The key facts

  • In the first eight months of 2026, 140 people were killed in Kyiv — compared with 172 for all of 2025 (data from the Kyiv military administration).
  • Residents spend nights in the metro due to a shortage of shelters; attacks on warehouses caused shortages in supermarkets, and emergency power outages resumed at the end of September.
  • According to a KIIS survey, 72% of Kyiv residents are ready to endure the war for as long as it takes; the curfew has been shortened to 01:00–05:00.

The capital increasingly resembles a front-line city

Just a few months ago, life in Kyiv was relatively calm compared with areas near the front line, Deutsche Welle notes. Now, as Russian attacks on the capital expand, Kyiv is increasingly turning into a front-line city. Shelters are insufficient for the roughly 4 million residents, and metro stations are turning into improvised dormitories: from about 22:00, people lay out mattresses and small tents, with children and pets settling next to the adults.

Civilian casualties

Halyna, a resident of the Lukianivka district, which Russia has systematically targeted throughout the four years and eight months of the war, takes her five-year-old son to the nearest metro station every evening — even when no siren sounds. 'We are alive. We got lucky again,' she told DW. In September, a Russian drone hit a residential building in the central Pechersk district while 14-year-old Daniel Umansky was doing his homework. His neighbor Vlad, who was in the hallway with his daughter at the time, said: 'We were late that day — and that saved our lives. Daniel's death is a tragedy,' adding: 'Those sick monsters don't care who they kill.' Flowers have been planted by the damaged building in memory of the boy. In early October, a drone hit a school building in the southwest of Kyiv; by that time, students and teachers were already in the shelter.

Schools depend on shelters and sirens

School principal Valentyna Chorna told DW that the school holds in-person classes for grades 1–9, because the large shelter can accommodate more than 500 students. Holding lessons depends not only on parents and the administration, but also on the availability of shelters and the duration of air-raid alerts: if one sounds in the morning, children may not go to school. A colleague from DW's Kyiv bureau, whose daughter attends school near the Antonov aircraft plant, said the road to school is dangerous because an alert can sound at any moment. Once, her daughter wrote to her: 'You can't imagine what a huge explosion it was!' — 'I don't know whether something was shot down or it was a strike,' the woman added. In September, a drone hit their building; the apartment itself was not damaged, and the daughter was at school. In her words, survival has become a matter of luck, and being at home also carries risks.

Rising losses and everyday hardships

According to the Kyiv military administration, 140 people were killed in the capital in the first eight months of 2026 — compared with 172 for all of 2025. If the trend continues, 2026 could become the deadliest year for Kyiv since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Attacks on warehouses led to shortages in supermarkets on a scale not seen since the first months of the war. At the end of September, emergency power outages resumed in the city, and the metro was paralyzed by a Russian attack. Due to strikes on energy infrastructure, it remains unclear how the capital will reliably supply residents with heat, electricity, and water in the coming winter.

The city keeps living

Despite Russia's attempts to make Kyiv unlivable, 72% of the city's residents said in September that they are ready to endure the war for as long as it takes, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology reported in early October. The authorities try to maintain normal life: the curfew has been shortened and is in effect from 01:00 to 05:00. Some facilities are allowed to operate during 'yellow' alerts; during 'red' alerts, people must immediately go to shelters — this may mean ballistic or cruise missiles, or massive combined attacks.