As a resident of Boryspil, a satellite town of Kyiv, Kostyantyn Kuts has grown accustomed to regular night-time air raids. This past week has been different.

Since late August, Russia has ramped up the frequency of its air assaults on the Ukrainian capital using jet-powered drones that are harder to intercept. With barrages now around the clock rather than mostly at night, life has once again been turned upside down for the city’s more than three million inhabitants.

For Kuts, a 39-year-old neurologist who lives with his wife and two children, travel from his home on the left bank of the Dnipro River to work on the right bank has become impossibly unpredictable as a result of transport disruptions.

“There are no suburban trains, no metro,” he said, adding that a return journey now takes him six or eight hours. At least he is able to use the time productively, making notes, reading professional literature, watching training courses, even consulting remotely. “But it is much worse for patients, for whom medical care will become less accessible due to the inability to get to a doctor,” he said.

The Kremlin’s new tactic has compounded Kyiv’s difficulties, complicating logistics and interrupting public services while increasing the risk of civilian casualties. All this has further eroded morale as the cold season approaches, making many — above all mothers with young children — wonder whether they should leave the exposed city or even the country.

The situation is likely to deteriorate further.

Ukrainian authorities expect Russia to increase the number of jet-powered drones, according to Pavlo Palisa, deputy chief of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, who acknowledged that the country is not yet sufficiently competent at countering them.

“We will certainly need to adapt,” Palisa told reporters on Aug. 28. “This will take time.”

With the war well into a fifth year, both sides are failing to make even incremental progress on the battlefield, so are increasingly focused on taking the fight deeper into the other’s territory. The aim is to push the other side toward negotiations by raising pressure on war-weary populations that may eventually demand peace at any cost.

The latest tactic in the air war is to target businesses and warehouses in a bid to cripple the economy, fuel public discontent and trigger panic buying. Ukraine has repeatedly attacked facilities belonging to Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries and its main competitor Ozon after strikes on oil refineries that caused sharp shortages of gasoline.

Russia has retaliated with multiple attacks on Ukraine’s largest retailers, leading to shortages of some food products, and has now turned to jet-powered Shahed drones that are faster than propellor-driven versions and which are equipped with cameras.

Kyiv has never experienced as many air-raid alerts lasting for as long as it has over the past week, according to official city data. Over the seven days through Sept. 2, air-raid sirens sounded 74 times in the Ukrainian capital, with alerts lasting a combined 63 hours.

It’s not just Kyiv.

“In many cities and communities, air raid alerts practically do not stop because of the threat of Russian jet-powered drone attacks,” Zelenskyy posted on Thursday after 17 people were injured in a Russian strike on a residential high-rise in the Black Sea city of Odesa. “The Russians have found a new way to escalate, and they have no intention of slowing down.”

The same day, the president held a staff meeting with top officials as he directed a focus on quick and efficient production of high-speed interceptor drones and low-cost missiles, citing “clear information about the enemy’s plans” from intelligence and promising “a clear response.”

Residents of Kyiv and other cities have developed a form of routine under night-time attack, then emerging into the light of day to resume their lives. Now they’re being forced to adapt anew. That means living from one alert to the next, curtailing walks and spending nights in subway stations deep underground, similar to the war’s start in early 2022.

This comes on top of regular attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, culminating in last winter’s hardships during extremely cold weather when Russian strikes left millions across the country without heating, electricity or water.

Many Ukrainians expect to see a repeat this winter, potentially on an even larger scale, a concern echoed by Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi in an address to parliament in July.

While Russia is now using fewer ballistic missiles as it switches to jet-powered drones, that could be even worse news for Ukraine if it means Moscow is stockpiling rockets for the colder months. The goal would be the same as before — to destroy Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure and make its cities increasingly uninhabitable.

Understanding that Russia’s new approach could paralyze relatively normal life and economic activity in large cities, Zelenskyy has said that the government is adjusting its security protocols. Measures planned include the introduction of a two-tier alert system, distinguishing drone attacks from more serious missile threats. Businesses and public services will be allowed to continue operating under the lower threat level.

Kyiv will be permitted to keep one metro line across the Dnipro fully operational during lower-level alerts, while adding more buses and shortening the nighttime curfew.

Work is meanwhile under way to combat the new threat, according to Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara.

“Countermeasures against jet drones are ongoing,” he told reporters last weekend, citing four potential interceptors able to shoot down the jet-powered Shaheds. “New drones have passed field tests. The task is to scale production as quickly as possible.”

The situation is exacerbated by Ukraine’s acute shortage of interceptors for ballistic missiles.

It’s for that reason Mark McNamee decided to relocate his 1-year-old son from Kyiv to the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy, where the boy’s grandmother lives. The U.S. citizen and his Ukrainian wife made the decision during a missile barrage in August.

“We knew there was nothing we could do,” McNamee, 44, a business-event organizer with Ukrainian roots, said in an interview. “We were just sitting there with open skies, and ballistic missiles are hitting relatively close to where we live.”

McNamee’s wife hasn’t left Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. But over the past two months, the couple have begun discussing a temporary move to Poland if the situation gets much worse, although he still sees that as very unlikely.

“But we did start to plan for all scenarios,” McNamee said.

Kuts, the neurologist, has a similar contingency plan to send his wife and children to another region or even abroad. The latter is not an option for him, as for many other men between the ages of 23 and 60, who are barred from leaving the country because they are eligible for conscription.

High-school student Lika Modebadze, 18, said that her books and studies are one way to distract from the new reality, however briefly.

“Every day now resembles the movie 'Groundhog Day' due to the number of alarms, explosions and descents into the basement,” she said.

For all the hardship, Modebadze is not ready to follow her relatives and leave Ukraine.

“I, my mother and sister are fourth and fifth-generation Kyiv residents,” she said. “We will be in our land until the end.”

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(With assistance from Aliaksandr Kudrytski.)

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