“Overconfidence is your weakness,” a calm male voice tells me between wailing sirens. “Seek shelter.” It’s 3am in Kyiv’s old town, and I’m being warned that an air strike is incoming. The voice is from the hotel’s intercom advising me to go to the air raid shelter in the basement.

The moment I opened my eyes, it felt like I was standing. My heart beats through my ears as I pull on some clothes. Having never been in a country under attack before, it all feels surreal, but it is not to be taken lightly.

Before I travelled to Ukraine, others who’d made the trip told me the edgy feeling and sense of urgency tend to fade, which probably explains why the voice on the intercom is warning against overconfidence.

A close family member who lived in an earthquake zone said I should have a bag with valuables by the door. I did have a rucksack ready, but in my haste to leave the room, I left most of my belongings behind.

Pulling the door closed, I see empty halls and feel embarrassed. Either this is an empty hotel or I was overreacting by following the calm voice’s orders - do others just sleep it out?

Hours before, an ex-colonel called Oleg Zhganov told me he was scared by Russian rocket and drone attacks that regularly shake his home on the outskirts of Kyiv.

“I was working with heavy artillery in the army,” he said. “But these drone attacks are so unpredictable.”

Zhganov had beckoned me into his garage, where he pulled out a matchbox filled with small pieces of shrapnel. Although only marginally bigger than the size of a pea, my fingers feel how the sharp metallic edges would do immense damage if they were sent flying into a human body.

The larger chunks of engine or curved outer layers of wrecked drone the ex-military man has on his garage shelf look even more deadly.

“These lacerate the skin,” Zhganov explained, running his finger down the edge. “Nine people have been killed by shrapnel in this neighbourhood.”

Jogging down the stairs, I’m thinking about shrapnel at every window I pass. My room has thick bomb-blast curtains that offer some form of buffer, but if a piece of metal comes flying through the glass on the landings, there’s nothing in the way.

Midway through my journey to the basement, I’m joined by a groggy-looking man with brown hair. He nods and wishes me a good evening, but it’s the hurry in his steps that is reassuring; there are other people listening to the calm voice.

We navigate through the security area and into the back of the underground car park. There are sofas with blankets, a water cooler and a Monopoly set. It’s strange to see a domestic scene set up several parking spaces down from a 4X4 Chevrolet, but in the context of potentially spending hours underground makes total sense.

Our local journalist collaborator Natalie Gryvnyak sits with a blanket around her neck. She tells me an aircraft carrying a hypersonic missile is heading towards Kyiv.

A moment later, another alert from my phone pings about an impending attack. But there’s nothing to do but wait, and wait. After an hour, the voice on the intercom tells us it's over and we slowly wander back upstairs.

I close my eyes, but my head is still buzzing, and I wonder if the distant wail I hear is sirens. I fall asleep, wake up and realise the sound is the air conditioning machine.