Eight-year-old Andrii and his six-year-old brother Maksym’s wooden fort is covered with cloth netting.
Protection, they said, from the drones fired from Russia.
The children, who live just 15 kilometres from the Russian border in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, play with plastic guns.
They scamper through abandoned trenches and the charred shells of armoured vehicles, and keep watch from their makeshift fort.
The brothers hang out and play at the makeshift fort with the few other children left at their frontline village. (Reuters: Violeta Santos Moura)
When fighting intensifies, their mother Varvara Tupkalenko takes them back to the family’s apartment in nearby Kharkiv, the regional capital.
But Ukraine’s second city itself is a major target, and the swarms of drones that pound it at night terrify the boys.
“The kids keep crying, asking to come back to the village,”
Ms Tupkalenko said.
Kharkiv is among the cities that face regular drone and missile bombardments. (AP: Andrii Marienko)
Europe’s largest land conflict since the Second World War is now in its fourth year and does not appear to be easing.
The rhythm of attacks has been increasing in recent months since diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled.
Air strikes targeting cities are getting worse, with record numbers of drones and missiles flying overhead.
Analysts say Russia appears to have a new tactic: launching hundreds of weapons simultaneously from different altitudes and directions, encircling a city.
A firefighter stands on a roof of an apartment building in Kyiv damaged by Russian drone and missile strikes. (Reuters: Valentyn Ogirenko )
“This is an obvious escalation of terror by Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post to social media.
“Hundreds of ‘Shaheds’ [drones] every night, constant strikes, massive attacks against Ukrainian cities.“
Over 700 drones in one onslaught
Table of Contents
Russian forces launched 728 drones and 13 missiles on the night of July 8, according to US think tank the Institute for the Study of War.
It was the largest combined drone and missile strike of the war and about a 34 per cent increase from the previous record high of 550 earlier this month.
Lutsk, a city that’s home to airfields used by the Ukrainian army, was the hardest hit, according to Mr Zelenskyy.
It lies near the border with Poland in western Ukraine, a region that is a crucial hub for receiving foreign military aid.
Another 10 regions were struck, killing one person in the Khmelnytskyi area, and wounding two in Kyiv, officials said.
Kyiv’s military downed almost all the drones, but some of the six hypersonic missiles caused unspecified damage.
The attack came just days after US President Donald Trump announced that arms shipments to Ukraine would resume, and aimed unusually sharp criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A day later, hours before a conference in Rome at which Kyiv won billions of dollars in aid pledges, Kyiv was struck with a record bombardment.
It lasted for nearly 10 hours, killing two people and wounding 26, according to figures from the national emergency services.
Rescuers at the site of the apartment building hit by Russian drone strike in Kyiv. (Reuters: Stringer)
The Institute for the Study of War assessed that recent major attacks have occurred off the back of diplomatic efforts, such as the US and Ukraine offering a 30-day ceasefire in March.
Russia also launched more than 500 drones in the early hours of July 4, American Independence Day, just hours after Mr Trump and Mr Putin had a telephone conversation.
Russia expert Matthew Sussex from the ANU’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre said the Russian president was sending a message.
“Putin will do whatever he thinks, whatever he wants to do and won’t be influenced by others,”
he said.
Russian authorities have also reported dozens of attempted Ukrainian drone attacks over the last week, including four bound for Moscow.
Record drone and missile strikes are being launched at Ukrainian cities in an apparent new Russian tactic. (Reuters: Alina Smutko )
More drones with new upgrades
The Ukrainian capital of 3 million people has endured several consecutive weeks of escalating Russian attacks.
Civilians say they face nightly terror, kept awake by air raid sirens and endless booms of explosions.
“Most people don’t even sleep in our beds anymore,” Kyiv-based journalist Emmanuelle Chaze told ABC The World.
“There’s a constant state of stress and worry that something will drop on you in the middle of the night.“
Russia’s defence ministry said it had hit “military-industrial” targets in Kyiv as well as military airfields.
It denies targeting civilians although towns and cities have been hit regularly in the war and thousands have been killed.
June saw the highest monthly civilian casualty count in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, according to UN data.
It said it reflected a “worsening trend”, with 6,754 civilians killed or injured in the first half of 2025 – a sharp 54 per cent rise compared to the same period in 2024.
Kyiv residents were forced to shelter in underground locations during Russia’s attacks. (AP: Evgeniy Maloletka)
Professor Sussex said attacks had been “really bad” and the situation was becoming more difficult for Ukrainians.
He described that Russia was conducting “double taps” where a target would be struck twice — usually once firefighters had arrived.
“First of all they attack a target, then wait until the first responders get there and then attack it again,” he told the ABC.
“And they’ve started to also target recruitment centres for the Ukrainian armed forces when people are basically lined up waiting to get their call up.”
People gather nearby as firefighters work at a site of an apartment building in Kyiv. (Reuters: Alina Smutko )
Russia has been ramping up local production of drones, increasing both the quantity and quality of their supply.
Maksym Beznosiuk, a strategic policy expert and director of UAinFocus, an independent platform connecting Ukrainian and international experts, said Russia was producing new drones with a range of technological upgrades.
“This is making it possible to launch massive bombardments of Ukrainian cities that overwhelm Ukraine’s limited air defences and terrorise the civilian population,” he wrote in analysis for the Atlantic Council.
Loading…
The mix of new drones with hypersonic cruise missiles was making barrages more difficult to defend against.
Professor Sussex said Russia’s Khinzhal missiles were particularly hard to counter.
Russia was also now flying its Shahed attack drones at much higher altitudes.
“Then they programmed to dive straight down a bit like a dive bomber, which makes that harder to hit as well,”
Professor Sussex said.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat reported that Russian forces used more than 400 decoy drones in a record strike on July 8 in order to overwhelm air defences.
Women assess the damage to their apartment building after a Russian drone strike in June. (Reuters: Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy)
Ukraine pushed for ‘biting sanctions’
Professor Sussex said improving the situation for Ukraine would depend on how much Europe could come to the table, and whether Russia could keep its economy on a war footing.
This week, Ukraine’s allies pledged more than 10 billion euros ($17.8 billion) to help rebuild the country, and the EU announced another 2.3 billion euros in support.
Mr Trump has signalled willingness to send more Patriot air-defence missiles, which have proven critical to defending against fast-moving Russian ballistic missiles.
A boy plays on a bench near a residential building, which was damaged during Russian drone and missile strikes. (Reuters: Alina Smutko)
Mr Zelenskyy said the record strikes called for “biting sanctions” to be imposed on Moscow.
Mr Trump also said he was considering supporting a bill that would impose steep sanctions on Russia, including 500 per cent tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports.
“Even if Trump does it partially [import the sanctions bill], that still puts pressure on the Russian economy at a time that inflation remains very high, interest rates remain very high, and there are also ruptures going on within the Putin elite,” Professor Sussex said.
Analysts say Russia’s massive bombardments are largely aimed at demoralising the Ukrainian population and breaking morale.
But often it can instead harden their resolve, with many residents determined to hold on to some normality.
When 24-year-old translator Kateryna emerged after the record strikes on Kyiv this week, she got on with her daily routines.
“I took a cold shower, drank two coffees, sat and thought for a bit, realised that for now I can’t change anything, then went to work,” she said while waiting at a bus stop.
“That’s it.”