A night of missiles and drones over Kyiv underscores the brutality of Russia’s air campaign, but on the battlefield Ukraine is showing that Moscow’s enormous expenditure of men and weapons has not delivered the victory it expected.
I’m writing this from Kharkiv after a night in Kyiv that offered a firsthand reminder of what Ukrainians have been living with for years.
Seconds after I finished my broadcast from downtown Kyiv yesterday, the air-raid sirens started again. They continued into the evening, and later the sound of explosions carried through the night. By morning, smoke was rising over parts of the city.
According to the information available to us, Russia launched roughly 200 missiles and drones against Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine during the overnight attack, with Ukrainian defenses reportedly intercepting the majority of them. Several weapons still reached Kyiv, leaving two people reported dead and others injured.
Those numbers can become abstract until you see what they mean on the ground. One piece of footage from the aftermath showed a woman emerging from a shelter with her baby after spending the night underground. For millions of Ukrainians, this is not a dramatic scene from television. It is ordinary life in a country that has been dealing with Russian missiles and drones for years.
Russia’s War Against Ukraine’s Infrastructure
Kyiv was not the only target.
Russian attacks struck locations across the country, including areas in northeastern Ukraine, where we are now traveling. One attack hit a passenger train, although passengers were reportedly evacuated before the strike and no one aboard was injured. The train appeared to have protective anti-drone barriers installed around portions of it—a remarkable illustration of how deeply the drone war has entered civilian life.
Another strike destroyed a grocery warehouse in Kyiv. These are the kinds of places that matter enormously during wartime because ordinary distribution networks are already under tremendous strain, particularly closer to the front.
We are traveling with Hope for Ukraine, a Christian humanitarian organization based in Lviv whose teams drive toward front-line communities carrying food and other essential supplies. When stores, warehouses and transportation networks are damaged, organizations like this become even more important to civilians trying to remain in their communities.
The destruction is real, and the human cost is real. But there is another side of this war that can be missed when the nightly images of explosions dominate the news.
Russia is inflicting enormous damage on Ukraine, but that does not necessarily mean Russia is winning.
Heavy Bombardment, Limited Results
From inside Kyiv, the contrast is striking.
The city remains alive. Traffic moves. Businesses operate. People go to work. Buildings damaged earlier in the war have been repaired, sometimes so completely that someone arriving today would never know they had once been struck.
That resilience matters because Russia’s air campaign appears designed not merely to destroy individual targets, but to exhaust Ukraine—to make daily life so dangerous and difficult that eventually the population loses the will to continue.
So far, I’m not seeing that happen.
Even after a major night of attacks, most of Kyiv remained standing and functioning. Ukrainians repaired damage from previous strikes and continued with their lives. The objective may be to break the population psychologically, but the people I have spoken with continue to view this as an existential fight. For them, surrender is not simply a matter of accepting unfavorable political terms. They believe the survival of Ukraine as an independent nation is at stake.
Meanwhile, Russia has paid an extraordinary price for comparatively limited territorial gains.
Ukrainian battlefield assessments claim extremely heavy Russian personnel losses during the summer and throughout the war. Those figures come from the Ukrainian side and should be treated accordingly in an active conflict, where casualty numbers are notoriously difficult to verify independently. What is clearer is that Russia has spent enormous amounts of manpower and equipment fighting for relatively small changes to the front line.
In some areas, Ukraine is now claiming to have reversed recent Russian advances. Around Lyman in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces have reportedly pushed Russian positions back, part of what Kyiv describes as a broader series of battlefield gains.
That does not mean Ukraine is suddenly winning easily. Nothing about this war is easy. Ukraine faces serious shortages, particularly when it comes to the expensive interceptor missiles needed to defend its cities against Russia’s relentless aerial attacks.
But it does mean the familiar narrative that Russian victory is inevitable deserves much closer scrutiny.
Ukraine’s Air-Defense Problem
One of Ukraine’s most urgent needs remains air defense.
Russia can send large numbers of relatively inexpensive drones alongside more sophisticated missiles, forcing Ukraine to expend valuable interceptors to defend cities, infrastructure and civilians. No country can indefinitely shoot down every incoming weapon, particularly when some defensive missiles cost far more than the drones they are destroying.
Ukraine is therefore racing to develop cheaper and more sustainable ways of defeating Russian drones while continuing to depend on Western systems for the most dangerous threats.
During the broadcast, I discussed reports that the United States is preparing additional Patriot interceptors for Ukraine. If that happens, those weapons will be badly needed.
But Ukraine’s long-term survival cannot depend solely on intercepting whatever Russia launches. The country also needs the ability to impose costs on the machinery producing and launching those attacks.
Ukraine is increasingly doing exactly that, striking military and infrastructure targets deeper inside Russia and forcing Moscow to devote resources to defending territory that once seemed safely removed from the battlefield.
Peace Talks Remain Far From Peace
All of this is happening while diplomatic efforts continue.
The problem is that Russia and Ukraine remain extraordinarily far apart on what an acceptable peace would actually look like. Meetings and negotiations can create the appearance of movement, but handshakes and business proposals do not erase the fundamental questions at the heart of this war.
Former U.S. Army commander Ben Hodges was sharply critical of the latest diplomatic efforts, arguing that little meaningful progress had been made and that Russia continued attacking Ukrainian civilians even as discussions were underway.
That skepticism is understandable from where I am sitting.
This is not simply a business dispute where both sides need the right financial incentive to sign an agreement. Ukrainians see the conflict through generations of history and through what they have experienced since Russia’s invasion. Russia, meanwhile, continues to insist that its security and historical claims justify its actions.
Those positions are not going to disappear because somebody arrives with a better economic proposal.
What the War Looks Like From Here
There is a temptation when watching this war from thousands of miles away to reduce everything to maps, casualty figures, weapons systems and political arguments.
Those things matter. But they are not the whole story.
The war is also a mother carrying her baby out of a shelter after another night of explosions. It is passengers being evacuated from a train because a drone may be coming toward them. It is humanitarian workers loading vehicles with food and driving toward communities where normal supply chains have been destroyed.
And it is millions of people getting up the next morning and going back to work.
Russia can continue firing missiles and drones into Ukraine, and Ukraine will continue desperately trying to shoot them down. But after spending time here again, one thing becomes difficult to ignore: bombing a country and defeating it are not the same thing.
Russia has demonstrated that it can inflict tremendous suffering on Ukraine. What it has not demonstrated is that this suffering will convince Ukrainians to surrender.
I’m heading farther east toward Kharkiv and closer to the front, where we’ll continue reporting on what is actually happening here—not simply what politicians in Washington, Moscow or Brussels say is happening.
There is no substitute for seeing it firsthand.
