What is "The Kyiv Blitz, Seen from London" about?

The Kyiv Blitz, Seen from London

LONDON—It’s jarring for me to type a dateline outside of Ukraine, from where I reported every single day of the full-scale war until now. But to me, it is fitting that this dateline is, at least, LONDON. It was absolute hell in Kyiv last night—a hell that people here in the British capital once experienced during the Blitz.

**LONDON—**It’s jarring for me to type a dateline outside of Ukraine, from where I reported every single day of the full-scale war until now. But to me, it is fitting that this dateline is, at least, LONDON.

It was absolute hell in Kyiv last night—a hell that people here in the British capital once experienced during the Blitz. Even war-hardened friends texted me about how absolutely terrifying and awful Russia’s violent attack on the Ukrainian capital was. As I know well, the sound of missiles hitting is hateful. Minute by minute, for hours, the Russians sent these explosive-laden constructions of hate upon Kyiv.

The sound of missiles hitting is hateful.

As I write this Sunday morning, I am sick in soul hearing of what happened to Kyiv through the night. It was certainly the worst, most intense Russian attack on the city since the start of the full-scale war—and the Russians sent a lot of what they have been saving up, including the Oreshnik, launched from near-space, with 12 ballistic warheads pinging down at once on one point on the city’s outskirts.

I’ve long suspected: the closer Russia is to losing, and the more its info-grip slips, the worse such attacks will get.

I have got to know London well over the years and even lived here for a bit. I once worked for Lady Jane Williams, the last private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill—and the mother of the man who put the crown on King Charles III’s head. So I’m well-versed in the history of the Blitz here. And as I have walked the old streets I once knew so well, I’ve reflected on how, upon this return, I now have lived through many blitzes.

There’s a certain sound the electric double-deckers make when they start moving at a stop light that, to me, is suggestive of the first initial wail of the air-raid alarm. It gets me every time.

I have been thinking, too, of Erik Larson’s , his account of Churchill and his circle during the Blitz. I read it during the 2025 summer bombings of Kyiv, and in its micro-portrayal of

During my four years of being in Ukraine every day of the war, I thought often of the Churchill lessons I learned in Kensington from Lady Williams. And if it was clear to me then, it is even clearer now: as I stood on a crowded Tube, as I later ran through glorious Hyde Park and watched a commercial flight to Heathrow overhead (something impossible in wartime Ukraine), I know this fully—Ukraine is a nation of Churchills, a nation of people holding and doing the absolute impossible.

Yeah, I feel a strange relief here in London. Looking at my backpack in my hotel room, I realized I don’t need a go-kit organized with tourniquet and passport. I don’t need shoes by the door that are easy to slip into and to run with in case missiles come crashing down. But there’s a certain sound the electric double-deckers make when they start moving at a stop light that, to me, is suggestive of the first initial wail of the air-raid alarm. It gets me every time.

And yeah, it was nice, I suppose, to have a sleep with no bombs. But I don’t want to be here. The fight is not over. It’s over there. I want to be in Kyiv—ESPECIALLY during a bombing and its aftermath—to stand with the bravest, most Churchillian people in the world.

And soon, God willing, I shall return to Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, all of it, after my current tasks are achieved, all for the victory of free people. I want to be in the place of free people.

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Kyiv Endures One of Russia’s Heaviest Barrages—Russiacarriedout one of its heaviest attacks on Kyiv since the start of the full-scale war, launching 90 missiles and 600 drones overnight into Sunday, including an Oreshnik Intermedium Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) near the capital. Ukrainian officials saidat leastfour people were killed and more than 80 wounded, with museums, residential buildings, schools, offices, shops, warehouses and parts of the metro infrastructure damaged.

President Zelenskyy also said water-supply facilities were targeted ahead of higher summer demand. The attack puts the familiar question back in front of Washington and Europe: whether Russia pays a real price for mass attacks on cities, or whether Kyiv is left to absorb escalation while allies debate consequences.

A Briton Dies on Ukraine’s Front—Ayrton Redfearn, a 23-year-old British citizen from Devon, waskilledin action while serving with a specialist Ukrainian unit in the Donetsk region, only days before he was due to receive a bravery award for saving another soldier’s life. His death is a reminder that Ukraine’s resistance has never been a distant European crisis for everyone watching from the West, and for a small number of foreign volunteers, it has become a personal fight against a Russian invasion that threatens far more than Ukrainian territory.

**The Kremlin’s Bargain Starts to Fray—**Russia’s political moodappearsto be darkening as Putin pushes on with his war on Ukraine despite a weakening economy, rising inflation, higher taxes, and growing frustration over internet restrictions.

People close to the Kremlin and Russian business circles describe an elite that is increasingly disillusioned, while polls show public happiness at a 15-year low and Putin’s approval falling to its weakest level since the full-scale invasion began. None of this means the regime is near collapse: the security services remain powerful, the business elite is fearful, and Putin still appears determined to keep fighting in the belief that Russia can take the Donbas. But the old bargain is fraying. Russians were told they could live normally while the state waged war elsewhere; now the costs are moving into shops, phones, businesses and daily life.

**Russia’s Cheap War Inside Europe—**Leaked Russiandocumentsshow a broad campaign to wage psychological and political warfare inside Europe by exploiting weaknesses that already exist: social distrust, migration problems, religious anxiety, polarized elections, slow bureaucracies, and governments that struggle to act and speak decisively.

The operations described range from staged provocations and vandalism to election interference and AI-assisted propaganda in multiple languages, with the aim of making European societies argue with themselves while Moscow stays formally deniable. Countering this kind of warfare requires intelligence, social confidence, and governments willing to call both social problems and sabotage by its name before the damage becomes political reality.

**Russia Tries the Baltic Blame Game—**Russia istryingto turn a series of stray or suspected Ukrainian drone incidents over the Baltic region into a political wedge between Kyiv and some of its strongest European allies. After a NATO-operated Romanian F-16 shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonia, and after drone alerts in Latvia and Lithuania, Moscow accused Ukraine of using Baltic territory or airspace to launch attacks on Russia and warned Latvia of possible retaliation.

Moscow continues to work just below the formal threshold of war with NATO: not only with aircraft, drones and jamming, but with accusations designed to make frontline allies nervous, split them from Ukraine, and force defensive states to argue among themselves. So far, the attempt appears to have failed, but Russia’s attempts will likely increase over the coming months.

**Gunfire Reaches the White House Perimeter—**A gunmanopenedfire at a White House checkpoint near 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday evening, prompting Secret Service officers to return fire. The suspect later died in hospital, and a bystander was also struck by gunfire. President Trump was inside the White House at the time, and no law-enforcement personnel were injured.

Officials said the suspect had previously been identified as emotionally disturbed and had been subject to a stay-away order, making the episode less a conventional political attack than another warning about the security strain around America’s most symbolic institutions.

**Japan Waits for America’s Missiles—**The U.S. haswarnedJapan that deliveries of 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles could face severe delays as the Pentagon rebuilds stocks depleted by the Iran war. Tokyo bought the missiles to strengthen its long-range strike capacity against threats from China and North Korea, with deliveries originally expected in two batches by 2028, but the delay could now reportedly run as long as two years.

For Japan, this complicates a major part of its new counterstrike strategy. For Washington, it exposes a harder problem: America is trying to deter China in the Indo-Pacific, sustain allies in Europe, fight through a Middle East crisis and refill its own magazines at the same time.

**A Ceasefire, a Strait, and Iran’s Uranium—**Trump says a deal toendthe Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz has been “largely negotiated,” after calls with Gulf leaders, regional allies and Benjamin Netanyahu. The emerging framework reportedly centers on extending the current ceasefire by 60 days, reopening the strait, easing the U.S. naval blockade and beginning talks over Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile, with sanctions relief and frozen assets also part of the wider negotiation.

The Logistics Drone NATO Should Study—The Ukrainian-madeSimbaunmanned groundvehicle, fromUGV Laboratory, has taken part in NATO’s Crystal Arrow 2026 exercise in Latvia, where it was tested under the Task Force X program for integrating new land systems into allied operations.

The platform performed logistics missions, with one vehicle reportedly covering more than 1,600 kilometers during trials and another running 384 kilometers before scheduled maintenance, after roughly seven to ten missions. Simba is already in serial production in Ukraine, with a declared range of up to 70 kilometers, payload capacity above 300 kilograms, and frontline experience that includes cases of continued operation after losing a wheel or being hit by an FPV drone.

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