Never had. I only use Telegram to read the updates.
The last time a building 150 meters from my place was hit, I was having vareniki for lunch and working remotely, when I heard the Shaheds' high-pitched noise, then the explosion. I continued eating and editing a story.
Alya Shandra, editor in chief
They come during the night when I’m either up late working on some article on my computer, or asleep. In either case, I feel irritated — the people who want to ruin everything in Ukraine have come after my routine as well. When the Russians barge in to ruin my plans, I choose to rebel and go on with my life.
My husband takes the kids to the shelter, but unlike them, I can’t sleep there. I carry them down and come back up, accepting the smaller chance of being hit over the much greater chance of being exhausted the following day, when Euromaidan Press needs my full attention. I have earplugs that help me sleep the snores of fellow passengers on trains; I also use them for Russian missiles.
I do not think about being killed. I think about what a nuisance it would be if my house was destroyed and I would have to rebuild my life from scratch. It would distract me from the stories that need to be told, force me to care for the physical survival of my family.
But that’s how we’ve come to feel in the fourth year of the war — we build, the Russians destroy, nobody flinches or bats an eye.
I read the Twitter account of Ukraine’s chief Rabbi, who prays for the victims during each strike. I wish I could care more for the victims, but something burned out in me during the second year of the war. Now, it’s like: today I was lucky that it wasn’t me. How different it is from the first days of the war, when we ran to the shelters every time.
But sometimes, when the drones are buzzing directly overhead, I do go down into the shelter. And then it’s a sleepless night, followed by a mercilessly bleary day. Everyone goes to work. Nobody asks if you slept last night.
In Kyiv, it's business as usual.
