For a long time, people in Kyiv felt their city was relatively insulated from the war, despite the occasional Russian bombings that struck the city. However, a recent escalation in strikes, conducted over several hours at night and thereby depriving the capital’s 3 million residents of sleep, has heightened Kyiv residents’ sense of insecurity. These massive bombardments now strike anywhere in the entire country. On the night of Saturday, June 28, alone, Russia launched 477 drones and 60 missiles across six regions, according to Ukrainian authorities, who announced three deaths, including a young F-16 fighter pilot tasked with defending the skies against the attack, one of the largest since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022.
On Saturday, two people were killed and at least 14 injured in a bombing of a residential tower in Odesa. The day before, five people died and dozens were wounded in Samar, in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk oblast. On Tuesday, June 24, 24 people were killed in an attack on the city of Dnipro. These regular strikes have been conducted at a time when Moscow’s forces continue to assault several sectors of the eastern front, seizing small pockets of territory in the Donbas, at the cost of heavy losses, as they face fierce Ukrainian defense.
The Ukrainian capital is far from having been spared by this upsurge in attacks. On the night of Sunday, June 22, while 368 attack drones and missiles struck the country, a residential building on the outskirts of Kyiv was destroyed. Now, a small memorial of dried flowers stands opposite the gutted building, a tribute to the nine victims of the attack that reduced the structure to a heap of rubble. The strike exploded across all the nearby buildings’ façades, over dozens of meters. “It gets worse and worse,” said Lydia Snyhir, a retiree who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years, on Friday. “We see no end to this war. Putin is destroying Kharkiv, Odesa… But he wants to make Kyiv his dessert.”
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