This is blitz, blitz, blitz Air raids leave residents exhausted

At 1am on Thursday Dartsia Liuba went to the basement of her Kyiv apartment building with her two daughters and husband, Roma. The air raid siren had gone off. A Russian attack was coming.

- Luke Harding

Liuba scooped up her seven-month-old, Halyna, and woke bleary-eyed Orysia, nine. They staggered down three floors and waited in sticky darkness.

Soon explosions began. There was an ugly whine in the sky above their district of Podil. It came from a Shahed, a kamikaze drone. The streets echoed with loud booms and rat-tat-tat machine gun fire as Ukrainian air defence units tried to bring it down. The buzzing stopped – and then resumed as more drones appeared, in a swarm too big to count.

Across Ukraine's capital, people took cover in metro stations, subways and on the lower floors of apartment buildings. They heeded official advice to stay between two walls, with bathrooms a favourite hiding spot. Last autumn, as Russia escalated its aerial raids, Liuba kitted out her shelter with camp beds, chairs and a squishy bean bag. The family bought a first-aid kit and a fire extinguisher.

In the early hours of Thursday Orysia crashed out. At some point Roma and Halyna dozed off. Liuba couldn't sleep. She texted a friend: "It's very scary. A lot of neighbours who don't normally come to the basement are down here. It's hard for me to deal with the explosions. I can barely hold myself together. My head hurts." At 5am she took the children upstairs, returning at 6am to the shelter because of incoming ballistic missiles.

Russia has been pounding Ukrainian towns and cities since the beginning of Vladimir Putin's full-scale 2022 invasion. In recent months, however, these raids have got dramatically worse. One explanation is military-technical: the Kremlin has stepped up drone production, building new factories. Another is geopolitical: since returning to the White House in January, Donald Trump has pivoted towards Moscow.