A Direct Hit

After his apartment in Kyiv was blasted by a Russian drone, Paul Niland reveals the daily human impact of living with a 'not zero' chance of death

Residents watch as firefighters work at a destroyed apartment building after a Russian drone attack in Kyiv, Sunday 26 October 2025. Photo: Associated Press/Dan Bashakov/Alamy

“Put it this way.” I replied to my 21-year-old son on WhatsApp, “it’s not a great day when you greet your neighbours with ‘at least we’re alive.’”

That was the morning after the night before, the night we took a direct hit from a Shahed drone.

Here’s the thing, there’s a danger to living in Kyiv, anywhere in Ukraine really. There is a not-zero chance of death, we know and accept this. And at the same time, this amazing city continues to function, as it must, as the engine of the country. Actually, the fact that Kyiv does continue to live and exist as a vibrant city, despite the war, is one of the many ways in which Ukraine has already won this war. People expected the country to collapse, it has not, governed from the capital as some envisaged may be impossible at the outset of the invasion, Kyiv stands.

And yet there are times when that “not-zero” chance of death turns into something quite real, and terrifying.