The train was late. Eight people stood on the platform waiting for it - the last suburban service that takes people from Brovary home after a shift. The missile arrived first. Not one of them boarded anything.

It happened at Kvitneve station, on the edge of Brovary east of Kyiv, during one of the fiercest nights since the war began in that part of the Kyiv region. A Russian missile struck a line of trees immediately behind the station, and the blast wave swept across the platform. In the morning the bodies still lay beside the rails - and a few metres away railway workers were already repairing the damaged track. That image tells the whole story of this war: death and routine side by side, with no pause between them.

The night's total is at least 17 dead in Kyiv and the surrounding area, with dozens injured. After midnight Russia sent 24 ballistic and four hypersonic missiles towards the city and the region, many of them aimed at warehouses in Brovary. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the targets were the warehouses of civilian companies.

The night when even the socks flew off

"That was the most terrifying night of my life," said 48-year-old Anastasia. A drone hit the house where her mother and her deaf and blind grandmother were. The top two floors were destroyed - neither of them was injured. Neighbours and emergency crews helped them out of the burning house.

"You know how they say you never hear the missile meant for you? That is exactly how it was," she says. The blast wave from one explosion was so strong that, as she describes it, "even my socks flew off". "I always wondered why people who survive an explosion lose their shoes. That is exactly what happened."

The director of the online store Rozetka, Iryna Chechotkina, said their distribution centre in Brovary was completely destroyed. That day she was supposed to write a post for the company's 21st birthday and thank its customers and team. Instead, as she wrote, she spent the night watching her life's work burn after three ballistic missiles struck.

The siren never sounded

Oksana Zhyrnyak, a 44-year-old nursery teacher, says there was no air raid warning at all before the first explosions. "There was no alert. They did not sound it. Then came three explosions, one after another. From the bedroom we saw the flash. I ran to my child and lay on top of them."

That is a detail worth holding onto, because it explains more than all the statements do. In recent weeks Russia has increasingly reached for ballistic missiles - precisely because Ukrainian air defence chronically lacks enough interceptors capable of stopping them. "Interceptors for ballistic missiles could have saved the lives of the people who died today," Zelensky wrote. In other words: the difference between eight dead on a platform and eight passengers running late for home is measured in delivered equipment.

Oksana has a message too, and it is not asking for pity: "It is hard for us, especially for those with children. Just do not forget us. Help us, because we cannot hold out alone." The Balkans know that sentence by heart - and know how quickly the world stops listening once a war stops being new.