As Russian missile strikes on Kyiv intensify, residents brace for a darker winter ahead
Russia has stepped up ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv in recent weeks, while Ukraine's military has run low on Patriot interceptors needed to stop them. Residents are again sheltering overnight in metro stations, and anxiety is growing over the coming winter without reliable heating or water.
Residents of Kyiv are once again sleeping overnight in metro stations as Russian missile attacks on the city have grown more frequent and destructive in recent weeks. One couple with a young dog has spent every night for three weeks at the Dorohozhychi metro station, saying the warning time before explosions has shrunk to roughly 30 seconds.
On one recent night, missiles struck the city within minutes of the first air-raid warning. Sixteen people were killed in an attack that hit residential areas in the suburbs, followed by hours of drone-related alerts.
In another strike, two missiles hit the Solomianskyi district west of the city centre — one tore off the top floor of a ten-storey apartment building, killing two people, while the other destroyed an empty building in a car park, damaging several vehicles nearby.
Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, visited the scene and said the attacks were intended to break residents' morale, though he could not say how many new bomb shelters the city had built. Ukraine's military has stopped disclosing how many ballistic missiles are launched at the capital, since it no longer has the means to intercept them — only the US-made Patriot system can do so, and its interceptors have run out.
According to UN figures for July, the most recent month available, 437 civilians were killed and 2,610 injured across Ukraine — the highest monthly death toll since May 2022.
Although daytime temperatures in August often exceed 30C, conversations increasingly turn to the coming winter, with residents fearing a repeat of last year, when apartments in the worst-hit areas dropped to 4-5C without heating. One Kyiv resident, Maria Hlazunova, said her greater worry is the possible loss of water supply rather than heating, since the city relies on a single wastewater treatment facility.
Ukraine has responded by intensifying its own long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries and warehouses it says support military logistics. Russia has retaliated in kind, and in early August destroyed a $70m distribution hub belonging to Rozetka, Ukraine's largest e-commerce company, near Brovary outside Kyiv, a facility that had employed a thousand people.
