Story: It's evening in Kyiv.
Just like timepiece, 27-year-old Daria Slavytska takes a pram.
In it – a yoga mat, blankets and food.
Several times a week she makes her way to the metro of the Ukrainian city with her two -year -old son, Emil.
Not to catch a train, but a few hours of sleep – safe underground – while air raid sirenes above moans.
:: Daria Slavytska, resident of KYIV
“In the past we came here less often, about once a month, once a month – that was six months ago. Now we come here two or three times a week.”
In the past two months, Russia has released the escalating drone and rocket attacks on Kiev on Kyiv as part of a summer offensive.
The attacks have exhausted the 3.7 million inhabitants of the city, such as Slavytska.
She remembers that Emil heard the sirens.
The air strikes on her phone would send the little boy in attacks of shaking – crying: “Corridor, corridor, mother, I'm afraid.” A doctor advised them to turn them off.
In April, a strike destroyed a residential building a few kilometers from the Slavytska apartment block.
She says that the threat of losing her house suddenly became more more real.
Now she takes her identity documents with her underground.
And has bought a lighter pram to make it easier to get into the station.
“I don't remember the exact figures. If we remembered everything we all died a long time ago – so we were just here, we were just here. At 5 o'clock we went home and closed it, it was ok. Now it's no longer ok, unfortunately every attack brings victims.”
During the nights they spend in the metro, Slavytska curls her pink yoga mat with Emil through one of the columns along the tracks.
But given how often they sleep underground, she started buying a mattress that would be more comfortable.
A Danish retailer told the demand for Reuters for inflatable mattresses, camp beds and sleeping mats has increased.
:: Ruslan, sales manager, Jysk
“The largest turnover jump is registered in Kiev in the last three weeks of June. The question has grown by 20-25 percent.”
The number of people such as Slavytska looking for resort in one of the 46 underground stations of Kyiv shot up after large -scale bombing that struck five times in the city in June.
The metro system registered 165,000 night visits in that month.
More than double the visits in May, and almost five times the song in June last year, the press service told Reuters.
The military administration of Kyiv told Reuters that more people were on their way to the shelter because of “the scale and deadliness” of attacks.
It said that strikes killed 78 residents and were injured more than 400 in the first half of the year – and now sleeping in an asylum has become the norm.
But some take more extreme measures – such as Kateryna Storozhuk.
Without shelter within three kilometers of her house, Storozhuk has invested more than $ 2,000 in a 'capsule of life'.
It is a reinforced steel box that can resist to resist falling concrete slabs.
She sleeps in it every night.
:: Kateryna Storozhuk, Kyiv Resident
“The capsule protects me against rubble and fear. It makes it possible to sleep in a safe cupboard.”
Storozhuk knows that the capsule would not resist direct rocket hit.
But the lack of sleep of the attacks caused her intense stress.
“I have become anxious and anxious and at some point I could no longer control it. I just became insomnia because of the fear.”
