NYT: The Kremlin Has Changed Its Approach To Shelling Ukrainian Cities
- 31.08.2026, 19:41
- 1,246
Russia has shifted from nighttime shelling of Kyiv to daytime attacks.
Vladimir Putin’s army is bogged down in attempts to make even the slightest headway on the front lines, while in Russia itself, oil refineries, warehouses belonging to major online retailers, and military facilities are constantly burning. Against this backdrop, Moscow has decided to change its approach to shelling Ukrainian cities. While drone and missile strikes had previously been carried out at night, the new, “terrorizing” tactic involves launching waves of drones throughout the day, reports The New York Times.
In recent days, air raid sirens have sounded almost continuously in Kyiv, the newspaper’s correspondents in the capital report. By midday on Sunday, stores in one of the shopping centers had opened and closed five times, said Natalya Lipinska, manager of the Danish home goods chain JYSK (the mall’s management requires stores to close during air raid alerts). Previously, when the main airstrikes occurred at night, this would happen only once or twice a day.
The ongoing attacks now involve jet-powered drones, which are harder to shoot down. It is also much more difficult to escape them, as they attack at high speeds. The view is gaining ground within the government and among Kyiv residents that the capital—and possibly other cities—is facing a new phase of the war, the NYT reports.
In their view, the escalation is aimed at breaking the spirit of Ukrainians, disrupting the start of the school year, and inflicting further damage on the economy. This tactic includes strikes on food warehouses and logistics centers of grocery chains, including “Silpo,” one of the country’s largest, and Novus. According to Taras Vysotsky, Ukraine’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, “roughly 90% of the food supply chains for retail chains have been destroyed.” He did, however, assure that “there is currently no systemic physical shortage of basic foodstuffs.”
But empty shelves have nevertheless appeared in stores, the NYT notes.
In recent days, large shopping centers and other retail facilities in various regions have also been repeatedly targeted, including three stores in the Zaporizhzhia region belonging to Ukraine’s largest chain of home improvement and hardware hypermarkets “Epicenter K”; shopping centers in Sumy and Kryvyi Rih were also damaged, adds The Washington Post.
One of the Velychko couple’s sons in Kyiv is set to start at a new school on September 1; the school has built underground shelters where classes will continue even during air raid alerts. But if the situation worsens, the family is considering moving to western regions, which are less frequently targeted by airstrikes.
Yevhen Velychko told the NYT:
“They [the Russians] are acting like the Germans did during World War I and World War II. But this tactic yields no military results. They’re trying to sow chaos. They want people to flee Kyiv. They want to destroy our way of life.”
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