The crack and the ear-splitting blast – two in a row, then a third – rattle windows and set off car alarms. But, in a city under constant bombardment, a smoker in a doorway tips a little ash and takes another drag.
A hotel receptionist, pooled in lamplight, doesn’t look up from her papers.
The explosions, they know, come from outgoing long-range anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the centre of the Ukrainian capital against incoming attacks.
While the citizens of Kyiv won’t move for these, the sound of lawnmower engines in the sky will prompt an immediate race to cellars and shelters.
For swarms of Iranian-made Russian Shahed unmanned drones are fired at Ukraine almost every night. They’re about two metres across, delta winged, and carry between 30kg and 50kg of explosive. They are guided by a primitive GPS system and driven by whining two-stroke engines.
“We’re pretty accurate, especially when they’re flying low at about 200 metres above us,” says “Lucky”, the gunner in a small unit that forms part of Ukraine’s air defence.
He is part of a team that, like soldiers across the country, have shrugged off US president Donald Trump’s latest edict, which has halted the provision of aid to almost any foreign country. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has insisted that the aid freeze doesn’t include military help. But only Egypt and Israel have been excluded from the ban, and there has been no signal from the Trump administration that Ukraine will still get the assistance it desperately needs.
To tackle the nightly bombardment from Vladimir Putin, these Turkish-made .50 calibre heavy machine guns, mounted on farm trailers towed by pickup trucks, are Ukraine’s answer to the Russian Shaheds – which are intended to kill, destroy, and above all distract.
Russia’s aim is to overwhelm sophisticated defences with vast numbers of cheap drones. Putin’s forces want to trick Ukrainians into firing long-range multimillion-dollar air defence weapons, such as US Patriot missiles, at drones that could be knocked up in a garden shed for £20,000.
The defence systems – the men on the trailers – bear a heavy responsibility every night as they take on deadly flying lawnmowers while the expensive kit is focused on Russia’s devastating long-range missiles, including the Iskanders, Kalibrs, and nuclear-capable Kinzhals.
The team’s thermal sights, along with the laptop tablet that gives early warning of incoming missiles, are all that separates them from Second World War infantry fighting off German Stuka bombers. Their weapon is, essentially, the same gun the British used then.
Tucked into a wood on the southern outskirts of Kyiv, a small group of middle-aged men, who joined up when Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, prepare for another night.
Razor-cold winds slice through their uniforms on 12-hour overnight shifts as the team of six men scour the skies. A few days earlier, we hear, at least three people were killed near Brovary, northeast of Kyiv, by an incoming Shahed missile, even though 50 other drones had been shot down.
“It’s a very heavy responsibility,” says one gunner, a former electrician, with the callsign “Alien”. “We know that if these Shaheds get through, or even if we hit one in a wing and it comes down, it’s carrying explosives and it will kill civilians.”
Ukrainian soldiers, from the eastern front lines near Poltava to the Sumy province in the north, as well as those in Kyiv province, say they’re exhausted, but that the kind of peace deal with Putin that has been suggested by the new US president is unacceptable.
They believe a decision by Trump to cut aid could force Ukraine into talks, kill more people on the front lines, and leave Russia to rearm, enabling it to take the rest of the country or attack other neighbours.
Still, soldiers here say they’ll fight on with what they’ve got.
Putin’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s energy sector for more than two years. Last December, the US agreed to fund repairs to the tune of around $800m (£650m). That funding is now in doubt following Trump’s three-month review of all US foreign aid.
“The enemy directs its attacks on civilian infrastructure, on energy,” says one soldier. “We all depend on it. Especially nowadays, most people are accustomed to the convenience. Therefore, civilians cannot do without energy. And military units as well. Everything depends on energy.”
The US has spent about $60bn on military aid to Ukraine, and is the embattled nation’s biggest donor. The aid has included long-range missiles, in limited quantities; anti-aircraft missiles, but not enough; and some tanks and artillery pieces, along with millions of rounds of ammunition.
Along with aid from the European Union of $52bn, that support is being consumed at a vast rate in defending Ukraine’s cities, as well as along a front line that stretches for at least 1,300km.
Now, the air defence team says, Putin’s drone developers are using black paint to hide Shaheds in the night sky, and adding dummy drones to the swarm to distract the teams even further.
The use of dummies may also be a sign that Russian resources are running low. Other frontline units fighting in Kursk and on the eastern front have said they are detecting a fall-off in artillery and the use of armoured vehicles among Russian forces.
“We’re seeing drones carrying old pipes, plastic jerry cans – and sometimes some explosives, as well as the Shaheds,” adds a senior air-force officer in Kyiv.
