In Kyiv, road safety has almost caught up with the threat from enemy air strikes. According to statistics for the past 2025, the difference between the number of victims of Russian shelling and those killed in accidents is only 18%, which, taking into account errors, makes these risks almost the same for residents and visitors of the capital.
In Kyiv, road safety has almost caught up with the threat from enemy air strikes. According to statistics for the past 2025, the difference between the number of victims of Russian shelling and those killed in accidents is only 18%, which, taking into account errors, makes these risks almost the same for residents and visitors of the capital.
This was reported in his analysis by transport modeling expert Dmytro Bespalov, who compared data from the Kyiv City Military Administration (KMMA) and the Patrol Police.
According to official data from the KMVA, in 2025, 171 people died in Kyiv as a result of Russian missile and drone attacks, including 13 children. At the same time, 145 people died in road accidents on the capital’s roads during the same period. In terms of population, this is 4.6–5.7 deaths per 100,000 residents from shelling versus 3.9–4.8 from road accidents.
The expert notes that this situation arose due to the escalation of shelling in 2025, when the enemy used the tactics of massive combined strikes, launching 2,556 drones, 122 cruise missiles and 88 ballistic missiles at the city. For comparison, in 2023–2024, when air defense effectively countered threats, Kyiv’s roads were two to three times more dangerous than Russian weapons. In particular, in 2024, the largest air attacks took a total of about 45 lives (33 of them during the strike on the Okhmatdyt hospital on July 8), while 107 people died in road accidents that year.
The total statistics for the four years of the great war demonstrate that road accidents remain a critical factor in mortality in the capital. During 2022–2025, 438 people died in road accidents in Kyiv, while from shelling during the same period — from 360 to 380 people, according to reports from the city authorities (the city prosecutor’s office claims 236 victims due to differences in counting methodologies). In terms of the number of injured, the statistics are even more one-sided: in 2025 alone, 2,450 people were injured in road accidents, while 945 people were injured from shelling.
«The probability of dying from a missile is not set by Kyiv residents: the enemy with their launches, our air defense and allies with anti-missile means — the city itself has almost no leverage for this. And we set the chances of dying in a road accident for ourselves,» emphasizes Dmytro Bespalov.
The figure of 145 road deaths in 2025 is the worst for the capital since 2017 and shows a 35,5% increase in accidents compared to the previous year. Police say the main causes of the tragedies are speeding, inattention at pedestrian crossings, and dangerous maneuvering.
«Zero deaths on Kyiv’s roads is an achievable figure. Will we continue to consider 145 deaths per year as the normal background of a big city? The Hunger Games as they are: dozens die for the opportunity for hundreds of thousands to change nothing,» Bespalov believes.
