First of all, it’s scary to be bombarded. For five hours and 37 minutes dozens of rockets launched from the Caspian and Black seas hit Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, where I live and work. Each of them could destroy your house. As a reporter travelling in the areas most affected by the war, I’ve seen the horrific damage these strikes can cause. Just one hit can destroy a multi-storey apartment building, leaving a burnt skeleton – over the weekend an attack like this in Zaporizhzhia took at least 13 lives.
Today Ukrainians experienced one of the largest air attacks since the start of the Russian invasion. For the first time, missile strikes hit the very centre of the Ukrainian capital, where at least five people were killed, and dozens wounded. These were mainly commuters going to work on Monday morning. Five more airstrikes followed.
The Kremlin targeted all major Ukrainian towns, including Dnipro and Kharkiv, Lviv and even Ivano-Frankivsk in the relatively safe west of the country. According to the state emergency service, at least 11 people have died, with a further 60 wounded.
President Zelenskiy has recorded a video statement saying the primary targets were infrastructure, in particular the power grid. The government acknowledged at least 11 important targets were damaged, but most power has now been restored. In my Kyiv flat the electricity went off for no more than 10 minutes, but areas on the outskirts of the city and parts of Chernihiv, Lviv and Sumy still have no power.
What makes these attacks so unnerving is the imprecision of the Russian missiles. Their airstrikes constantly miss targets. You could see this as good from a practical military perspective – but it means that anybody, at any given moment, can become a victim. The Ukrainian vegan and animal rights defender Pavlo Vyshebaba, who now serves in the army, posted a photo of a bomb crater where a playground used to be in Kyiv central park. He referenced a previous Russian statement that they would be attacking military decision-making centres. “It was our ‘centre for decision making’, where we decided whether my daughter either wanted a cone or an ice-cream on a stick,” he joked. At these times, black humour is a sort of psychological self-defence.
The president said the other aim was to terrorise Ukrainians, and attack our morale. For the last few months we have watched the Russian army sustaining battlefield losses. Ukraine’s early successes in the Kharkiv region were largely attributed to the fact that the Russians were taken by surprise. But these successes continue; Ukrainian troops, with great difficulty, have continued liberating village after village in the Donbas and Kherson regions.
The 8 October explosion on the bridge connecting occupied Crimea with Russia – a personal project of Vladimir Putin – was also a huge symbolic blow against the Russian leadership. The Ukrainian government didn’t confirm it was its operation, but Ukrainian security services gave hints they might be behind the attack by posting a celebratory photo of the bridge on fire. It caused an incredible stir among Russian war propagandists, and calls for immediate retaliation. Influential hawks within Russia had already been criticising their forces for lacking toughness.
Today’s attack on Ukraine looks like an attempt to please that particular Russian audience, and show that the Kremlin is capable of hurting Ukraine. Also on 8 October, Sergey Surovikin was named the commander of all Russian forces invading Ukraine. Known for his harshness, Surovikin, who commanded forces in Syria during the Russian military intervention there, may use this immediate assault as a chance to establish himself.
And so, civilians who had enjoyed some small amount of peace are on high alert again. Today, schoolchildren are moved to basements. Businesses are closed down, and meetings cancelled. Kyiv subway – which started operating in the spring – again served as the bomb shelter. After a few months enjoying life in Kyiv, many again might consider leaving.
Yet, after seven months of war, the Ukrainians have found their ways to cope with anger. After a few hours checking in on colleagues, friends, and relatives all over the country, the Ukrainian internet is full of messages about how much people have donated to the army.
Ukrainians also worry that after a few hours of compassion from people around the world, we might hear new calls to surrender. These, coming from the safety of far-off European towns, sound not just inappropriate, but unethical. The multiple crimes committed in occupied territories such as Bucha and Izium show that the alternatives to resistance can be not just persecution, but mass execution and torture.
We are scared at the moment, but that is different to living in perpetual fear. Ukrainian defiance doesn’t mean bravado. More than anything, the feeling you get while sitting in a basement looking at the air raid warning map for five hours and 37 minutes is pragmatism. We think not about grand ideas, but electricity and water supplies, documents, daily rations and contingency plans.
Out of more than 80 rockets fired into Ukraine today, at least half were reportedly shot down by the Ukrainian air defence. What can look terrifying and inevitable can be stopped with proper defences. This looks like the only rational answer to the irrational assault on our parks, universities, museums. It must continue.
Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting, and author of Lost Island: Tales from the Occupied Crimea
