There Are Numbers That Should Never Exist

Eight hundred drones in one night

There are numbers that should never exist.

There was a time when invading a neighbor country was something absurd.

Then this same invader started to send 10, 20 killer drones each night, and it was unthinkable.

Then 80, 90, many of us wondered if they would ever reach 100 drones in a night.

Two nights ago, they sent more than 800 drones in a space of a couple of hours.

800, 810, no one knows.

And now we are here, wondering if they will ever reach a thousand drones in a single day.

This time, they did something they hadn’t done before (and the list is already long, believe me): they struck an important government building in the heart of our capital, the Cabinet of Ministers building.

Kyiv, September 7, 2025. Serhii Korovainyi/Reuters

They escalate. They have been escalating since day one.

They are escalating in the eyes of the whole world.

And this is why I am writing.

Many times I think my mission here is not to bring the facts, the weapons, the deaths, because I am no journalist and I am no news outlet. There’s so much talented people around, with diplomas and huge editorial structures, informing the world with the precision you need to understand what is happening, and the geopolitical dynamics of everything.

I’m here in an attempt to bring a human component, just that.

A humble testament to the perceptions of common people, and there goes so much about poetry, about dreams and nightmares, about glimpses of hope…

But I cannot avoid speaking about the war itself, because the escalation I mentioned is happening in the open, right and raw in front of me, before everyone’s eyes.

And it’s becoming humanly unsustainable to bear.

Kyiv, September 7, 2025. Thomas Peter/Reuters

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We already lost the count of how many days this war has.

We are almost losing the count of drones, of weapons, of how many people we have lost to this insanity.

But we will never lose the count of the pain we feel inside.

Even though it cannot be measured, we feel it. Even if we don’t tell anyone, even if we don’t express it, every attack takes away a part of us.

I chose to believe that each day makes us stronger, but until when?

We are not infinite. We are human beings, like anyone else.

“A young woman living on the 6th floor, who had recently given birth. She was thrown into the street by the blast wave.”

Every day, every night, there is a new story like this above. This one happened in the same district where I once lived, in the western part of Kyiv.

Kyiv, Sviatoshynskyi District, September 7, 2025. Thomas Peter/Reuters

Even if we cannot count how much we are dying inside ourselves every day, I will still be here, to make sure the world understands:

We don’t need numbers to see the absurdity of this war.

We only need to feel it

To face it.

To admit that the escalation is happening right now.

Even if we lose count of the numbers, if we ever let ourselves accept this as normal, then the Russian drones have already won.

And not only over Ukraine.

🇺🇦

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