Russia trains sights on buses, schools and offices in busy Ukrainian city.

Acting mayor Regina Karchenko told the BBC that in one particularly violent attack, “she didn’t go to the shelter, but I was covered in the toilet when it was so loud.”

Shahed’s drone crashed in a huge explosion not far from Anna’s office, and another drone hit the cable, knocking out the internet. “That’s just another normal day in Zaporizhia,” she said.

Their city is the administrative capital of the Zaporizhia region, one of the five regions in the south and east of Ukraine that Russia claims to belong to.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, is under Russian occupation 50 km southwest of the city.

Following the relentless Russian attacks, Zaporizhia’s city council met in an underground shelter to discuss the dire situation. “The enemy has intensified terrorism against civilians, municipal transport, private buses, cars, residential buildings and children,” Regina Karchenko said at the meeting.

There are plans to build more shelters around the city and install more anti-drone nets in the busiest and most vulnerable areas, the acting mayor later told the BBC, adding that anti-shatter film is being applied to the windows of schools, hospitals and public buildings.

“Personally, I’m very scared,” she said. At night, she sometimes sleeps on the floor in the hallway of the house: “I live on the seventh floor of an ordinary building. I don’t have a private apartment with 10 guards. I live an ordinary life.”