Plenty, though, were not – as they explained, they preferred to chance it in their flats than spend endless nights in cold, cramped basements with snoring neighbours. Why was this? One obvious reason was because many residents had either left, or were spending the night in bunkers. Compared to the car bomb attacks I covered while based in Baghdad years ago, which would regularly kill more than 50 people, it wasn't much. While each one looked like a potential Grenfell Tower disaster, the fatalities were always in the low single figures. And it was the same at the many other tower block bombings that month. The answer, somewhat to my surprise, was one dead and 10 injured, most of them only lightly. How many would be dead, I wondered, surveying the building's charred exterior. And when I first went to cover the aftermath of a bombing raid, which ploughed into the upper floors of a nine-storey tower block and set it ablaze, I feared the worst. On several occasions, my photographer colleague and I debated whether to move out of our rented apartment downtown, fearing it was too near government buildings that might be hit.

I write having spent most of the first month of the war reporting from Kyiv for the Telegraph, when the blitz of the capital was at its height.

In the wider metrics of the conflict, though, these missiles are rather like very large fireworks: more show than effect. Sure, they look awful on the television news: the mushroom clouds over the skyline, the apartment blocks wrecked by bombs. Eight months on, though, bombardments of the kind unleashed by Vladimir Putin on Monday have largely lost their power to terrify. When Russian bombs first landed in late February, half its three-million population fled. True, Kyiv didn't always have this keep-calm-and-carry-on attitude. If you've ever been in the office when the fire alarm sounds, you'll know roughly what I mean. Meanwhile, most other folks largely go about their business, looking unperturbed. The moment the klaxons sound, they make a beeline for the nearest underground bunkers, dutifully waiting until the all-clear sounds. You can always spot a new arrival in Kyiv by how they react during air-raid warnings.

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