After three and a half years of fluctuating fortunes, they are tough and extremely resilient. But in recent months, they have been experiencing something new: vast, coordinated waves of attacks from the air, involving hundreds of drones and missiles, often concentrated on a single city. Last night, it was Kyiv. And the week before too. In between, it was Lutsk in the far west. Three years ago, Iranian-supplied Shahed drones were a relative novelty. I remem-ber hearing my first, buzzing a lazy arc across the night sky above the southern city of Za-porizhzhia in October 2022.

But now everyone is familiar with the sound, and its most fearsome recent iteration: a dive-bombing wail some have compared to the German World War Two Stuka aircraft.The sound of swarms of approaching drones have sent hardened civilians back to bomb shelters, the metro and underground car parks for the first time since the early days of the war. (BBC)