Inside Putin's campaign to instil ‘psychological terror’

Kyiv lies hundreds of miles from the front line but residents have had to adapt to an endless cycle of missile strikes

- By STEFFIE BANATVALA

Less than two weeks after Donald Trump promised an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, Russia pounded Kyiv with the second-worst aerial assault of the war so far on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and injuring 48.

Residents of the Ukrainian capital, which lies hundreds of miles from the front line, have been forced to adapt to a constant cycle of devastating missile and drone strikes since the beginning of the war in February 2022. The sound of air raid sirens and the retreat to bomb shelters have become a daily reality.

In the last few months, Russia has ramped up strikes on towns and cities in a move experts say is a deliberate attempt to sow fear among civilians and break their morale.

"Russia is pressuring Ukraine through psychological methods and intimidation. This is a strategy to exhaust our moral and instil psychological terror," Liliya Sky, a PhD student from Kyiv, told The Independent.

"It is a methodical, constant campaign of moral and physical exhaustion so that people surrender and agree to give up territories for the sake of simply ending the war," Ms Sky said. "But Ukrainians have a different mentality: I would rather die than submit."

At least 100 buildings, including a shopping mall, were damaged in the overnight attack. Emergency workers dug through rubble on the left bank of the Dnipro River to recover bodies, and firefighters battled blazes in residential buildings.