Surviving Russia’s Biggest Attack on Ukraine in 18 Months
A firsthand dispatch from an American in Kyiv.
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Issac Luna (Olvera) is a former US Marine Corps officer who fought for the Ukrainian military after the full-scale Russian invasion. He is the author of the book Reckoning Dreams and Fire, a memoir about his experience in Ukraine and other battles. Mr. Luna remains based in Ukraine. Follow him on X.
The American embassy warned of an impending Russian attack against Kyiv, which could include ballistic missiles.
It was about midnight, Sunday, May 24, 2026. My fiancée and I had just finished watching a nature documentary—zebras grazing in the Serengeti, sloths dangling from trees in Costa Rica. We had committed to going to sleep.
Thirty-two minutes later, we heard the dreaded phone alarm that signals an air threat. Something menacing was airborne, coming from Russia or the occupied territories. Too soon to know where it was headed or where it would land.
At about 1:00 a.m., I found out. They were coming to us. The air defense went into full mode. First came the sound of piston engines buzzing overhead. Hundreds of interceptor drones launched to head off the incoming attack. Machine guns opened fire, in case the interceptors failed. Then came a massive blast—an American Patriot or a German IRIS-T (I can almost tell the difference by now).
The cacophony of twenty-first-century warfare filled the sky. My fiancée Mariia and I sat tense. We knew we would not sleep. She put on extra clothes. She fears being pulled from the rubble in too little clothing—a rational and practical fear many Ukrainians have quietly developed.
Then the ground vibrated. Not just the building foundation, but something deeper, almost tectonic. The Patriots missed and something powerful—very powerful—hit.
It was an Oreshnik. It is a terrifying weapon: a hypersonic ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. It travels at Mach 10 and separates in the upper atmosphere to unleash six independent warheads, each containing smaller submunitions. It is almost impossible to stop.
For the four million people living under this aerial battle, there is only one primitive means of protection: go underground.
We do not have a shelter in our building, so we move away from the windows and place our faith in probabilities. I have worked out the math before. Suppose this is a major attack: one thousand aerial threats. Ninety percent get intercepted. One hundred get through. Assume each kills ten people—one thousand dead. Kyiv has roughly four million residents. That gives you a one-in-four-thousand chance. About 0.025 percent.
Many Ukrainians have done some version of this calculation, even if only subconsciously. For a former military officer, the helplessness is devastating. So we try to sleep through the onslaught.
At 10:00am, neither of us knew how much we had slept, if at all. Mariia and I looked at each other, unsure if it was all a nightmare. It was—a living nightmare that has now played out for more than 1,550 days.
When I checked the news, the scale of the damage was devastating. Six hundred Shahed drones, thirty-three ballistic missiles, and fifty-seven cruise missiles. Data gathered by The New York Times suggests this was the largest Russian attack—not just on Kyiv, but anywhere in Ukraine—since December 2024.
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A popular market near us—normally packed with thousands of shoppers on a Sunday morning—was reduced to a heap of twisted steel and ash. Completely destroyed. The recently reopened Chernobyl Museum suffered a collapsed roof, and artifacts that had survived one disaster 40 years ago did not survive this one. One cruise missile, which ignites a booster rocket during its final descent to evade interception, crashed through the base of a high-rise building, carving a massive hole into the underground parking structure.
A water supply station, the Institute for Religious Studies, the Podil Opera Theatre, and the Kyiv School of Economics—all civilian sites—were damaged. More than one hundred people were wounded, but it was still too early to know how many will end up dead.
Living in a war zone for four years, I see both the worst of humanity, and the best of humanity, side by side. Air defense brigades—many composed of former college students, teachers, and retirees—intercepted 92% of drones and 60%of missiles. They validated my estimate of survivability. Rescue workers, poorly paid and fully aware that secondary strikes are possible, rummaged through rubble searching for survivors, including pets.
Yevhen, is a slim man in his early forties. He had sold his home to open a café in Kyiv. The café had opened for business the day before. Overnight, it was heavily damaged. But because some of his machines and coffee supplies survived, he reopened, handing out free coffee through shattered windows.
On the military front, Russia has failed to make meaningful progress.
During Russia’s attempt to take Kupiansk in Kharkiv Oblast, one Ukrainian website quipped: “The three-toed sloth sleeps eighteen hours a day, defecates once a week, and is still making better time than the [Russian[ 11th Army Corps.”
The sloth, according to the site, would have advanced 74 %faster and at a far lower cost. Over 35,000 Russian personnel were reportedly killed or severely wounded during April, the deadliest month on record, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
In Moscow, where Putin had banked on public support and minimal disruption to daily life, residents can no longer dismiss the war as a distant “special military operation.” Drone attacks are increasingly common. Military-linked industrial facilities have been hit. Refineries and oil terminals far from the Ukrainian border have also reportedly been targeted. The road connecting Russia to Crimea along the Sea of Azov has increasingly become a highway of death, where Ukrainian drones strike military logistics almost at will.
Unable to produce a decisive victory on the battlefield, Putin has increasingly resorted to the one tactic he can always sell to his public as a victory: terrorism. Hence Sunday’s attack.
These attacks were enabled by a recent financial windfall. The war in Iran pushed oil prices upward, while Trump recently lifted sanctions on Russian oil, giving Putin a lifeline and replenishing the Russian treasury with at least a billion dollars a day.
The American government, through its embassy in Ukraine, warned of the attack. But it made no effort to use its considerable leverage over Russia to help prevent it, even though it could have.
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Highly recommend on YouTube Jay in Kyiv, Prof Gerdes, Jason Jay Smart and Anna from Ukraine. Russia is being decimated and is in societal collapse. Demographics alone will take a century to recover if at all. Jay in Kyiv shows copious video from drones and gives a holistic view. It’s amazing what Ukraine is doing. Empathy always beats psychopathy. Love always wins.