From Sunday evening into Monday, Kyiv barely left its shelters. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia launched 277 attack drones of various types in a single night, 155 of them jet-powered. Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian capital was under air raid alert for a total of about 18 hours - more than three quarters of the day.

Moscow has its version ready. The Russian Defence Ministry said the strikes targeted Ukraine's communications and logistics infrastructure, with targets in Kyiv and Odesa, as well as a cargo ship in the Black Sea. Ukrainian monitoring channels confirm half of that story: the DLine data centre and Ukrtelecom facilities were hit. The other half is told by the damage list - warehouses, petrol stations, car repair shops, and even the residence of Saudi Arabia's ambassador.

A medical centre across from the Constitutional Court

The most telling strike came in the very centre of the city. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a drone hit a seven-storey office building at the level of the fourth floor. Ukrainian media then identified the building at 40 Antonovycha Street - home to the private medical centre Dobrobut, which treats both adults and children, a few steps from Olimpiiska metro station and opposite Ukraine's Constitutional Court. Ukrtelecom's city branch is at the same address. There is no confirmed information yet about casualties from this particular strike.

Somewhat earlier, a fire also broke out in the building of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences, also in the centre. One person was killed there and several people were injured. By the afternoon, Ukrainian authorities had put the toll for Kyiv at one dead and 19 injured, three of them children. There were also strikes in the Odesa and Kirovohrad regions, in Balakliia and in Kharkiv.

When "connections" become the target

Data centres and telecoms are the nervous system of a city at war - without them there is no military coordination, no banking, no call to an ambulance. That is exactly why every side declares them legitimate targets, and it's civilians who sit in the buildings next to them. Belgrade learned this in April 1999, when the RTS building was hit on similar grounds. Twenty-seven years later, the rule hasn't changed: whoever targets "communications" rarely counts who was working on the floor above.

One warning about the headlines is also in order. Some media in the region wrote that Kyiv is "being wiped off the face of the earth". The numbers say something else - one dead, 19 injured, heavy material damage and a city that spent 18 of 24 hours under sirens. That is frightening enough without apocalyptic vocabulary. The real question is a different one: does anyone at the negotiating table even count those 18 hours?