Fear, darkness and newborn babies: inside Ukraine’s underground shelters

In the bunkers and underground tunnels of Kyiv, life continues underground, even as explosions sound overhead.

Teens sit glued to iPhones, parents tuck quilts around their children to sleep. Some hold pets, while others sit in darkened, unmoving subway cars. And babies arrive. In one shelter in Kyiv, a woman gave birth to a girl, Mia.

Sharing an image of the newborn child wrapped in blankets while others in the shelter are visible in the background, Hanna Hopko, a former Ukrainian MP and chair of Democracy in Action Conference, said Mia was born in the shelter in a "stressful environment". But she said that despite the challenging experience, Mia's mother was happy, adding: "We defend lives and humanity!" The baby was among more than 80 born in bomb shelters over the last two nights, according to Kyiv's city authorities.

On the same day, another baby was born in the basement of a hospital close to Ukraine's eastern border, where more than 100,000 Russian troops have massed.

In Luhansk, hospital staff rushed to make an underground makeshift ward in the basement of Starobilsk Multidisciplinary hospital while Russian forces fired outside after a woman went into labour and later gave birth to a boy.

Ukrainian MP, Anastasia Radina, compared the scene to London during the blitz.

"Ukrainian mothers are now giving birth in shelters and metro stations during air raids," she wrote on Twitter. "The blitz of London 1940 is being repeated by Russia in Ukraine in 2022. Nato must make UA no-fly zone."