War teaches you to believe only in what happens, rather than what is merely said or promised. A day after the “peace talks” in London, which the US secretary of state Marco Rubio didn’t even turn up for, Ukrainians were not anxiously waiting for the results of a possible deal, which looked unfeasible anyway. Instead, they were counting their dead.

According to Ukraine’s air force, in the early hours of Thursday morning Russia launched 11 Iskander ballistic missiles, 37 KH-101 cruise missiles, six Iskander-K cruise missiles, 12 Kalibr cruise missiles, 4 KH-59/KH-69 missiles and 145 drones. For Kyiv and Kharkiv residents that night, this was not just a case of reading numbers on a news feed, but hearing and feeling explosions rock their cities. It turned out to be the deadliest night for the Ukrainian capital this year.

“Not necessary and very bad timing,” Donald Trump later wrote on social media. But, Ukrainians might ask, when would be a better time to kill 12 civilians and injure at least 90?

Most people were asleep in the western suburbs of Kyiv that were hit. Most of the homes in a five-story apartment block were damaged. A ballistic missile – allegedly North Korean – destroyed an older two-story house. Most of the casualties lived there.

At the time of........

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