Air raids are different.

Ballistic missile attacks are sudden, swift, and brutal. No compromise, no remorse. Ballistic missiles are fast. Usually, you have only a minute or two between the alert and the incoming.

You don’t have time to look for a shelter. If caught outside, just hide inside the nearest building. You are in luck if there is a subsurface facility nearby - an underground pedestrian crossing, an underground parking lot, or a subway. The best of them, of course, is a subway, designed in the Cold War to be a nuclear shelter.

If the alarm caught you at home or in an office, it is better to stay inside. It is the best option since the strike might happen while you are outside still looking for shelter. Actually, we had fatalities in the city when the falling debris of an intercepted missile killed someone who was looking for shelter. So it is better to stay inside within the location you are currently in and look for the most reinforced place away from windows. Try to have at least two walls between you and the outside. If your building has an underground parking lot it is a good idea to move there ASAP.

It also can be that a ballistic attack caught you in transit. The worst-case scenario I can think of is when you are stuck in traffic on one of the bridges over the river. There is nothing you can do then but hope that this strike is not targeting this particular bridge.

Cruise missiles are different. Russians launch them from standoff distances way inside their territory to keep strategic bombers away from danger. Often somewhere over the Caspian Sea. It takes at least an hour for a relatively slow subsonic missile to reach Ukraine. When the launch is detected you have plenty of time to plan your shelter arrangements.

Drones are the slowest of the explosives delivery bunch. So the drone attacks are the most exhausting ones.

When the city is hit by ballistics, you hear the air raid alerts, then explosions in a few minutes. You still have to wait until the air raid alert is over as a safeguard for additional attack waves.

Windows are shaking, and adrenalin is spiking, but after the burst of explosions usually it is over pretty soon. If you hear ballistic missiles hitting or intercepted, that means these are not meant for you. You will never hear a ballistic missile hitting you since they are supersonic. First comes the explosion, then the sound (though, there are still very dangerous debris and shrapnel afterward).

Drones are the totally different beast. Russians launch Iranian Shaheds in batches late in the evening and wave after wave, these drones are flying and circling all over Ukraine for hours.

Last night, the initial air raid alert was declared at 10 PM. That means the drones are closing in on Kyiv. And they continue to come in multiple waves during the night. Almost 100 drones in total, 30+ of them targeting Kyiv. Each time another pack of drones enters Kyiv we have an additional “Increased Air Threat” alert. We had like 11 or 12 of these throughout the night mixed with shooting and explosions when these drones were intercepted here and there.

No drone passed through the air defense deep into the city last night, but bad sleep for millions of Ukrainians was ensured. Another attack is repealed. And once again I’m consuming copious amounts of coffee in the morning to compensate for the sleepless night.

Just another sleepy day.