Sleepless in Kyiv: In wartime capital, the stress of long fight weighs on everyone. Somehow, people cope

KYIV, Ukraine — In some cultures, people greet one another by asking: "Have you eaten?" In Ukraine's wartime capital, the question is more likely to be a wry, "Getting any sleep?"

More than 16 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, wailing air alerts routinely pierce the late-night and predawn hours, followed by the thunder of air defenses at work against incoming waves of missiles and drones in the skies over this city of some 3 million people.

In May and June, more than 200 Russian projectiles were shot down over the capital region, Ukrainian officials said. With the relentless pace of attacks, a full night of sound slumber is something to dream about — a rare treat, a treasure so often tantalizingly out of reach.

Kyiv, which resisted Russia's early onslaught of ground forces, is hundreds of miles from the current front lines, and people here tend to depict their own forced wakefulness as a far lesser ordeal than the battlefield conditions faced by the country's defenders or the perils of life in Russian-occupied cities and towns.

But the noisy alerts reflect real danger. On a Saturday in June, five people were killed when falling