russian attack

Today it was one of the biggest russian attacks. In my post Why I’m back in Ukraine I wrote that a country-wide attack will happen. My prediction was for the night between 23 and 24. In Ukraine 23 August is Flag Day and 24 August is Independence Day. I was wrong, but also Modi was in Kyiv those days. The attack happened today, Monday morning. Also, I said that it will be “significant”, which is a bit of an understatement as it was the biggest in the war so far.

I got up with the air alarm. My phone is set to the British time, it was 6.14 in Ukraine when I took this screenshot. At about 7-7.30 the threat level grew in the light red areas as well, where I am staying, in Lviv. In Kyiv 52,000 people hid in the metro. Others who have basements went there to hide.

ruSSia attacked with 109 Shahed UAVs and 127 missiles of various types. That means a total of 238! Ukrainian defenders shot down 201 of those targets, 99 Shaheds and 102 missiles:
• 99 Kh-101, Kalibr, Kh-59 missiles
• 1 Kh-47M2 Kindzhal missile
• 1 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missile
• 1 Kh-22 cruise missile

I got up, made the post for Instagram, prepared for breakfast. At breakfast I had a chat with a fellow volunteer who stays in the same hotel as me. We said it’s not necessary to go to the shelter and we had a meeting with another volunteer. While we were having breakfast the lights went off. Nobody was particularly bothered, not us, not the staff, not the others who had breakfast. We had to climb the stairs as we were not allowed to use the lift while there is an air alert.

All three of us went to the volunteer centre, had coffee with the other volunteers, had a chat about the missile attack, and started working. We also talked about the opera two of us went to yesterday. All this time the air alert was still on. A Ukrainian said that it will be a difficult winter because the russians are attacking the energy infrastructure, but that it doesn’t matter because Ukraine will win and some discomfort is to be expected. After a lovely lunch we worked a bit more. I had a chat with another Ukrainian volunteer about a place she didn’t go before, but which I went to, so told her a bit about the work there. We had a chat about a restaurant in Lviv.

After volunteering for 5 hours I went to a museum which was partially closed, but I had a coffee in some part of the exhibition that was open. It was calm, like nothing was happening. But we all knew what happened, we all know people from places more affected than Lviv, which only had a few explosions. I thought of the lady I met on Saturday on the guided tour of Lviv, who was heading for Kharkiv for a few days, I thought of my friends in Kyiv…

The generators are on, life goes on, and russia lost because of this, because Ukrainians are going to work and to volunteer and have fun despite russia’s attempts to terrorize them.

Slava Ukraini!