Bars and restaurants are full but every night brings fear for those who live near factories and industrial estates
I
t only occurred to Iryna Yakymehuk to make use of the local bomb shelter after the Shaheed kamikaze drone struck her nextdoor neighbour’s fifth-floor flat at 2am on Tuesday, taking a messy bite out of the bedroom.
The 22-year-old had returned to her home in Kyiv’s Obolon district from the underwear shop where she works as an assistant at about 9pm. She ate macaroni while swiping through some funny TikTok videos before getting into bed at 11pm.
Russia has stepped up its aerial attacks on Kyiv in recent days. From the safety of Washington, Donald Trump had warned that Vladimir Putin’s response to Ukraine’s audacious Operation Spiderweb attack on Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers a week earlier “wouldn’t be pretty”. But Yakymehuk doesn’t look for that sort of content on TikTok.
