A night in Ukraine’s sleepless capital, taking cover from Russian bombs
Viktoriia Pysmenna with her son Mark in the bathroom of their apartment in Kyiv where they typically shelter during the night air raids.Each time the sirens wake Viktoriia Pysmenna, she follows the same drill. Desperate for more sleep, the 35-year-old single mother rolls over, scrolls through the air raid Telegram channels — “almost like checking the weather” — and starts counting minutes.
If another Russian airstrike is headed for Kyiv, she must get out of bed, again. She must wake her 12-year-old son, Mark, in the middle of the night, again. If it’s a drone, they might have a couple of hours. A ballistic missile? Just minutes.
The boy already knows where to go: into the bathtub, where his mother tucks him in with pillows and blankets and waits for the blasts — hopefully from Ukraine’s air defenses thwarting the attack.
This is the terrifying nighttime routine for families living under Russia’s relentless air assault on Kyiv.
Kyiv largely emptied out at the start of Russia’s brutal invasion last year, but after a string of Russian military failures, many families returned. The capital is once again bustling, with people crowding downtown streets, restaurant patios, and neighborhood parks to enjoy the arrival of summertime temperatures.
It’s also a place where, in recent weeks, a full night’s sleep has become nearly impossible.
Ukraine’s new arsenal of air defense systems, including two Patriot systems donated by the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, have allowed its armed forces to shoot down and destroy most of the drones and missiles hurtling toward its capital.
But the same air defenses that protect the city of more than 3 million people have also made it a higher-value target, with Moscow apparently intent on destroying the Patriots, which cost more than $1 billion each, and other valuable systems.
Kyiv has suffered 20 air attacks in the past month, most in the middle of the night. Some have been deadly, as falling debris from intercepted missiles crashed into homes, buildings and yards.
Each time the air alarm echoes, families must instantly decide where to take cover, how quickly, and for how long, weighing safety against exhaustion after a month of insomnia.
Parents tuck their children into closets or bathrooms or corridors, following the so-called “two wall rule.” Couples living in high-rise apartments dart into underground garages, basements or subway stations. Others simply push their beds as far from the windows as possible, protecting young children with their bodies.
The next morning Kyiv residents must continue with their day, sending children to school late, ordering an extra espresso shot on the way to work or taking a nap in an office meeting room — knowing they will face it all again in just a few hours.
Kateryna Davydchenko with her son Vova in the bathroom of the house they are staying in, and where they spent the time during the air raids that have been increasing in the past month in the Ukrainian capital.
Early Thursday morning, the city woke to a series of blasts that left three people dead, including a 9-year-old girl. Some ran to a basement shelter — only to find it locked.
The explosions came so suddenly that Pysmenna had no time for her usual decision-making. Just before 3 a.m., about five minutes after the alarm started, a roaring explosion shook her 15th floor apartment and jolted her and her son out of bed.
This time, they ran straight to the hallway. Shielded by multiple walls, the mother hoped they would be safe.
“Can I bring you a pillow?” she asked Mark as he yawned and nodded, sitting on the tile floor outside their apartment door.
“I’m going to spread the duvet so you can lie down,” she told him. She tucked him under a fleece blanket and gently stroked his hair, hoping he would sleep. Then she scrolled through her phone, hoping it would tell her when to expect the next blast.
They live on the 15th floor, in a two-bedroom, roughly 690-square-foot apartment. Pysmenna always dreamed of living in a place with a view, where she could watch the sun set over Kyiv’s skyline. Now, that view has become a constant threat.
Earlier that evening, she had pointed out places in the city where a fighter jet was once shot down, where a missile was destroyed, where a building caught flames during an attack. At night, she sees beams of light flash across the sky, searching for drones.
Mark said the booms have become slightly less scary over time. When he lies awake at night, he plays a Brawl Stars video game on his phone to keep his mind off the explosions.
Pysmenna, a local TV news editor, recently worked the overnight shift at her office. It was early May, a relatively calm time in Kyiv, and it was the only night she left Mark home alone. (His father, Pysmenna’s former spouse, is a soldier fighting in the east.)
She didn’t realize until later, when a colleague texted her, that the air defenses were shooting Russian targets that night, and the explosions in their neighborhood were loud.
“My heart was beating fast,” Mark said, recalling that night. But instead of calling his mother or anyone else, he walked himself to the bathroom, curled up in the tub alone, and slept.
For Kyiv parents with younger children, like Kateryna Davydchenko, 31, it’s impossible to explain the booms. When she hears the blasts, she grabs her nearly 2-year-old son and carries him to the bathroom. He’s often shaking, not fully awake, agitated but unaware of what is going on.
“Sometimes, he’s awake and just pointing at the window,” Davydchenko said.
Daria Altukhova, 37, rushes her 3-year-old son to their hallway, where they sleep on couch cushions. Her husband stays in bed. On loud nights, Altukhova said, sleeping next to her son helps her calm down. But even when she’s able to sleep, she wakes up feeling uneasy.
“You begin your day in a stressful way,” she said. “Your mind is still there.”
The near-nightly attacks are creating a collective sleep crisis for Kyiv residents.
Yuriy Pogoretsky, a somnologist, runs Ukraine’s Laboratory of Sleep, the country’s only clinic for sleep disorders. The war has roughly tripled the number of patients seeking help. This month, as strikes intensified, there was a tenfold increase in requests for online consultations, he said.
Daria Altukhova and her son Danylo in the hallway of their apartment in Kyiv where they typically shelter during the night air raids.
Pogorestsky advises companies to designate places for employees to take short naps, and he tells patients to go to bed early, to achieve a deep phase of sleep before the airstrikes start. He encourages families to prepare a bag with essentials for sleeping in a bunker or hallway or a subway station: A sleeping bag, pillow, eye mask and ear plugs.
Sitting cross-legged in her pajamas outside her apartment, Pysmenna wasn’t even trying to sleep. She checked in with friends on Facebook and Instagram, asking if they were awake and taking cover.
“Car alarms went off,” one friend said. “Ballistic,” said another. “It was sooooo loud.”
Everyone seemed to be out of bed, even friends who tend to simply keep sleeping.
“Are you staying home?” one asked.
“We could only make it to the hallway,” Pysmenna replied.
“It’s good you are going to the hallway,” her friend said. “Some children didn’t make it to their shelters tonight.”
Pysmenna soon learned what her friend meant: A 9-year-old girl in Kyiv was killed as she ran to a basement shelter with her family.
In moments like these, Pysmenna sometimes asks herself why she stayed, why she risks keeping her son here. The only way to explain it, she said, is comparing it to a problem in a family. “When you face problems with your family, you don’t run,” she said. “You try to sort them out.”
By 4 a.m., a phone alert said the threat had lifted. At 8:30 a.m. Mark would need to be in math class.
“Where do you want to sleep?” she asked him.
“I’ll sleep on my own,” he said. But Pysmenna knew he would probably crawl into her bed.
She realizes it’s unusual for a 12-year-old to sleep with his mother. But these are unusual times.
“When he’s next to me,” she said, “I still have this idea that I can protect him.” She wanted him close, for his sake, but also for her own.
The light of dawn was already visible through the apartment window as the family went back inside — at last, to bed.
Mark is falling asleep in his bed, with his mom Victoria Pysmenna and their cat Masha beside him, after sheltering at the entryway to their apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine during a rocket strike on Kyiv on June 1st, 2023.
As missiles exploded over Kyiv, they raced for a shelter. It was locked.
Yaroslav Riabchuk, 34, whose wife Nataliya Belchenko, 33, was killed just several hours before in front of him when they couldn’t access the bomb shelter at the Children’s Clinic in Desnyans'kyi District
When the air raid alarm blared across Ukraine’s capital at 2:49 a.m. Thursday, Yaroslav Riabchuk and his wife and daughter rushed outside to find shelter, as they often did, in the nearest basement: a medical clinic in front of their apartment building.
But on this morning, for some reason, the clinic’s doors were locked.
In the darkness, a group of 10 families with children banged on the doors with their hands and feet, pleading to be let inside, Riabchuk said. He ran to the other side of the building to find another entrance. Then he felt the blast.
Ukraine’s air defenses had intercepted an attack, and the explosive force was powerful enough to blow out the windows of nearby apartment buildings. Debris crashed down around the clinic.
“It was chaos. My daughter was screaming. Everyone was screaming,” Riabchuk said. “I was hoping it was not my wife.”
“I tried to help her,” he added, “but it was too much blood.”
His wife, Nataliya Belchenko, 33, was one of three people killed in Thursday morning’s attack, among the deadliest recent strikes on the capital. Another victim was a 9-year-old child, Kyiv police said, a death that occurred as the country prepared to celebrate International Children’s Day. At least 12 other people were injured, police said.
Russia has unleashed a relentless barrage of airstrikes on Kyiv in recent weeks, in an apparent attempt to weaken or destroy air defenses ahead of Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive.
The air defense systems, many donated by Western nations, have allowed Ukraine to thwart most of these attacks and protect the city. And the Ukrainian military said it destroyed all 10 missiles fired at the capital on Thursday morning.
But Thursday’s deaths served as a reminder of the growing danger in Kyiv’s skies as tensions escalate ahead of a potentially pivotal moment in the war. It came two days after a drone attack hit Moscow, damaging two residential buildings — the first strike on a civilian area of the Russian capital since President Vladimir Putin launched his brutal invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.
Thursday’s attack also raised questions about access to shelters for residents across Kyiv, especially those whose buildings lack basements. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post that city specialists are investigating why the families were unable to enter the clinic’s basement.
Klitschko said the heads of the medical facility and of the district were responsible for the operation of the shelter. “All decisions regarding the actions of responsible persons will be made today and immediately,” he said.
Klitschko also called for all the heads of all of the capital’s districts to “immediately check all the shelters” to be sure they are accessible and in working order.
A local prosecutor, Anton Yefimov, told Ukraine’s Suspilne broadcaster that authorities are investigating the medical clinic’s security guard after allegations that the guard was drunk at the time of the airstrike. A local resident said he woke up the security guard in the shelter after the explosion and that there were signs of intoxication.
Riabchuk said the shelter was usually open at night and accessible to families from nearby apartment buildings like theirs.
“I don’t how it could happen,” he said, standing in front of the clinic in Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district Thursday morning, just a few hours after the attack. Blood was still splattered across his jeans and his wife’s purse, which he carried. “It’s all because of negligence.”
Around him, neighbors and friends swept up glass from their apartment building’s blown-out windows. Residents reentered their homes to assess the damage. Law enforcement authorities had cordoned off the clinic but could be seen covering a body at its entrance.
“Even my wife understood that after all of these attacks,” Riabchuk said, “the next could happen at any time.”
For Kyiv residents, who have grown accustomed to sleepless nights under frightening explosions, it all happened much faster than usual. Only a few minutes passed between the start of the alarm and the first explosion.
Bogdan Pomaz, 32, a children’s swimming coach, quickly took cover with his wife and toddler son in the hallway farthest from the windows in his apartment. Two small booms led to one large explosion, and Pomaz’s family decided to rush to the clinic basement.
As Pomaz ran toward the clinic, he saw several people outside its entrance, on the ground. He turned his wife and son around and quickly helped administer first aid for one of the injured women.
He asked a man for a belt to use as a makeshift tourniquet, and the man handed him a real one, which Pomaz applied to her leg.
Riabchuk said he saw a child running toward the clinic entrance during the blast. Two women appeared to have protected his daughter, pushing her toward a corner of the building.
As he stood looking toward the clinic, a neighbor wept next to him. She spoke about the man’s daughter, who had witnessed the entire attack. “How could you explain to that daughter why her mother died?” the woman said.
She Was Killed in Front of Her Son. It Took 26 Years to Crack the Case.
Inside a cold-case detective’s dogged quest to solve the murder of Jasmine Porter.
read the story on nytimes.com
She Was Killed in Front of Her Son. It Took 26 Years to Crack the Case.
She Was Killed in Front of Her Son. It Took 26 Years to Crack the Case.
Inside a cold-case detective’s dogged quest to solve the murder of Jasmine Porter.
read the story on nytimes.com
Architect Known for Building Castles in the ‘Vegetable Kingdom’
Emilio Ambasz for the New York Times
read the story on nytimes.com
Zohran Mamdani
for City & State
Zohran Mamdani
for City & State
Zohran Mamdani
for City & State
for City & State