KYIV, Ukraine — As explosions boomed and smoke blanketed Ukraine’s capital early Friday, it was the same old fear for Nadiia Chakrygina.
Like clockwork, she got her three children — Tymur, 13, Elina, 9, and 9-month-old Diana — out of bed and into a basement, where they waited, some asleep, some awake, for the strikes to be over.
“Why do our children deserve this,” Chakrygina, 34, told NBC News in a telephone interview. “Why are they living under strikes? Why can’t they get proper sleep and go to school? There is anger about everything.”
It’s a routine millions of Ukrainians have been begrudgingly following since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion almost four years ago, and the nearly nightly barrages of Ukrainian cities that have followed.
As Chakrygina and her family emerged from their shelter, they learned at least four people were killed and another 29 injured in the massive attack, which authorities said had damaged residential buildings in the Ukrainian capital.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has been pushing for an end to the war, took to X shortly afterward to call it a “wicked attack.”
But with peace negotiations effectively stalled and Russian troops pushing deeper into eastern Ukraine, there is little end in sight.
Chakrygina, who used to work as a pension fund clerk before she had her three children, said she moved to Kyiv from the town of Vuhledar in the eastern Donetsk region shortly after the war started in February 2022.
Vuhledar, which has been obliterated by years of fighting, was captured by Russian forces last October as part of Putin’s wider push to recapture the entire Donbass region, which is made up of Donetsk and the neighboring region of Luhansk.
While their progress has been slow, earlier this week Russian forces appeared to be advancing on the city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub seen as a gateway to the broader region, which sits around 35 miles north of Vuhledar.
Back in Kyiv, business manager Maryna Davydovska said she could feel the air “shake” around her as powerful and loud explosions interrupted the night, forcing her family to go to an underground shelter.
“I feel numb inside,” Davydovska, 36, said in an interview on WhatsApp messenger after the attack. “It’s too much pain we are carrying every day, and it feels like it will not be over, never. I am not angry or fed up, I am desperate.”
Russia has been pummeling Ukraine with near-daily drone and missile strikes, killing and wounding civilians.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that forces targeted Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex and energy infrastructure” with “high-precision long-range weapons.” It made no mention of civilian sites hit.
The Kremlin has repeatedly said its only targets are linked to Kyiv’s war effort, but it has relentlessly targeted Ukraine's energy sector in a bid to plunge the country into the cold and dark ahead of winter.
“We are used to everything. The strikes come, we get scared but life continues,” Chakrygina said, reciting the motto that gets her through the relentless attacks.
But while civilians simply try to survive, there was public anger this week after Ukraine’s justice minister was suspended Wednesday in an investigation into an alleged $100 million kickback scheme in the country’s energy sector.
German Galushchenko was removed from office after anti-corruption authorities said they exposed a scheme which allegedly saw current and former officials, and businesspeople receive benefits and launder money through the country’s state energy company, Energoatom, authorities said.
Five people have been arrested and another seven were placed under suspicion, according to a statement Tuesday from Ukraine’s National Anticorruption Bureau, the NABU, and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, SAPO.
Zelenskyy said in a statement on Telegram on Wednesday that those involved “cannot remain in their positions,” adding: “This is a matter of trust in particular. If there are accusations, they must be answered.”
Davydovska called the scandal “demotivating,” although she said she was encouraged that the corruption was uncovered and investigated.
“We have a joke — Ukraine is the richest country: no matter how much is stolen, there is still money here,” she said. But on a more serious note, she added that Ukrainians had been fundraising for the army for the last four years, “while some bastards are doing such things.”
Chakrygina meanwhile, said she was hopeful that peace can be reached. “We don’t believe anymore in Vuhledar, in our [Donetsk] region, because Vuhledar has been erased from the face of the Earth. But we want to at least live here [in Kyiv],” she said.
It’s her three children that keep her going every day, she said. “They need their future. They need to live without war,” she added.
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv. Yuliya Talmazan from London.
