Day 1,254 of the invasion; 31 July 2025, Kyiv, 4.30am. The air-raid alarm started again just a moment ago. I wake up from the roar and rumble of rockets. It’s a sound that makes you want to flee in primeval terror.

Time slows down. I roll over on the bed, embrace my girlfriend Dasha, make another half-turn and we drop down softly to the floor. I am not thinking or reflecting, I’m guided by instinct – move away from the windows, position our silhouettes as low as possible. I cover Dasha with my body. All she has time to ask for is: “The doggie? Where’s the dog?” From under the bed, we can hear the rustling of our old chihuahua’s paws.

Five Iskander-K cruise missiles are falling from the sky. One after another. Like gigantic knives, striking between the ribs of the city. A deadly force that cannot be stopped. The sounds of explosions are coming from different parts of the city, enveloping us in total helplessness. There is no hiding from this.

Two hours before the shelling, I laid out my clothes and placed my emergency bag in the hallway. Just in case. It was not a rational decision based, for example, on warnings from analytical groups. But you can feel the shelling coming. It will happen today or tomorrow. Thousands of little Russians, who “have no influence over anything”, and will repeat at the tribunals the convenient narrative that this is “Putin’s war”, have already manufactured new Shahed drones and missiles.

According to Russia’s new tactics, every night it first sends hundreds of the drones to one or several Ukrainian cities, thus exhausting the air defences, destroying civilian infrastructure and terrorising civilians. And then Russian missiles fly right after them and finish off the city that is already bleeding out.

On that day at the end of July, the all-clear siren after the Shahed attack sounded at 3.18am, after four and a half hours of explosions. After the all-clear, Kyiv residents who had been hiding in........

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