Ukraine Call 20240327

I just got off a video call with my friend/student in Kyiv. He said that there was a missile raid over the weekend. He had to go to a bomb shelter at his son’s school and hide out all night. What a fucking shitshow.

He said they sometimes get a thirty-minute warning that missiles are on the way, but recently Russia started using Onyx missiles that fly at 3,000 km/hour and are launched from Crimea. That means they only have a few minutes of warning. My friend said sometimes the missiles arrive at the same time the warning sirens start.

It is kind of difficult to have a normal discussion with my friend when you know he and his entire apartment building can be wiped out by one missile. For this call, we ended up taking turns sharing our screens and showing areas of our city using Google Street View. He showed me places where he is planning a bike ride, and since we ended up talking about World Cup 2026, I showed him aerial views of large stadiums in Los Angeles.