Overhead, the skies were reverberating with the thud of missiles and the whine of drones. But most of the people taking shelter in a Kyiv subway station one night last month were looking down at their phones, following social media channels that track attacks in real time.
Every few seconds, an alert appeared. Drones approaching Kyiv. Ballistic missiles launched. Air defense at work. Then, at 2:01 a.m., Kyiv Sky, a popular channel, posted the update everyone had been waiting for.
Kyiv Sky
Clear for now
02:01
A small crowd headed up the stairs out of the station — smokers yearning for a cigarette, couples tugging dogs on leashes and others just seeking fresh air on a warm summer night. All kept their eyes on their phones, just in case. Suddenly, Kyiv Sky pushed out a new alert.
Kyiv Sky
More ballistics are coming
02:03
The crowd hurried back underground. Minutes later, explosions from Ukraine’s air defenses echoed. Everyone in the station was safe — and already back on their phones, waiting for the next opening to go outside.
This is how Ukrainians have learned to game Russian air attacks over nearly four and a half years of war: using dozens of Telegram social media channels, with residents often following several at once to piece together the clearest minute-by-minute picture of the danger.
The alerts have become all the more important as the war, nearly deadlocked on the front, is increasingly fought through the skies.
“You get all the heads-up about drones and missiles,” said Hanna Syvak, 29, one of those sheltering in the subway station last month, as she opened an app to show the 21 air raid warning channels she follows. “When the attack starts, I turn on the notifications.”
The social media channels aren’t official. They are run by people with ties to Ukraine’s military who want to help civilians react better to attacks.
Many Ukrainians prefer the channels over official military alerts in part because the channels have been around longer and have built communities. They also often give more targeted and precise information than the nationwide alerts provided by government channels.
Because the information the channels share is typically restricted to government communications channels, they operate anonymously. But the Ukrainian authorities have largely tolerated them, recognizing their value in encouraging residents to take shelters.
The result has been a major shift in how people respond to air raids. For decades, countries at war relied on sirens that offered only two messages: danger or all-clear. They left people in the dark about what kind of weapon was coming or how close it was. Now, Ukrainians can calculate in real time how to react. A missile? Run for shelter. A drone? You’ve got time.
The channels have become a fixture of wartime life, attracting hundreds of thousands of users. Some use humor in their posts to ease people’s anxiety. The information the channels contain has turned some followers into amateur military analysts who estimate how long a ballistic missile takes to reach a target and, by extension, how quick to find shelter.
The channels have emerged as “vital warning systems and a collective coping mechanism,” said Mariia Kriuchok, a Ukrainian sociologist. “By offering a sense of control over the chaos, they became an essential infrastructure of resilience.”
The channels sprung up after the shortcomings of official air raid sirens became clear in the early weeks of the war. That pushed some Ukrainians with ties to the army to build their own warning systems. Ms. Kriuchok said the initiative reflected a broader pattern in which Ukrainians self-organize when institutions move too slowly, such as the grass-roots fund-raising that has helped supply troops with equipment that the government could not provide.
One of the first channels was monitor, which was started three months into the war, in May 2022. monitor tracks attacks nationwide with terse updates identifying the weapon type and target area. “Accuracy matters to me — accuracy of information, accuracy of wording,” the man who runs the channel said in a telephone interview, calling clear messages potentially life-saving.
Reached through the monitor channel, the man spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work. To prove he was the channel’s operator, he shared a draft of a message before he published it online.
The man said he relied on several dozen army sources for his updates. Col. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, said that many people in the military had access to resources for tracking air attacks, including intelligence from Ukraine’s allies and data from radar systems. New York Times reporters have observed officials exchanging messages with Telegram channels, sharing details about impending air attacks.
Colonel Ihnat said that he had warned the channels against publishing information that could help Russia plan attacks. Revealing a drone’s precise flight path, for example, could expose the location of the Ukrainian tracking radars.
Even so, Colonel Ihnat acknowledged that the channels were a powerful way to disseminate warnings. monitor has more than 950,000 followers on Telegram, more than President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian Air Force eventually adopted the model, issuing its own warnings via Telegram beginning in mid-2023.
The channels’ influence was on full display that July night.
At 9:02 p.m., monitor warned that Russia was likely to launch a large drone and missile attack. Over the next two hours, the channel’s feed filled with alerts as the assault got underway.
monitor
3 jet-powered drones are flying along the state border toward Slavutych
21:09
monitor
Six drones are flying from Russia’s Kursk region toward Konotop, Sumy region
22:34
As alerts flashed across her phone, Ms. Syvak sat at home weighing her options. She rarely goes to shelters because of drones, she said, because most drones are shot down. But the warning suggested a larger attack, including ballistic missiles, which Kyiv struggles to intercept. She and two friends decided to take refuge in the nearest subway station.
“This attack is going to be a big one,” one of her friends, Artur Nasibyan, 27, said as he unrolled a gym mat on the station’s granite platform.
Around him, the station had turned into a makeshift campground. Nearly every face was lit up by the glow of a phone screen.
At 1:53 a.m., monitor warned that Russia might have launched ballistic missiles. Seconds later, a rapid-fire stream of alerts confirmed the threat.
monitor
Kyiv — incoming ballistic missile!
01:53
monitor
Kyiv — incoming ballistic missile! Second one
01:53
monitor
Kyiv — incoming ballistic missile! Third one
01:54
The station shook with the blasts of missile impacts and air defense interceptions. As monitor reported that there would be a brief lull in the attacks, more residents used the opportunity to make their way into the station before the next barrage.
Sitting on a folding chair in the station, Olha Yarmosh, 63, said the humor of a channel called Nikolaevsky Vanek, with 2.7 million followers, helped her endure the attacks.
In the channel’s alerts, drones become “mopeds,” a nod to the buzz of their engines. Air defense crews don’t shoot down missiles, they go “pew-pew.” The channel’s signature line marking the all-clear — “Pee and go to sleep” — has become a moment of exhalation for millions of Ukrainians.
“You’re sitting at home, your legs are shaking,” Ms. Yarmosh said. “Then you read something funny and somehow it calms you down a little.”
Shortly after 5 a.m., the channels reported that the attack was mostly over. Ms. Yarmosh climbed the subway stairs into the pale morning light. A few hundred feet away, a plume of gray smoke rose from a strike site. On her phone, the warnings had given way to news of the night’s toll: 27 people killed and 85 wounded.
