Kyiv residents have lived under Russian drone and missile attacks since the start of the war, but this summer the attacks became a daily occurrence. Since late August, Russian forces have been attacking the city day and night, and air raid alerts constantly disrupt residents’ plans. Dozens of civilians have been killed in the capital over these months, and hundreds have been injured. As winter approaches, residents are preparing for power outages and heating problems. Meduza spoke with Ukrainian journalist Denys Trubetskyi, who writes for Die Zeit and other European outlets, about how doctors, business owners, and other Kyiv residents live and work under relentless attacks, and whether the coming winter could be much harder than previous ones.
‘Since last winter, Russia has focused on Kyiv. It’s the number one target behind the front lines’
— You were born in Sevastopol, but now you live in Kyiv and cover Ukraine for German-language outlets. When did you move?
— My career in German media came about pretty much by chance. I’ve never lived permanently in Germany or another German-speaking country, but at some point I started learning the language because I was interested in German sports and politics.
I got into journalism 14 or 15 years ago as a sportswriter, working for fairly big Ukrainian outlets like Football.ua. In 2012, Ukraine and Poland hosted the European soccer championship, and I met German colleagues while covering the German national team’s matches.
Then Ukraine entered a very interesting period politically: Maidan, the annexation of Crimea, which affected me directly because of where I’m from, and so on. I’d always thought about moving to Kyiv, and I’ve lived here since 2015. That’s also when I started working as a political correspondent for major German outlets — Die Zeit and Table.Media — as well as Swiss and Austrian publications.
— In late August, Russia began attacking Kyiv and the Kyiv region almost nonstop — at night and during the day. How is the city coping?
— To understand that, you have to look at Russia’s whole strategy of total war against Ukraine. I should explain why I call it total war. You can debate whether Russia is using all its resources for mobilization. When it comes to the war economy, it isn’t using all its resources yet.
But in the air war, Russia has been using every resource available since the fall of 2022. It’s sending pretty much everything it produces at Ukraine, including Kyiv. The jet-powered drones that have been pounding Kyiv since August are so new that some were built just two weeks ago. They sometimes stockpile ballistic missiles, but overall, attacks on the current scale wouldn’t be possible without using missiles fresh off the production line.
On September 11, 2022, Russia launched the first wave of attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The strategy was meant to put as much pressure as possible on civilians. Since then, Russia has tried all kinds of ways to pressure Ukrainians — trying to knock out the country’s energy system, for example. But it’s come to realize that plunging half the country into a total blackout for a couple of weeks is very difficult.
So since last winter, Russia has focused on Kyiv. It’s the number one target for attacks behind the front lines. Kyiv and its metropolitan area account for roughly 15% of the population currently living in Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Last winter was the harshest in 20 years. Temperatures sometimes dropped to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit). Entire districts of Kyiv, especially on the left bank of the Dnipro, went weeks without electricity or heating. But this summer also turned out to be the hardest in the city’s history.
— What made it so hard?
— Two things coincided. First, [in winter] the genius U.S. president launched his “very successful” Operation Epic Fury, which caused a major weapons shortage. That had a serious impact on air defense. The PAC-3 MSE missile used in Patriot systems is the most effective against ballistic weapons. In July, Ukraine was receiving small batches of 15 to 20 missiles. We don’t know how things stand now, but those July figures are unlikely to have changed much.
Second, Russia increased production of its ballistic missiles. It used to produce up to about 60 standard ballistic missiles a month; now it’s up to 75. There are also missiles that follow a quasi-ballistic trajectory, like the Zircon. Roughly speaking, we’re talking about production of around 80 to 100 ballistic and quasi-ballistic missiles a month.
Ukraine has almost nothing to shoot them down with. And several Patriot systems are stationed in Kyiv — that’s an open secret. Obviously, once shortages developed here [in air defense], Russia started firing at Kyiv, because a new opportunity had opened up for its military.
Then there’s the situation with jet-powered drones — the Geran-4 and Geran-5. Ukraine had more or less been mentally prepared for attacks like these since the beginning of the year. Technically, there are ways to shoot them down, but it’s extremely difficult to find a solution that can be used on a large scale against drones flying at up to 650 kilometers per hour (about 400 miles per hour). And to make sure that solution doesn’t cost one and a half to two times as much as the Gerans themselves.
‘With everything flying so fast, you don’t even have time to do anything’
— How has this crisis affected everyday life in Kyiv?
— From May through the end of summer, ballistic missile strikes happened every third night on average. That’s really hard on your mental health and your day-to-day life.
Quite often, the strikes came before an air raid alert was even issued. But ballistic missiles fly so fast that many people barely have time to get down to a shelter, even after hearing the alert: A missile can hit one or two minutes after the alert. And if you’re outside at that moment, say, on your way to a shelter, that can be more dangerous than staying in the hallway.
You go to bed and you don’t know which night it’ll happen. In practice, a strike can come at any moment. When it happens every day, it’s hard to describe it without swearing.
— After the attacks intensified, The Guardian and The Washington Post described Kyiv as a frontline city. Do you agree?
— Things are different here. Kyiv is still a city behind the front lines, even if it’s the “number one target” behind them. FPV drones, artillery shells, and so on don’t reach us here. I wouldn’t use that particular term [“a frontline city”], although I understand it from a journalist’s perspective, and the situation [in Kyiv] is very difficult.
The problem with the endless launches of jet-powered drones is that it’s basically one endless attack that’s been going on since August. Without exaggeration, several people are killed and dozens are wounded every day. Of course, the chance of you personally getting hit is still small. But it’s increased considerably. There was a time when your risk of dying in a car crash in Kyiv was much higher than in an air attack. Now it’s the other way around.
I’m noticing that a lot of people around me are at their limit. They’re thinking about the coming winter. People who have the option of leaving for the winter are looking into whether they can afford it. I can’t do that: You can’t work as a Kyiv correspondent without being in Kyiv.
My friends were looking at apartments in Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi. Prices have naturally gone through the roof. You can describe Ukraine’s economic situation in one sentence: People have become much poorer. And we can say with certainty that food, internet, phone service, and so on will inevitably get much more expensive. Finding the money for an incredibly expensive apartment somewhere in western Ukraine is very difficult.
The economic side of this is very important right now. Many employers are suffering from the attacks — almost every industry has been affected. People’s wages are being cut while everything is getting more expensive. It leaves people feeling paralyzed.
Some people cope better than others in stressful situations like these. Among the people I know, the number taking sedatives or seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist has multiplied several times over.
— If you walk around Kyiv on a weekday now, what’s changed since the summer? What’s the first thing you notice?
— There’s a lot more destruction. Kyiv has 1,200 high-rise buildings, and I think about a third of them have been damaged over these four and a half years. Not always anything hugely dramatic, but at least a window blown out here or there.
There are fewer people in the city, though you might not notice it. The thing about Kyiv is that as some people leave, new people arrive — from Sumy or other cities [near the front lines].
There aren’t any official figures yet, but I’ve noticed it’s easier to park and fewer people are going to cafés and restaurants. You see fewer people on the streets, too, though that may be because so many are being switched to remote work.
And another thing you notice is that people are much more on edge.
— More and more people are working remotely?
— Yes, wherever that’s possible. Universities have been switching to remote learning on a fairly large scale. Schools haven’t been able to resume regular in-person teaching since September 1 — that’s very difficult with so many hours of air raid alerts every day.
— Which parts of the city are suffering the most from the attacks?
— Right now, all districts are suffering about equally. For example, Russia has recently been specifically targeting Kyiv’s gas stations. Literally any gas station could become a target, and you could happen to be nearby — stuck in traffic, for instance. Jet-powered drones can reach Kyiv from Russia’s Bryansk region in half an hour, depending on the model, and can fly around the entire city in three or four minutes. In that situation, there’s nothing you can do.
Russia has also been attacking Ukrainian data centers recently. Take the strike on the National Academy of Sciences [on September 28]: One of the offices of Ukrtelecom, a Ukrainian internet provider, is in the building next door. That same day, there was a strike on another Ukrtelecom office, which shares a building with the private clinic Dobrobut. Another strike [on September 25] hit a data center in Shuliavka, in an office building. There were terrible scenes there, too — bodies were literally lying in the street.
Russia isn’t holding back — I’m saying that without exaggeration. It’s not necessarily setting out to strike civilian facilities in these particular cases, but this is no longer collateral damage. It’s part of the military strategy. Russia can strike a gas station or a large office complex during the workday. It apparently intends to stick with this tactic. And with everything flying so fast, you don’t even have time to do anything.
— You’ve already said that internet and communications services in general could soon get more expensive in Ukraine. Are people already feeling the effects of attacks on data centers? Has internet service in Kyiv gotten worse?
— There are local disruptions, yes. At one point, roughly 100,000 subscribers in Kyiv and the Kyiv region lost internet access. But I still find it hard to understand exactly what this campaign is meant to achieve. The military’s internet infrastructure isn’t entirely independent of these data centers, but they [the Ukrainian armed forces] have their own infrastructure and networks, plus Starlink. These attacks seem more aimed at the civilian economy. Ukraine relies heavily on digital services.
How effective are they really? You might find yourself unable to pay for something by card, but there won’t be a total catastrophe. Ukraine may have one of the most decentralized networks of internet providers in Europe, or even the world — there are about a thousand operators in the country. Of course, there are big companies, but overall it’s a very extensive network.
‘We’ve been through all sorts of things in four and a half years. But never this level of anxiety. Now it’s constant’
— Are businesses managing to adapt to round-the-clock attacks and the changed conditions?
— It varies a lot. I’ve spoken with people running many large restaurants and food-service chains. They all have different views of the future, but they agree that restaurants in shopping malls won’t survive this winter: It’s dangerous to have employees come to work there during an air raid alert, even a yellow-level one.
There are reasons to believe Russia will strike shopping malls. So not only restaurants but probably all retail businesses in those malls will close down. And shopping malls are an important part of Ukraine’s economy. Kyiv has Respublika and Blockbuster Mall — they’re among the largest shopping malls in Ukraine and [Eastern] Europe.
Business owners — whether they sell clothing, run restaurants, or do something else — are trying to find solutions. But nobody can predict with complete certainty what things will look like in winter, so everyone’s improvising.
More generally, businesses are trying to adapt: A red alert means we don’t work; a yellow alert means we try to work somehow, because otherwise you could go crazy.
— Can a red alert last for hours?
— No, actually. That’s more likely with yellow alerts. This is a deliberate Russian tactic: launching small groups of jet-powered drones one after another. One arrives, gets shot down, then another is launched. It’s all done either to keep a yellow alert going almost indefinitely or to have another yellow alert issued 20 minutes later.
A red alert means either a truly massive drone attack or a specific missile threat.
— How much have Kyiv residents’ daily routines changed since attacks started happening during working hours?
— There is no routine — everyone’s improvising. Meetings are constantly being rescheduled and canceled, but businesses somehow manage to keep working. I’m amazed myself at how the cafés on my street manage to open on time. If you want to get a coffee at a café that opens at 8 a.m., somehow you can.
We’ve been through all sorts of things in four and a half years. But never this level of anxiety. Now it’s constant. People see it all happening. Very often, jet-powered Gerans fly right overhead. This will sound surprising, but that’s a good thing, because it means you won’t be directly hit. Most likely.
I’ve seen a lot over these years, but when this superfast thing that sounds like a quiet jet aircraft races over your head, it really gets to you.
— How has life changed for families with children?
— Everything’s become harder for them, because the children are effectively learning remotely all the time. Officially, it’s hybrid or in person, but the reality this school year is distance learning.
And this is another area where the internet situation matters. Because if attacks on energy infrastructure intensify, cell service and internet access could go down.
But the city has been through that before.
— The daily attacks must also have affected hospitals. How are they operating now?
— As a rule, surgery doesn’t stop during an alert — it all depends on the specific situation. During a red alert, hospitals try to move anyone they can to a shelter. During a yellow alert, they’re more likely to keep patients where they are, and 80% of Kyiv’s air raid alerts are yellow. Nobody moves intensive care patients anywhere. Ambulances and intensive care units keep working all the time.
As for strikes on hospitals, I wouldn’t say hospitals are being deliberately targeted at this point. But honestly, with the current strategy of terror — let’s call it that — we can’t rule out Russia moving on to that. Take the strike on the private clinic Dobrobut: The clinic wasn’t the specific target. Though perhaps Russia didn’t mind it getting hit, either.
There could be serious problems with medicines in the future. Some medications could be in short supply: There have been strikes on a facility in Kyiv belonging to Darnytsia, a major pharmaceutical company. This is primarily part of the economic war, but attacks like these show that Russia doesn’t care much about civilian lives. I don’t think that needs explaining anymore in 2026.
There’s also collateral damage. When warehouses are attacked, absolutely everyone gets hit — book publishers, manufacturers of all kinds of things. Quite a few warehouses storing medicines have also been destroyed. That doesn’t mean there’ll be a catastrophe, but shortages of certain medicines could develop.
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‘Shortages and major price increases are almost inevitable’
— You mentioned that Russia is heavily attacking warehouses in Ukraine. In late August, Agriculture and Food Minister Taras Vysotskyi said that about 90% of the country’s grocery-chain warehouses had been destroyed. Can you see that in the selection of products in stores?
— Yes, it’s changing. That’s especially true of perishables, because there are virtually no refrigerated warehouses left in the Kyiv region [because of Russian attacks].
I can’t say we’re facing an across-the-board shortage of fish, meat, or milk. But the selection has shrunk, and exactly what’s missing from stores depends directly on what was damaged two, three, or four days earlier. For example, right now you can barely find cola in Kyiv supermarkets, because the Coca-Cola plant in Brovary was hit very recently.
I don’t think there’s a risk of famine. Ukraine’s agricultural sector has enormous capacity, despite all the problems of 2022. But shortages and major price increases are almost inevitable. We can’t yet tell how severe they’ll be. But you’ll certainly be able to get through the winter eating, say, buckwheat.
There’s an effort now to reorganize logistics so that more goods go straight from suppliers to supermarkets. But the vehicle fleets that retail chains and suppliers needed and maintained in the 2000s no longer exist.
There’s still the option of importing food from the EU. We saw a similar situation in 2022 with gasoline and food. Back then, Russia was destroying Ukraine’s few oil refineries, and now Ukraine depends almost entirely on gasoline from Europe.
— In August, Ukrainian media reported that air raid alerts were bringing Kyiv’s transportation system to a standstill. The metro had effectively stopped carrying passengers, and buses and trolleybuses were overcrowded. Kyiv residents were flagging down cars in the street and asking drivers to give them a ride to the other bank. How is public transportation working now?
— That was actually one of the reasons for dividing alerts into yellow and red levels. All city-run surface transportation keeps operating during yellow alerts. That’s dangerous, of course, but otherwise the city simply can’t function.
Previously, though, large numbers of passengers on buses and trolleybuses would be made to get off at the nearest stop. If you can’t get to a shelter, that’s hardly safe, either.
The metro is a little different. Kyiv has three lines, two of which connect the left and right banks. During yellow alerts, one of those stops running, and the other becomes severely overcrowded.
— Has planning a route become harder?
— I’d strongly recommend avoiding trips from one bank to the other whenever possible. Especially from the left bank to the right. The city center is on the right bank, so large numbers of people travel there for work in the morning and return in the evening.
That’s another reason so many people are being switched to remote work. There’s the general safety concern, but also a very specific everyday problem: With constant traffic jams, people can easily be an hour late. There’s no point sitting in traffic.
— Since the beginning of October, the Russian military has struck bridges over the Dnipro several times, particularly the Northern and Southern bridges. What consequences could those attacks have for the city?
— Completely destroying bridges over the Dnipro is virtually impossible — we can see that from many other bridges in Ukraine. Despite continuing attacks and damage, the bridge over the Dniester estuary in Zatoka [in the Odesa region], the bridge over the Dnipro in Zaporizhzhia, and the Antonivskyi Bridge in Kherson are all still standing. Ukrainian forces struck the Antonivskyi Bridge during their counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, when Kherson was still occupied.
We’re talking about strategically important bridges, not small structures somewhere on the Siverskyi Donets, which really can be destroyed.
Still, if intensive attacks on Kyiv’s bridges continue, serious logistical problems will naturally develop. According to Ukraine’s Infrastructure Ministry, roughly 600,000 vehicles cross Kyiv’s main bridges every day.
The city is now considering setting up pontoon crossings and ferries, but as I understand it, the infrastructure needed for that isn’t ready yet. And it would be hard to replace the Southern Bridge fully that way, for example. It’s particularly important for transportation and logistics: A significant share of freight passing through the capital crosses it, and it also carries a metro line.
‘A friend of mine says she’s learned to fall asleep in the metro without worrying about what might happen’
— You regularly see headlines about air raid alerts lasting for hours. According to Ukrainska Pravda, Kyiv had one of its longest air raid alerts on September 28: It lasted more than nine hours. How does the city change during an air attack?
— It depends. If you walk around Kyiv during an ordinary attack, when there aren’t explosions right around you — whether you’re downtown or elsewhere — the city won’t look much different from normal. Life doesn’t stop. It’s an ordinary workday: People go about their business, drink coffee, and go places.
When there’s a confirmed threat of ballistic missile strikes, things are a little different. You can see people trying either to take cover with two walls between them and the outside or to get to a shelter. Again, it varies from person to person and depends on where you are.
What has really changed is that quite a few people, including people I know, are choosing to spend every night in a shelter — in the metro or an underground parking garage, for example. For many, that’s hard mentally, but a friend of mine, for instance, says she’s learned to fall asleep without worrying about what might happen.
Signs of a massive combined strike — an attack involving cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and drones — usually appear several hours [before the strike itself]. You can tell whether an attack is coming from the movements of strategic bombers inside Russia.
At times like that, Kyiv’s metro is packed. The record for the number of people spending the night in the metro has been broken many times. The current record is 56,000. Realistically, that’s the maximum the metro can accommodate. Experts give higher figures, but after this summer’s combined attacks, you get the impression those are only possible on paper.
— Does Kyiv have enough shelters? Are they equipped for attacks lasting hours?
— The situation is pretty bad. Kyiv has about 4,500 shelters. It’s hard to say whether that’s a lot or a little. Not all of them are in good condition, and, let’s put it this way, not all of them are actually accessible.
During a jet-powered drone attack, conventional shelters — the metro, basements in schools and government buildings, and so on — aren’t all that helpful. They’re important, but Kyiv has almost none of what you see in Kharkiv and Odesa, for example. There, you can see portable concrete shelters on the streets that provide decent protection from drones.
Why are there almost none in Kyiv? That’s partly down to domestic politics. I don’t want to get too deep into it, but President Zelensky and Mayor Klitschko have been at odds for a long time. Different authorities block each other’s decisions to some extent.
I don’t want to take anyone’s side. But why almost nothing has been done about portable shelters in four years remains an open question. Kyiv’s mayor bears a great deal of responsibility here.
— What’s happening in Kyiv’s shelters during these hours-long alerts?
— Sometimes in the evenings, people try to get [into the stations] before the metro closes so they can lay out their mattresses and other things. Sometimes there’s a fight for spots.
Apart from these rather comical situations, I don’t think the atmosphere is that bad. It probably doesn’t compare anymore with the start of the war, when people held impromptu concerts in the stations. But even though everyone’s on edge, you can still feel people supporting each other. They share coffee and sandwiches, get to know each other, and so on.
Several times, I’ve gone down into the metro specifically as a journalist, to see how it all works and how people behave. And you really can still see some of that unity.
— In September, the Kyiv Post reported that Kyiv residents were increasingly ignoring air raid warnings. What do you think about that?
— You have to understand that it’s impossible to respond to every air raid alert for four and a half years. At some point, you could just go crazy. During yellow alerts, you could theoretically spend 18 hours in a shelter, but, as you can imagine, almost nobody does that.
But at night, when the chance of a ballistic missile strike is fairly high, people do go to shelters. I’d say that since May 2026, there’s actually been a noticeable increase in the number of Kyiv residents who don’t ignore air raid alerts.
‘People who wanted to prepare for winter have mostly been ready for a long time’
— You’ve already mentioned attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Last year, some districts of Kyiv went without heating for weeks at a time, and temperatures often dropped below minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit). What’s the outlook for this winter?
— It’s obvious there’ll be problems with energy supplies. Russia is trying to cut Kyiv off from the country’s power grid by striking both thermal power plants and power lines. Frequent repeat attacks make it harder to repair the damage. Kyiv could end up spending a week or two either with no electricity at all or with power for just a few hours a day. Hospitals, public and private, have long been ready for this. They largely prepared during the first winter of the war: They have generators and fuel reserves, so things are more or less okay on that front.
Air defense is also in worse shape now, for the reasons I mentioned at the beginning. But the weather is expected to be better this winter. Electricity consumption has also fallen. I think this winter will be more or less like the last one. It won’t be good, but I’m not expecting an outright apocalypse.
There could be problems with the sewer system — that’s very dangerous, and you can’t really prepare for it. If that happens, it’ll be a new experience for Kyiv residents.
— Last year, 600,000 people left Kyiv because of power and heating outages. Should we expect a similar mass exodus this winter?
— First, I want to point out that Klitschko’s figure of 600,000 was pulled out of thin air. People did leave, but there wasn’t a noticeable exodus. This winter will probably be different, since a whole range of factors will come into play.
Obviously, for people who have relatives [in other cities] or a house in some village where they can at least heat with firewood, that’s an option. But many people’s ability to travel is limited — primarily, I’m talking about military mobilization. There are checkpoints outside Kyiv, and if your paperwork isn’t all in order, you won’t get very far by car. So some people effectively won’t be able to leave Kyiv. And their girlfriends, wives, and children often stay with them.
And as I’ve already said, prices have risen so much that many people can’t afford to rent an apartment somewhere in western Ukraine.
— Can those who stay in the city prepare for winter?
— There’s nothing new here. Obviously, you can’t put a gasoline generator on the balcony of an apartment building, because your whole apartment could burn down. But people generally already have their power banks, EcoFlow portable power stations, and all that equipment ready.
I’m not saying everyone does, because there are people who don’t put much effort into it and just take things as they come. But people who wanted to prepare for winter have mostly been ready for a long time.
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Interview by Kira Kiseleva