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For two weeks, the skies over Kyiv have been quiet. Too quiet. Each day, the silence feels heavier, like something pressing down. Everyone knows it won’t last. So when the attack finally comes—loud, violent, expected—there’s no panic. Just a kind of grim relief. At least it’s not hanging over us anymore.
For close to ten hours, the staccato hammering of heavy machine guns rattled the windows in downtown Kyiv. Their targets, the black, delta-winged Shahed drones, with the high-pitched whine of their two-stroke engines, have earned them the nickname ‘mopeds’.
Every so often, a thunderous boom rolled through the flats. Plaster flakes sifted from the ceiling; the acrid tang of cordite clung to the cold night air. Iskander ballistic missiles — 700 kilograms of high explosive packed into each warhead — tore into sleeping blocks with surgical brutality. The mopeds and the Iskanders aren’t hunting soldiers; they stalk kitchens, bedrooms, playgrounds. Their aim is simple: terror and death.
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When daylight broke, I drove across town. Autumn rain mingled with the smoke, settling on weary residents who shuffled through the ruins. The night’s chaos was over; It was time to count the cost.
