The crack and ear splitting blast, two in a row then a third, rattled windows, and set off car alarms. But, in a city under constant bombardment, a smoker in a doorway tipped a little ash and took another drag.
A hotel receptionist, pooled in lamp light, didn’t look up from her papers.
The explosions, they knew, were outgoing long-range anti-aircraft missiles being fired from the centre of the Ukrainian capital against incoming missiles.
While they won’t move for these, the sound of lawnmower engines in the sky will prompt an immediate a race to cellars and shelters.
For swarms of Iranian-made Russian Shahed unmanned drones are fired at Ukraine almost every night. They’re about two metres across, delta winged, and carry between 30kg and 50kg of explosive. They are guided by a primitive GPS system and driven by whining two stroke engines.
“We’re pretty accurate especially when they’re flying low at about 200 metres above us,” says “Lucky” the gunner in a small unit of Ukraine air defence.
He is part of a small team that, like soldiers across the country, have shrugged off US President Donald Trump’s latest edict which has banned aid to Ukraine. The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has insisted that the aid freeze doesn’t include military help.
But only Egypt and Israel have been excluded from the ban and there has been no signal from the Trump administration that Ukraine will still get the aid it desperately needs.
To tackle the nightly bombardment from Vladimir Putin, these Turkish made .50 calibre heavy machine-guns, mounted on farm trailers towed by a pickup trucks, are Ukraine’s answer to the Russian Shaheds – which are intended to kill, destroy and above all distract.
Russia’s aim is to overwhelm sophisticated defences with vast numbers of cheap drones. Putin’s forces want to trick Ukrainians into firing long range multi-million-dollar air defence weapons, like US Patriot missiles, at a drone that could be knocked up in a garden shed for £20,000.
The defence systems – the men on the trailer – bear a heavy responsibility every night as they take on deadly flying lawnmowers while the expensive kit is focussed on Russia’s devastating long-range missiles like Iskander, Kalibr and nuclear-capable Khinzal.
The team’s thermal sights and laptop tablet which gives early warning of incoming missiles is all that separates them from Second World War infantry fighting off German Stuka bombers. Their weapon is, essentially, the same gun the British used then.
Tucked into a wood on the southern outskirts of Kyiv, a small group of middle-aged men, who joined up when Russia launched its full-scale invasion three years ago, prepare for another night.
Razor cold winds slice through their uniforms on 12-hour overnight shifts for a team of six men scouring the skies. A few days earlier at least three people had been killed near Brovary, north east of Kyiv, by incoming Shahed, Zelensky said, even though 50 other drones had been shot down.
“It’s a very heavy responsibility,” says one gunner with the callsign “Alien”.
“We know that if these Shaheds get through, or even if we hit one in a wing and it comes down it’s carrying explosives and it will kill civilians,” says the former electrician.
Ukrainians soldiers from the eastern front lines near Poltava to the Sumy province in the north and in Kyiv say they’re exhausted but that the kind of peace deal with Putin that has been suggested by the new US president is unacceptable.
They believe Trump’s cutting of aid could force Ukraine into talks, kill more people on the front lines, and leave Russia to rearm to take the rest of the country or attack other neighbours.
Still, soldiers here say they’ll fight on with what they’ve got.
Putin’s attacks have targeted Ukraine energy sector for more than two years. Last December the US agreed to fund repairs and support with $875 million. That funding is now in doubt following Trump’s three month review of all US foreign aid.
“The enemy directs its attacks both on civilian infrastructure, on energy,” says one soldier. “We all depend on it. Especially nowadays, most people are accustomed to the conveniences. Therefore, civilians cannot do without energy. And military units as well. Everything depends on energy.”
The US has spent about $60 billion on military aid to Ukraine and is the embattled nation’s biggest donor. The aid has included long range missiles, in limited quantities, anti-aircraft missiles, but not enough – some tanks, artillery pieces and millions of rounds of ammunition.
Along with aid from the European Union of $52 billion, the support is being consumed at a vast rate in defending the cities and along a front line that stretches for at least 1,300km.
Now, the air defence team says, Putin’s drone developers are using black paint to hide Shaheds in the night sky and adding dummy drones to the swarm to distract the teams even further.
The use of dummies may also be a sign that Russian resources are running low. Other front line units fighting in Kursk and on the eastern front said they were detecting a fall off in artillery and the use of armoured vehicles among Russian forces.
“We’re seeing drones carrying old pipes, plastic jerry cans – and sometimes some explosives as well as the Shaheds,” adds a senior air force officer in Kyiv.