Russia’s new shelling tactics deepen suffering in Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine – When Olena Krakovska is at work selling tools for manicures from a small shop on the basement floor of a shopping centre in central Kyiv, she doesn’t hear or see much.

“I’m already in a bomb shelter. Air raid or not, I’m at work,” the 42-year-old single mother of two boys told Al Jazeera.

Outside there are regular wailing air raid sirens, red-and-white explosions of Russian drones hit by Ukrainian interceptors, gong-like thuds and white plumes of smoke swelling in the sky.

Falling debris, from tiny metal pieces to larger fragments of fuselage, flop in the wind and come down with the sour stench of gunpowder.

But when Krakovska is at home, the air raids rattle her senses and nerves.

“There’s been too many recently. My brain isn’t functioning, my movements are uncoordinated,” she said.

Since mid-August, Russian air raids in Ukraine have become longer, more frightening for residents and more frequent as part of Moscow’s new tactic aimed at “terrorising our people, our cities and our villages far more intensely,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on September 6.

Between June and early August, there were five air raids a week with a combined duration of 2.3 hours, according to a calculation by the UA.news web portal. In the third week of August, their number rose to 12 and their duration to 7.9 hours, and in the fourth week, 34 over 23.2 hours.