But once it started – just after midnight on June 10th – it seemed like a nightmare that just wouldn’t end.
One after another Unamanned Aerial Vehicle came buzzing over the dark horizon and picked up speed as it descended before going into a frenzied ear-splitting kamikadze dive.
Several times during the four-hour non-stop attack, I found myself pinned to the wall of my flat in my underwear bracing for what seemed like imminent impact.
Then, the drone, invisible to us building dwellers below, would either veer off, be shot down by air defense forces or crash into a target and burn.
In the dead of night, with the windows all open due to the warm weather, the whir, the whine and the explosion of these mechanical birds of prey is all too vivid, particularly if one has just been roused from a deep sleep.
Visually, the attack resembles an almost beautiful light show – criss crossing search beams, tracer rounds rising rhymically into the night sky and what looked like strobe light just floating in mid air.
But the distant explosions get closer, the aproaching sound of the engines more ominous and the very real threat of one slamming into your building more real.
In the brief pause between each sortie, I checked my favorite Telegram channel to find dozens of postings of fire and ruin across the city, punctuated by continual reports of more drones moving in on and around the capital.
Occassionally, I saw a report of an incoming missile, but the drones these days carry such a deadly payload that the sound they now make when they explode can hardly be distinguished from that of a missile.
Gone are the days when one would see a clunky sputtering aerial ‘Moped’ bumping around the neighborhood, vulnerable to being downed by someone on his balcony with a shotgun.
Today’s Shakhed more resemble – in sound, speed and deadliness – a Kamikadze plane from WWII.
And people here know it. They know longer shuffle along into the night for a brief stay in the basement of a designated safe spot.
Instead, I saw, small groups of flitting shadows racing from one building entrance to the next, as a drone raced by overhead. Their flip flops frantically slapped the damp pavement. Some spoke in hushed tones, others shouted anxiously, and ocassionally a child could be heard crying.
In the corridor of my building I then noticed my neighbor, a usually easy going middle aged woman, standing petrified in the door frame of her flat, as explosion after explosion shook the walls.
“Are you ok,” I asked.
“It’s so scary,” she responded pathetically.
Moments later, I saw the same petrified woman trying to comfort another neighbor, an elderly infirmed woman from Georgia who has lived in Ukraine as a refugee since 2007, when the Russians attacked her country.
Throughout the building and my flat, the smell of smoke chokes the air. A black cloud has risen from a nearby warehouse that was struck and covers the entire sky above.
I awoke a few hours later not to the risen sun but to a Ukrainian helicopter hovering overhead, apparently surveying the innumberable sites of damage across the urban landscape.
Passersby on the street looked stunned, exhausted or panicked.
“I’m used to it,” says a clearly exhausted woman who serves me a coffee and roll, “but really, one can never get used to this.”
The authorities here say over 300 drones took part in the attack, hitting office buildings, apartment blocks, shops, playgrounds, countless cars, a football stadium, a pharmacy, etc.
Three have been reported killed so far, but as always more are expected.