Valeriya Tkachenko was in central Kyiv, dropping her son off at school when the sirens for an air raid began to wail. School staff quickly ushered children and parents into a nearby shelter, where Tkachenko, a lawyer, spent the next two hours anxiously waiting with her son.
“I’m terrified about what could happen to my son,” she expressed after leaving the shelter, already running late for her job. Just the day before, a Russian drone strike had targeted a school not far from where they were. “I can’t make any plans anymore. This situation is unsustainable,” she lamented.
Meanwhile, on the same Friday morning, Artem Marchenko, an IT professional, was forced to leave his car behind and walk for twenty minutes across the Pivdennyi Bridge to reach his workplace due to damage from ongoing Russian attacks on the infrastructure.
He worried that if Russia continued its assault, other bridges in Kyiv could also be targeted, severely restricting movement in a city of around three million residents, divided by the Dnipro River.
Kyiv is facing a critical phase, reminiscent of the early days of the invasion, as escalating Russian attacks are fundamentally altering daily life in the capital, which is being subjected to a concerted effort by Moscow to induce chaos.
In recent weeks, the primary concern for residents has been the impending winter, during which Russia is expected to intensify efforts to plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold. However, the recent surge in attacks has made many feel that the hardships they anticipated are already manifesting.
“The capital is in a very serious situation. We can no longer pretend that we can live as we did in peacetime,” remarked Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, on Friday. “The enemy is tearing Kyiv apart.”
This week, Russian missiles and drones have targeted various locations, including offices, data centers, a school, a hospital, and one of the city’s principal bridges. Moscow has also escalated its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, hitting a thermal power plant and other facilities, leaving several neighborhoods without electricity and water.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy indicated a significant shift in Russian military strategy during an interview with the Financial Times, stating that President Vladimir Putin had recently instructed his commanders to disregard conventional rules of war.
“They want Ukrainians to evacuate the capital… to demonstrate that without the capital, you essentially don’t have a country,” Zelenskyy added in comments to reporters.
Until now, Kyiv had maintained a semblance of normalcy, while cities closer to the frontline, such as Kharkiv and Dnipro, bore the brunt of daily missile and drone strikes. Now, residents are grimly observing that the tide seems to be turning, with some feeling that those cities may be safer than the capital.
Kyiv is grappling with a dangerous combination of a significant shortage of Patriot missile interceptors and a new class of faster, jet-powered Russian drones that are more challenging to intercept.
The city is hurrying to expedite the development of a new generation of interceptor drones capable of neutralizing these advanced threats. Some of these interceptors are already in operation, according to sources in the defense industry, although it may still take weeks or months to deploy them effectively for adequate protection.
Simultaneously, Russian territorial advances on the battlefield have been relatively sluggish and costly. According to military analyst Konrad Muzyka, Moscow gained approximately 361 square kilometers in September, an increase from previous months but still insufficient to secure the remaining territory in Donbas before winter, when offensive operations generally become more challenging.
In contrast, Ukraine has regained around 126 square kilometers through a series of counteroffensives in the east, under the codename Vivaldi. This slow-moving ground battle contrasts sharply with the escalating threats to major urban areas. “You can achieve significant success on land, but if you are vulnerable in the air, especially in the rear, that is the vulnerability your opponent will exploit,” noted Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies.
Ukrainian officials have been alerting their European counterparts about the magnitude of the impending threat. As reported by the New York Times, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, recently provided a briefing to European officials about an intercepted Russian plan that aimed to deploy as many as 1,000 missiles, drones, and bombs targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. These targets included electrical substations, hydroelectric and thermal power plants, and boiler facilities, in what appeared to be an attempt to plunge Ukrainian cities into darkness and create a humanitarian crisis.
“Russia plans to freeze Kyiv out, to revert it to the Stone Age,” stated a senior western diplomat in Kyiv, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
While western diplomats publicly affirm their intention to remain in Kyiv, aware that leaving would grant Moscow a propaganda victory and risk conveying the impression of abandonment, two senior diplomats privately indicated that contingency plans are being prepared to relocate embassies to Lviv or eastern Poland should Russia begin deliberately targeting foreign missions.
“The situation is obviously deteriorating rapidly,” the diplomat remarked.
