CNN
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Since September 1st, Ukraine’s capital Kiev has been spared Russian drone attacks for just one night, October 14th.
Many of the country’s 4.5 million residents are woken every other night by sirens and run to some form of shelter or hide in bathrooms.
Sirens blared for 43 hours in the first week of November alone.
The latest onslaught is just one indicator of Russia’s ability to carry out attacks at full speed, even as Ukraine faces deep uncertainty about future support from the United States and Europe.
The cities of Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Odessa have also come under frequent drone and missile attacks in recent weeks, in what appears to be another Russian effort to break the resolve of Ukrainian civilians.
On Saturday night, Ukraine’s air defense forces detected a record 145 incoming Shahid drones.
The surge in attacks on cities comes as Russian forces continue to make gradual advances in Donetsk, while Ukrainian military units suffer from manpower shortages and are increasingly stretched out along a vast front. .
Kiev residents told CNN it was a long, terrifying night with sirens, strikes and debris falling on apartments, shops and homes.
Victoria Kovalchuk said her 6-year-old son Theo was “very scared and clung to me” after debris from a drone fell near his home last week.
Kovalchuk said Teo was in a constant state of anxiety. “During the past two months, when shelling became more frequent, we hid in toilets or took shelter in underground shelters,” Kovalchuk said.
“I don’t remember the last time I slept properly.”
Businesses are also suffering. A man who identified himself as Maksim told CNN that debris crashed through the restaurant’s roof last week, causing about $10,000 in damage.
“We will restore everything on our own and continue to operate as usual,” he insisted.
Warnings alone can cause major disruption to city life. Bridges have been closed, public transport has stopped, and two areas of the capital across the Dnipro River are effectively cut off.
Konstantin Usov, deputy mayor of Kyiv, told CNN that during the attack, “the city freezes… This alone causes a huge delay in the functioning of the city’s economy.”
Usoff said many children do not come to school during the warning.
Many air defense batteries are operated by volunteers from all walks of life, including Yury Chumak, a judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine.
Chumak told CNN that the territorial defense force also includes members of parliament, opera singers and television hosts.
“We’ve been doing this for over two years,” he said, but the intensity of drone attacks had peaked in the past few months.
Their equipment is low-tech, with machine guns mounted on the roofs of eight skyscrapers. “Since the drone was flying low, it was practical and cheap to shoot it down with a machine gun.”
“We continue to work during the night. Attacks are now occurring almost every day,” Chumak added.
Several people have been killed in recent weeks in drone attacks, which appear to be aimed at inciting fear rather than causing mass casualties. Among them was 15-year-old Mariya Troyanivska, described by her Kiev school as an inspirational person who “loved life and brought joy to everyone around her.”
The persistent attacks seem to be reducing morale. The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology regularly asks people whether Ukraine should continue fighting as long as necessary. The number of people who answered “yes” decreased from 73% in February to 63% last month.
This perception was likely fueled by news from the front, where Russian attacks continue to erode Ukraine’s defenses, particularly near Pokrovsk, a key stronghold in Donetsk Oblast.
“The situation remains difficult and tends to escalate,” the military’s top commander, Oleksandr Shirschiy, said on Saturday. The enemy continues its offensive operations, taking advantage of its numerical superiority, concentrating its main efforts in the direction of Pokrovsk and Krahov. ”
After a two-week visit to Ukraine last month, Rochan Consulting analyst Konrad Muzyka said the key issue was integrating the newly mobilized military.
Mr. Muzyka posted on X that the invasion of the Ukrainian army into Russia’s Kursk region has “further expanded the already small Ukrainian army.”
The Ukrainians are using a variety of battlefield drones to inflict losses on the Russians. Silsky said more than 52,000 enemy targets were destroyed or damaged by drones in October alone.
But drones cannot compensate for the lack of infantry, Mujica said. Despite a law passed earlier this year to improve mobilization, “the presence of newly mobilized troops and soldiers is virtually imperceptible.”
“We are in a situation where the Ukrainian army is not only unable to replace its losses, but is also losing soldiers at an increasingly rapid pace due to declining morale,” Muzyka told X.
Russian forces have become increasingly adept at exploiting weaknesses on the front lines, allowing them to erode Ukraine’s defenses within six miles (10 kilometers) of Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian forces are on the defensive in many other parts of the 600-mile front, with some analysts predicting further Russian offensives in the south. The only gains for the Ukrainians this year were inside Russia, and in August they launched a surprise invasion of the Kursk region.
The negative outlook darkens the mood among Ukraine’s allies, who talk less about Kiev winning on the battlefield and more about Kiev holding enough ground to force the Kremlin to negotiate. talks a lot about
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hinted as much. “No single capability can turn the tide. No system can end Putin’s aggression. It is important to focus on the collective effectiveness of Ukraine’s military capabilities and what works. Just keep going.”
“There is a quiet growing consensus that negotiations that involve accepting at least a temporary loss of sovereignty over territory are the only way to end this war,” said Lim Montas of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I am evaluating it.
“Kyiv is in its weakest position since February 2022, and the prospect of selling out such a deal is a political minefield for Zelenskiy,” Montaz said.
Victory, defined by the Ukrainian government as expelling Russian forces from all territory, is widely seen as unachievable.
“Washington needs to face the harsh realities of war and accept a more acceptable outcome,” writes Richard Haas in a new essay in Foreign Affairs.
“There are no game-changing weapons or lifting of restrictions that would allow Ukraine to simultaneously protect what it already controls and liberate what it does not control,” Haas wrote.
Ukrainian officials are putting on a brave face despite the gloomy outlook.
“I am sure that we are all united in the goal of achieving a just peace in Ukraine and deterring Russian aggression…We are not talking about appeasement,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha said on Saturday. , just peace.”
The path to negotiations is murky, to say the least. The Kremlin says its goals in Ukraine remain unchanged: to annex four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine. Russian forces already occupy almost all of Luhansk and large parts of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson, about 20% of Ukraine.
“If Ukraine wants to convince Russia to join the peace talks, it first needs to stabilize its front and rebuild enough forces to carry out an attack,” Muzyka said.
Donald Trump’s election victory will likely intensify the debate over how to end the conflict. President Trump has previously said he could end the war within 24 hours, declaring in September, “I think it’s in America’s best interest to end this war and just get on with it.”
One option favored by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is to freeze the conflict on its current course with a heavily fortified demilitarized zone to deter future Russian aggression. Along an ill-defined front hundreds of miles long, it would be a daunting and possibly impossible mission.
It would give the Kremlin control of territory it had already captured. Moscow will also demand guarantees of Ukraine’s neutrality, or at least an indefinite suspension of moves toward NATO membership.
Even if he is outnumbered, it will be impossible for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to accept this without guaranteeing Ukraine’s future security. And given the sacrifices of the past 1,000 days, it will be difficult for many Ukrainians to accept.
Supreme Court Justice Chumack told CNN: “Our mood remains patriotic and unchanged. We are ready to go anywhere.”
But the destination may change.
