Putin’s Constant Long-Running, Long-Range Escalations in Ukraine

While the Kremlin complains about the US giving Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles against Russia, I woke up to the sound of explosions on Saturday morning.

It’s a fairly common occurrence in Kyiv these days so I did what I normally do and checked monitoring channels on Telegram to find out what was happening. There were 17 Russian bombers in the air, and multiple reports of incoming ballistic and cruise missiles — only then did I freak out a bit.

It was too late to get dressed and head to a shelter so I sat in my hallway and for the next hour or so, listened to the sounds of Russian missiles being blown out of the sky by Ukraine’s air defenses.

You get a rough idea of when to expect them — those Telegram channels report in real-time, so when they say there’s a Russian hypersonic missile heading for Kyiv, you know that in the next couple of minutes, it’s either going to hit something or be intercepted — either way, it’s going to make a lot of noise.

Fortunately, the ones headed for Kyiv were intercepted, creating explosions loud enough to shake the walls of my apartment, and set off car alarms outside on the street.

Here in Ukraine, we’ve been expecting a mass aerial attack for some time now — the last was more than two months ago, and it’s been widely expected that the Kremlin will at some point begin its now annual campaign of trying to destroy Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure.

And you will have heard about it now because Saturday’s attack was big enough to make headline news in the UK. But what you probably haven’t heard about is all the other times over the last few months that I’ve been woken up by explosions.

Just the night before, the sound of Russian kamikaze drones being blown out of the sky jolted me awake three times. You won’t read about this on the news in the UK because this is the new normal for Kyiv, and it’s simply not newsworthy anymore.

Yes, the big mass missile attacks like today’s will still make headlines, but Russia in recent months has dramatically reduced the number of attacks involving hi-tech and incredibly expensive cruise and ballistic missiles.

EXCLUSIVE

‘If you Hear That Sound, You’re Probably Dead’: How Drone Attacks are Making Evacuations in Ukraine Increasingly Unsafe

Rescuers on the ground in Ukraine detail the ‘massive risks’ now involved in evacuating residents in areas under attack from Russian forces

Kris Parker

The Drone Threat

Instead, nearly every night for nearly three months, the Kremlin has instead launched wave after wave of cheap, easy-to-manufacture Shahed-type kamikaze drones at cities all across Ukraine.

If you’re not familiar with a Shahed, we’re not talking about something hobby-drone sized like the ones most people are familiar with.

They’re 3.5 metres long, have a wingspan of 2.5 metres, and weigh 200kg, and when one flies over your apartment, it sounds like an oversized moped struggling up a steep hill.

Fortunately, Ukraine’s air defences are pretty good at intercepting and shooting them down. Unfortunately, even when downed, they still cause damage and, occasionally, injuries and deaths.

And then there is the simple exhaustion caused by constantly interrupted sleep.

On top of this, we’ve also had to deal with a couple of fake attacks — basically Russian practice runs, in which bombers take off, fly to their usual firing zones, and then using electronic warfare methods, launch fake missiles.

To Ukraine’s air defenses, those Telegram channels, and not to mention, the people like me following them, they look exactly like a mass aerial attack, and they cause exactly the same type of anxiety and panic until it becomes apparent it was all just a bit of a sick hoax.

A Trip to the Southern Front: Human Dignity and the War Zone in Your Head

Peter Jukes visits the vibrant city of Odesa and discovers more about the Ukrainian spirit of resistance at the front line in Kherson

And while this all sounds absolutely awful, here in Kyiv we’re relatively lucky. Cities like Kharkiv are being hit with giant glide bombs every day, cities like Pokrovsk are under constant shelling every hour from Moscow’s advancing troops, and cities like Toretsk are now swarming with Russian soldiers. 

There is more than enough horror being inflicted on Ukraine by Russia every single day to make headline news, but after two-and-a-half years, only a mass aerial attack like today does.

Ukraine is heading into what will likely be the grimmest winter of the war — these attacks on energy infrastructure will continue, Russia will try and capture more cities in the Donbas, and Vladimir Putin will try and do as much of this as possible before Donald Trump takes office in January.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t wait until Ukraine is headline news again before you spare a thought for what is happening here. 

And if you want to do more than that, donate to Ukrainian charities that support the military, or to organisations like the Kyiv Independent that will — just like Byline Times — continue to report on what is happening here even when most of the world’s media is distracted elsewhere.