The Russo-Ukrainian war has created a special category of people – "nighttime metro residents".
These people aren't hippies and they aren't homeless. They're ordinary citizens with a variety of social backgrounds and income levels, people who have homes of their own but still spend their nights underground whether an air-raid warning has been issued or not. They arrive before the metro closes "just in case" – in case the alarm goes off in the middle of the night.
For them, the metro is a safe bedroom. When morning comes, they fold up their mats and blankets and hurry out, back to ordinary life, only to return underground in the evening and fall asleep on the granite floor just a few metres from the tracks. Because up in their apartments, they simply cannot sleep. Their anxiety levels are higher than most people's.
A dual-purpose facility
Metro stations were originally designed as dual-purpose sites, to be used for public transportation and as shelters in the event of war or man-made disaster.
During the Cold War it was believed that the underground could withstand even a nuclear strike. Heavy, hermetically sealed blast doors were installed to isolate metro stations from the outside world, along with powerful air filtration units and back-up electricity and water supply systems. Public toilets that could serve tens of thousands of people were even installed in the tunnels.
There are three metro systems in Ukraine: Kyiv (52 stations), Kharkiv (30) and Dnipro (6). There is also a "hybrid metro" in Kryvyi Rih – a rapid tram that partly runs underground.
Since the start of the full-scale war, all underground stations have doubled as shelters. Thankfully, there has been no need to filter radiation from the air or pack people into the miles of tunnels.
Nevertheless, the metro has served as a giant bomb shelter throughout waves of missile and drone attacks.
In the early weeks and months after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the metro as a transportation system stopped running. The trains were used to shelter those hiding from Russian attacks. Some people stayed underground for days or even weeks without surfacing – especially in Kharkiv, the million-strong city only 25 km from the Russian border.
Once Ukrainian forces had pushed the Russians out of Kyiv Oblast and to some extent from Kharkiv Oblast, metro services resumed, stations returned to normal use, and overnight stays on the platforms were prohibited.
The "metro as shelter" function is now limited to the duration of air-raid warnings and the nighttime curfew, when people have to be off the streets. The ban is lifted during air raids, when people are allowed to go to shelters, including the metro.
Since spring 2025, Russia has stepped up its campaign of missile and Shahed drone terror against civilians, targeting residential districts. As a result, Kharkiv went back to permitting overnight stays in the metro in March, and Kyiv and Dnipro followed suit in April this year.
To get a closer look at the world of the nighttime metro, I set off for an overnight stay underground.
Why tempt fate?
I arrive at Kyiv's much-bombarded Lukianivska station and descend on the escalator with a roll mat and sleeping bag about fifteen minutes before closing time.
In a draught-free corner of the platform, I spot the first four people settling down for the night.
Two are already lying down, covered by blankets, and the other two are making up folding beds brought from home.
My attempt to strike up a conversation meets with little enthusiasm. The woman speaks for them all: "We're very tired," she says, turning her back on me and pulling her blanket over her. Later I learn they are a family – parents and two almost grown-up sons – and always the first to arrive. Trains are still rattling through and passengers hurrying past, but they're scrolling through their phones as they wait for sleep.
In the bustling crowds, I notice a man of about 30 wearing a warm autumn jacket with the hood pulled up (though it is +30 degrees in Kyiv, sweltering hot). I decide to approach him – and I'm right, he's come to spend the night here and that's why he's so warmly dressed. His name is Vladyslav and he works in IT. He's single, lives nearby, and spends every night underground.
Vladyslav unhurriedly explains the "house rules".
"The cleaners will bring out folding chairs and camp beds from the storeroom soon – they have a stock of them," he says. "If there's an air-raid warning in the night, at least a couple of hundred people will rush down here, maybe more, with their children, cats and dogs, camp beds and tents.
There aren't enough metro chairs for everyone, so I always bring my own.
But if there's no air raid, it's spacious – usually no more than twenty people spend the night here. Everyone knows each other, at least by sight. If you want conversation, come during an air-raid warning – it's livelier then, you'll hear plenty. Lots of children, even babies being rocked to sleep in their parents' arms up and down the platform."
Vladyslav tries to sleep in the same spot every time – the one he has marked out as the "least draughty". He keeps glancing at his phone as we talk. Barely a minute passes without him sharing the latest on missile and drone launches, their flight paths and so on.
"Shahed drones have entered the airspace via Sumy Oblast," he casually drops into the conversation.
A little later:
"Ballistic missiles have been launched. No word yet on where from or where they're headed. If they're Iskanders aimed at Kyiv, that's about ten to twelve minutes' flight time."
And after a bit:
"Shahed drones have been launched from Luhansk. They've turned towards Poltava, but that doesn't mean much – they'll change direction several times to confuse our air defence."
It's clear Vladyslav cannot shake off his fear. Outwardly he seems calm, but he's taut, on edge. He adds more details about the tricks and deviousness of Russian drone routes. Against his will, it seems to have become his pet subject – at least for the duration of the air raids.
Another person I chat to is a woman of about 40. She won't tell me her name or what job she does. I don't press her – I understand the type of people I'm speaking to. Their anxiety is multi-layered, applying both to missiles and to overly curious strangers on the platform at night.
The woman tells me she hasn't spent a single night at home since the start of the full-scale war. Well, except for a couple of weeks when she was visiting her parents – they live in a quiet town, and at their house, the cellar which serves as their shelter is just two steps away from the bed.
She lives in a 17th-floor apartment with her husband. At first he spent the nights in the metro too, but over time his fear subsided. Hers has not. Yes, she admits after a pause, it's hard to sleep for months on end fully dressed on a granite floor. But what else can she do?
I try an appeal to reason.
"Kyiv has about four million people, and only a few dozen missiles and Shahed drones come in – and not even every night. The odds are small, surely…"
She interrupts nervously: "What does it matter how many missiles there are? Whether it's ten, a hundred or a thousand, one small one is enough for me! And anyway, why tempt fate? Why would you? I just don't understand…"
"What about your husband?"
"Yes, he is tempting fate. The person who's dearest to me, and… (again a long pause). He can fall asleep in bed. I can't. If I could, I'd probably feel different somehow."
The last train has departed, the escalators have been switched off, and it's quiet now. It's never this quiet during the day: the only sound is the faint monotonous hum of air currents coming from the tunnels.
Women workers start cleaning with wide mops. They chat unhurriedly to one another from different ends of the platform without raising their voices, and they can be heard clearly. I feel like saying that it's "like in paradise" – such "divine" acoustics could never be sensed during the day.
I wander around the vestibule and count the "regulars": there are 31 people including me. The types of people are interesting; I provisionally define them like this:
– an urban elderly lady, fussy, with darting eyes, who's clearly realised that I'm a newcomer in their world and examines me with curiosity;
– a "gym bro" with the typical look of a fitness centre regular – a small goatee beard and a shaved head. All muscles, expensive sportswear. He's reading his smartphone intently, sitting on a still rolled-up sleeping bag; – women aged 55+ whose faces mark them out as educated – they might be civil servants, doctors, teachers; – young women of indistinct appearance – perhaps shop assistants, uncommunicative, they huddle against the station columns, wrapped up in sleeping bags; – elderly men in blue-collar jobs – maybe drivers or factory workers.
And also an interesting-looking couple, a boy and a girl. Quite young, maybe even still at school. They hold hands, cuddle and whisper to each other. I have the feeling that what's brought them underground is not fear of missiles, but first love – and perhaps their first attempt to spend a night together. No words are needed here, as the classic writer would say.
I walk around the platform several times; people are settling down, hardly making a sound, as if afraid of disturbing something or someone.
Two repairmen in orange gilets and helmets have opened the hatches and are busy with the pipes. "We're pumping out the groundwater that builds up during the day. It's done every night, at every station," they tell me. I seem to be the only person interested in talking to them – no one else pays any attention to our conversation. People aren't here out of curiosity, but for safety.
The repairmen leave, most of the lights go out, and semi-darkness reigns.
In the middle of the night I'm woken up by a growing rumble – a motorised trolley is passing by, carrying workers to distant stations. The trolley is an interesting hybrid: it has railway carriage wheels, a cab, and behind the cab a diesel engine from a Soviet MAZ car, coughing through the exhaust pipe. It's strange to hear the familiar "voice" of an internal combustion engine in the metro. This happens only at night, when the tracks in the tunnels are de-energised but repair works are underway and equipment and materials need to be delivered.
When I wake up next morning, I hurry to say to my guide as cheerfully as I can: "Good morning, Vladyslav!"
Still drowsy, he replies at once in a staccato tone: "There were 362 Shaheds during the night – from Voronezh, Luhansk and Crimea. There haven't been any from Crimea for ages – not since last week."
The full lights come on and everyone starts crowding towards the exit. For the first time in my life, I ride the first morning escalator upwards. And for the first time I look at the faces of the early-morning passengers coming down into the metro rather than at the backs of their heads. It's a strange feeling: somehow the people seem especially interesting to me. And they too, it seems, are looking with equal interest at our "night reverse flow".
Curtains made of sheets
"Shelter life" in the metro today is not as intense or emotional as it was in the early weeks of the invasion, when the stations turned into strange communities – an example of Ukrainians' self-organising creativity.
"There were stationary trains at the platforms, and people decided what they'd 'specialise' in themselves," says Oksana Nykyforuk, communications specialist at the Kyiv Metro. "There'd be elderly citizens with particular needs in one carriage, families with small children in another. There were women-only carriages. Curtains made out of sheets made it cosier.
A space was left untouched in the middle of the platforms (the "headquarters"), where the people living at the station held discussions and made announcements. Assistants to the station cleaners were appointed according to a schedule. Dog owners were assigned to sleep closer to the exit. There were places where humanitarian aid was given out, medical points were organised, psychologists worked on a volunteer basis."
A family of refugees from Chernihiv with a three-week-old baby found shelter at Vokzalna station at that time. They lived there for about a month; they were allocated one of the service rooms, which became a temporary home for the family. One of the staff brought a baby bath, and chamomile was brewed in a kettle to bathe the baby.
There were funny incidents too. Imagine: it's nighttime, people are sleeping on the platform, but then an air-raid warning is issued, the escalators are switched on, more people arrive. And suddenly an indignant woman's voice rings out: "What's all this noise and mess, can't you be quieter? And turn the lights off, it's night outside, everyone's asleep!" Some people laugh, others think it's selfish and rude and get annoyed. In the end the situation somehow sorts itself out, and silence and calm reign once more in the "underground kingdom".
The record held by the Kyiv metro shelter is when 70,000 people were in underground stations at the same time. This happened on 10 October 2022, almost the first time the Russians launched a large-scale strike on the city centre in the morning rush hour.
"The platforms were very tightly packed with people, so the trains were temporarily suspended for safety reasons," Nykyforuk recalls.
But it was even tougher in Kharkiv. Mayor Ihor Terekhov says that in the early days of the full-scale invasion, 150,000-160,000 people were sheltering in the metro at the same time. At large stations such as Heroiv Pratsi in the outlying Saltivka district, which was shelled most intensively, there would be up to 2,000 people on the platform at once.
In Dnipro, which has the smallest metro system, the maximum number of people sheltering during an air attack was around 3,000 across all six stations at the same time.
Separating the real from the imaginary
Why do some people go to the metro every night, even when there is no air-raid warning?
It's to do with how the instinct of self-preservation works, explains Yaroslava Popovych, a psychotherapist at the Kyiv Centre for Stress Resistance. For some people, it kicks in at moments of danger and recedes when things calm down, but for others, the feeling of anxiety and panic is retained for a long time.
"Statistically, about 84% of people self-recover (return to normal) after stressful situations. But 14% need professional help, and a small percentage will require hospitalisation, as they may get stuck at a level of helplessness and heightened anxiety," Popovych continues.
"For example, I worked with a woman who'd stopped spending the night at home after what she'd experienced. Her apartment was locked; she'd arranged with the management at work that she could sleep in the office shelter. During the day she'd work as usual at her workplace, but when the end of the working day approached and she had to go home, she'd be overwhelmed with fear and panic. She would do anything not to have to sleep in her own bed in her own apartment.
What to do? Psychotherapy can help people to separate the real from the imaginary in their mind. But it isn't a quick fix; it can take months, even years. Progress is made bit by bit.
At the same time, a precondition of recovery is always that the person has to be aware of their disorders and want to get rid of them. Psychotherapy doesn't work by force."
In a recent joint study by the Coordination Centre for Mental Health of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and UNICEF, 47% of Ukrainians reported high stress levels.
So this is now our harsh "new normal". Even if someone is spared death and destruction, the war will almost certainly leave them burdened with anxiety, fear, and terrors.
Some are being slowly destroyed by the word "ballistics" alone, while others live by the principle: "I won't hear the bullet that finds me."
Vadym Petrasiuk, for Ukrainska Pravda
Translation: Myroslava Zavadska and Anastasiia Yankina
Editing: Teresa Pearce