The Current - On the ground in Ukraine as Russia ramps up attacks

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Russia launched a heavy attack against Ukrainian energy infrastructure this week. The UN says more than two hundred civilians have been killed in the last month. CBC's Foreign Correspondent, Briar Stewart takes us through what life is in Kyiv now with attacks intensifying, and what other parts of Ukraine are experiencing as winter is approaching. 

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luc. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on, let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Of course, I'm scared because I see people deaths. I see ruins there, my city. Of course, for me, it's not normal. I think it's one month, very attack every day, every day. That's Yana Horodok, describing life in Kiev after a sharp escalation in Russian attacks. Jet-powered drones have been striking the Ukrainian. capital day and night for the past month, and the escalation is actually being felt right

across the country. Yesterday, Russia launched a heavy attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, killing at least seven people. Today, they hit transport and logistics centers in Kiev. Further south, in Odessa, Russian strikes are disrupting commercial shipping, with another vessel hit today and putting increasing strain on Ukraine's economy. The CBC's international correspondent, Breyer Stewart, has been traveling across the country, speaking with people, and we've reached her just west of Kiev, making her way back from Odessa. Breyer, hello. And good morning, Matt.

We heard a little bit there from people in Kiev. How has life changed in that city in the more than four and a half years of this war? You know, I think it's quite interesting because when you're in Kiev and you look kind of on a surface level, it's still a very vibrant city. It's busy. You know, this morning we saw people out for a jog. But I do think that image kind of betrays the sense of exhaustion and anxiety that people are experiencing because of these attacks, which really started intensifying dramatically in August. And the city is being targeted in a way it hasn't before.

Around the clock strikes, gas stations being a target, data centers, even grocery stores. And in fact, today, they've had to suspend some of the road in metro services across a bridge over the Neapro River in Kiev because of a drone strike. I mean, so these things are happening every day. And not only is, you know, are we seeing deaths and injuries every single day, but it is that sense of fear. That image of the city is really interesting because to your point, for much of the war, it's not as though the war wasn't present in the city as you understood it. But it felt like people were able to kind of live normal-ish lives, to your point, going out jogging, there were restaurants that were open, there were bars that were open. You've been reporting from that city throughout it.

So does it feel different now than the last few times that you were there? Yeah, I would say it absolutely feels different. Now, to be clear, I wasn't in Kiev at the start of the war. I was CBC's Russia correspondent then, but I've been here more than, I'd say, half a dozen times in the city. And this feels much more intense than it ever has before. You have strikes all throughout the day. I mean, we were in our hotel numerous times where we were hearing explosions, you know, once every 20 minutes, because that's part of Russia's strategy now. Before you would have attacks at night, maybe there'd be an hour, air, air, rate alert and, you know, it would end and people would go on with their day. That's not happening. One of the things that Russia is trying to do, it appears, is really grind down the economy. You know, part of the strategy has been to hit energy infrastructure, but they're hitting gas stations. I mean, we were on the highway today. We saw one that had been hit, basically destroyed. When we were heading to Odessa, we were at a gas station and there was an air rate alert. So when they have these alerts now, because gas stations are being targeted, the staff go away.

They go into shelters in a bunker. So you pull up to an empty gas station. And then they've kind of developed this QR code system. So you can still fill up your car. But when we pulled up to the gas station, there wasn't an air alert in effect. So we got gas. I think we got a coffee. And then all of a sudden we heard this woman's voice come over the loud speaker.

Very, very panicked. I mean, she was speaking Ukrainian. I don't speak Ukrainian. But it was very obvious that she was. she was really, really anxious. And she had said there's an air rate alert. Everybody leave. Hurry up.

Hurry up and leave. Even though things on the surface, you know, look, like, it's a busy gas station. People are, you know, having snacks and how quickly things can just, just change. So are people able to have a normal life to go about their daily lives in any normal sort of way? I'd say, you know, some segments probably are. Some people obviously are more anxious than others. But schools, for instance, I mean, children's school days have been upended. enormously. You know, they're having to take children up and down to the shelter every time

there is an air rate alert. And how the air alerts work right now is Ukraine has recently adjusted them. So before, if there was an alert, it was always sort of like a red alert. Now they try to differentiate between a drone attack and ballistic missile attack. So if there's a yellow alert, it means businesses can stay open with the exception of gas stations. But it's the red alert, which means there's a massive amount of drones coming in or ballistic missiles are in the air, that's when businesses do close. And, you know, it has a, not only does it very disruptive, but it's a big deal for the economy. I think what the financial ministry is saying is that every hour businesses are closed during an air rate alert.

I mean, it's tens of millions of dollars being lost. And this is a country that its economy is already very fragile. struggling and you can just see and envision the kind of impact that this is having. You mentioned schools, and this is a little bit of what it sounds like in terms of how people are trying to navigate those air alerts with a normal school day. We live in this in such noise, in such situation. And my son now at school and they're in basement. So they have like...

lessons there. So this is our life and I try to do the best to live the happiest life. So I try for myself, for my son, my parents. And we should do our best to live the happiest moment in the moment because we don't know what will have tomorrow. And that's Lydia Kashira, and we actually spoke with her just kind of after an area near the train station in Kiev had been hit repeatedly. And I asked her just how she manages, and that was how she responded. And then another point of that same day, maybe a few air raid alerts later, we went into the metro station and sitting off to the side.

I met a young man, Yeroslav Kulik. And he was coming home from work, had to take the metro anyway, but he was basically waiting because of the air alert was in effect. He wanted to stay underground during these air raid alerts. They often put an announcement through the metro station reminding people that they can stay there as a shelter. So while he was there at that point, he did say that it's just not practical to be seeking shelter every time there's a potential threat. You can't stay in shelter all the time. Because even if you see in Kiev-Zer4i, if you know it's an app where you can see threats here in Kiev, you just open it and it's like drone threat, drone threat, drone threat, drone threat, drone threat. It's very exhausted you.

Breyer, one of the things we've seen over the course of this war is Ukrainians using apps to track those drones. you were with some people in Kyiv as the alarms are going off, right? What happened? Yeah, it's really interesting just how attuned people are to these apps a couple different times. Once we were in a pedestrian tunnel during kind of a day-long drone strike on the Capitol. And then another time we were in the metro station where you had a couple of hundred people that were there for the night sheltering, trying to get some sleep. And, you know, the apps aren't perfect. You have to say that. But people go online, they go on social media, they try to figure out where the drones are

on some of these social media platforms, particularly telegram, which is very popular here. You know, there'll be information. You know, it'll say like Ukrainian intelligence sources think that tonight Russia may launch a ballistic missile attack. And, you know, and it's true enough that the people that we spoke to at the Metro, that kind of informs their decision making. Like if they think there might be at a ballistic attack that night, that's when they grab their sleeping bag or their tent and they head to the metro station. And I should mention too that when we're talking about apps, you can download an app for your

phone that actually shows you drones in the air. We have it on our phone. I mean, you know, it's not, it's certainly not perfect. But we, you know, the day when we had drones in the sky all through the day, we were looking at it. You could see where they were roughly going, the trajectory. And it was pretty accurate. I mean, we'd see the drones kind of fly over us on the map.

And then we'd hear an explosion somewhere in that direction, you know, just moments later. So it is interesting that, you know, the technology that people can use to try to help navigate this. The UN says that it has recorded at least 200 civilians killed and more than 1,200 injured in the last month alone in Ukraine. What's going on? I mentioned earlier about the jet-powered drones. Why have these attacks recently become so deadly? Well, what it is, I mean, for one, you have, as you said, these strikes all throughout the day and a wider variety of targets. But it really is as stems down to these jet-powered drones. It's very difficult for Ukraine to intercept them now.

I think the latest data is they're intercepting just over half of them. The problem is that these drones fly at a higher altitude, so around four kilometers above the ground. And they go as fast as 600 kilometers an hour. And, you know, we saw Ukraine on a couple different. locations, teams trying to intercept these drones and it just didn't work. We saw one from our balcony. We were out with a drone interceptor team in Odessa. They were used to intercepting the slower drones that Russia launched back in 2022, 2023. And they basically don't even try anymore to intercept these faster drones because they just do not have a proper tool right now to do it. And so that is the big problem that you have, you know, roughly half of these drones that are hitting targets. This is a situation that's happening across the country. We mentioned Kiev, but you were down in Odessa as well, which is one of the shipping hubs of Ukraine on the Black Sea, but a five and a half hour trip south of Kiev. What's happening there?

Well, you know, Russia has been attacking Ukrainian ports all throughout the war, but what has really happened over the last three months is that the attacks have intensified not only on. on port infrastructure, but on commercial vessels as well. And, you know, these vessels aren't just being attacked when they're kind of moored off the port. They are being attacked further south in the Black Sea as well. And I spoke with the president of Ukraine's Port Association, Dmitryl Baranov, and he described the way in which the vessels were being targeted. When they stopped to hunt, it's no other word. It's poor hunting. The vessel is a slu. merchant vessel cannot maneuver, can protect themselves. It's like, you know, hunting for elephant from the helicopter, something like that, or even worse.

And then it's a matter of shipowner's decision. Now, we were talking there about Russia striking, you know, Ukrainian commercial ships, but Ukraine, too, over the last couple months, has stepped up its attacks on ships connected to Russia's shadow fleet. In fact, I was speaking with an analytics expert from Ombray, which is a British maritime intelligence firm. And they said that since July, you had about 100 strikes on Russian vessels that were attributed to Ukraine and about 90 times that Russia had been striking Ukrainian ships. What does that meant for commercial shipping and the ability, for example, to get grain out of that part of the world to other parts

the world that need that grain. Yeah, it's made it much, much riskier and it has really basically ground so much of the commercial shipping down to a halt. And kind of the latest figures that we have is that both Russia and Ukraine are major wheat exporters. And so when you take the amount of wheat that they export, their total is 60% below what it was at this time last year. And so I think what we're kind of hearing is that there's going to be in the weeks and months, ahead, a tangible impact that will be felt elsewhere around that. Price is rising. The UN says that the global price of wheat is already up about 15% now, and it's possible that it could go higher.

One summer evening when she was 20 years old, something terrible happened to Vienna-Luc. I can't figure it out, but I do know that it was a violation. Then people started asking questions. What a creep. Who else knows about this? From CBC's personally, this is Agent Leila, the story of how a victim went undercover. So bring it on. Let's go. Let's get a confession. Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You have this panic over what's happening in the Strait of Formoos. What are the Ukrainians that you spoke with doing to try to keep shipping out of Odessa open? These are two big choke points. Two big choke points. And I think a lot of the Ukrainians here think that what's going on in the Black Sea should be getting, the same kind of attention, political attention, particularly as the Strait of Hormuz. And I spoke with a commander of a Ukrainian patrol ship, Mikhailo Lupa, and we're actually supposed to go out on the ship, but we couldn't because the security situation had deteriorated

so much. But he talked about how they can't even really get out on patrol very much these days because of the number of attacks. We are trying to find some windows in time between Russians' attacks to, patrol, to find some, to search for mines and some explosive materials, and looking for them to clear the sea from that that merchant fleet can navigate safely to our ports. Sometimes we go out to the sea and then we have to come back because jet drone is already in the sky and sometimes we like have to go in and out like a few times, two, three times, and we can't finish our task. And like other crews, you know, he and others on that, those patrol boats would normally

try to intercept some of the older drones, but he said now they just don't have a chance. And so they kind of feel, he even actually used the word useless. They kind of feel useless as these things are flying over their heads. And again, this comes back to the type of drones that Russia is using these jet-powered drones. Yeah, absolutely. Right now, they're using F-16 jets. they have them in the air. They're using kind of those shoulder mounted missiles. They're having some success firing it at them that way. But they don't have interceptors. And I think what we're seeing now is just the latest stage in how this war has really changed, how wars are being fought. I mean,

battles across Ukraine right now and, you know, with Ukraine hitting Russia, this is all being defined by drones. Sure, there are, you know, there's still trenches, there are still infantry, but you have a huge swath all along the front line where soldiers are, underground, carrying out the war by looking into a viewfinder, looking into goggles, seeing what a drone sees. You know, I had a chance to speak with a Canadian interceptor pilot. Corey Woods, he's from Alberta, and he's in Ukraine. He's been in Ukraine for about three years now. And I just asked him about the challenge these new jet-powered drones are causing.

It can be very, very difficult to continue to track him and to hit your target. and that's where the technology really comes into play in addition with the skill of the pilot. You need a fast enough drone. You need a drone within a battery capacity to see that engagement through to the end. We need the tools and resources to be able to strike at the production facilities,

the R&D facilities, the launch sites, the warehouses where they store, and muster all these drones. One of the interesting parts of this, as you said, this war is being defined by drones and that the drones are being used in an offensive capacity. But there are also, tell me about this. Ukraine is using them to get aid to people who wouldn't be able to be reached any other way. Yeah, that's right.

And that happened just over the weekend in the city of Oleski. And to give you a sense of the geography, it's a city that's occupied by Russia. And it's just a few kilometers from the Nipro River in the south, which essentially forms the front line in that part of Ukraine. and people are stranded. Russia has acknowledged it's not been able to bring in critical supplies for logistical reasons. Negotiations to establish some kind of humanitarian corridor have failed. And we haven't been able to connect with anyone in Alashki or in the surrounding area.

There's 6,000 people that live there. But we've talked to those who've been in touch with people there. And they describe the situation where people are desperate for food, even foraging for weeds, because they've simply ran out of supplies. So what happened on the weekend is Ukraine used waves of drones to basically drop off boxes full of supplies, canned goods, flour, sugar, that kind of thing at 100 different locations all around the area.

And what the military told us is that they know that people did receive this food because they were watching them on other drones. And so they could see residents coming out of their house, picking up boxes. Let me just ask you finally, this war has gone on for foreign. a half years. And winter is approaching. Last winter was brutal. It was cold. It seemed to go on for a long

time. What are people telling you about what they're fearing? I mean, again, there are these attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. What are people telling you about what they are fearing as winter gets closer and the war continues? They're seeing how it is now with these level of attacks, residential buildings being hit. And I think every single person that I've talked to over the last two weeks have said, I'm really worried about winter because people remember how bleak it was, you know, no heating for for so many hours, no electricity. You know, you have energy workers that are still racing to repair damage that was caused last winter. Like they're trying to ready the energy grid. You know, we've heard about houses being booked up in Western Ukraine by those

who, you know, who can afford to leave their communities to head to areas where there's, you know, not the same level of attacks on the energy grid. But people are very, very, very, very worry. Briar, it's really good to talk to you about this. Take care of yourself. Be safe and thank you very much for this. Thank you. Breyer Stewart, is the CBC's international correspondent. We reach her just west of Kiev. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.