When a war drags on long enough, it stops being news and becomes a schedule. Kyiv has just gone through exactly that - a night in which sirens wail and people count explosions instead of sheep to fall asleep.

Russia carried out one of the biggest attacks on the Ukrainian capital yet. According to sources, around 31 ballistic missiles and eight „Zircon” hypersonic projectiles were fired at the city - weapons that fly several times faster than sound and to which air defence struggles to respond. At least one person was killed and 13 wounded.

The first explosions rang out around 1:30 local time. The attack lasted until 2:38 in the morning - nearly a full hour of sky on fire over a city of millions. „It was the most terrifying night of my life,” recounted Eleonora Belej, a 30-year-old resident, adding that her neighbourhood is under attack almost every month. Almost every month. Stop on that for a moment.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that six wounded ended up in hospital, and five people were pulled from damaged buildings. Fires broke out in several parts of the city - Dniprovskyi, Desnianskyi, Solomianskyi and Shevchenkivskyi. Residential buildings, markets, vehicles and warehouses burned. The „Lukyanivska” metro station was temporarily closed due to damage.

The attack came as retaliation. Only a day earlier, Ukrainian forces had hit Russian logistics depots in the Moscow and Tambov regions, killing eight people. President Volodymyr Zelensky described those strikes as an answer „to Russian attacks on our civilian infrastructure.” Each side strikes, each side retaliates, and the bill is paid by those sleeping in the residential blocks.

There is a second front too, this time internal. At the same time as the missiles, rare public protests broke out in Ukraine against the removal of a popular minister. War from outside, discontent from within - a combination every society in this part of the world recognises.

The Balkans know this scene by heart. They know what it looks like when „temporary” becomes a way of life, when children grow up with the sound of a siren as a normal part of the night. The question hanging over Kyiv is not whether it will survive another night - it has already proven that. The question is how long the world will look at this and call it „a situation.”