IT HAS BEEN a long day in Kyiv.
As darkness falls, the city is heading into its second night of fear and uncertainty since Russian troops invaded yesterday morning.
The US believes that Russia’s intention is to remove the Ukrainian government from power and replace it with pro-Russian leadership – putting Kyiv, the country’s capital and seat of the government, at the epicentre of the forces’ focus.
As Russian troops push forward and Ukraine rallies its defence, life has been upended for civilians.
In Kyiv, which has a population of nearly three million, residents have either tried to find a safe place to stay or joined thousands of others leaving the country.
Speaking to The Journal, Maxim Sidorenko, a reporter at a Ukrainian media outlet, shared his experience of waking up to the beginning of Russia’s invasion and his journey to leave Kyiv.
Sidorenko said that yesterday morning, no one in the city could believe it was the start of an invasion.
“The city lived normal life, because we had several messages about a possible war start before. So when everyone went to bed on 23 February, no one thought that the next day would be a war,” he said.
“Yesterday, around 5.30am, the whole city woke up due to the mass explosion which was heard from all places in the city.”
He said that by around 7 or 8am, the “whole city was full of cars”.
“Kyivans tried to escape from the city in all directions, mainly going to the west in Lviv direction,” he said.
“The most crowded places were bank machines where people stood in lines trying to get some cash.”
“It took us some two hours to cover the distance of 10 kilometres to leave the city,” Sidorenko said.
“The later people started, the more time they spent in the line of cars.”
Kate, a doctor from Kyiv, told The Journal that she and her family won’t stay in their home tonight because of fears that Russian troops will attack civilian buildings overnight.
Yesterday morning, she woke up around 6am to “strange sounds” outside.
“I felt fear because I understood that something was happening. I tried to think that maybe it’s something else, but soon my friend called me – she was in Pripyat, near Chernobyl, and told me that there was a lot of troops there and they started to attack Ukraine,” Kate said.
“We had not a lot of time so we packed everything and started to wait for information on what to do.
We waited for some time and we heard a lot of explosions near home. We heard a lot of aviation and they started to fight.
“At 4pm, our friends called and told us that there was a lot of troops and that they would attack Kyiv more, that they would start to bomb it. We took everything we could and went to our family near Kyiv. We are now 20km away, not far, but safer than to stay there.
“On the way, there were a lot of sirens in the city. A lot of people stayed underground in the metro station, with children.”
Kate’s husband, who is also a doctor, has signed up to help provide medical care in the city.
“He will help when they call him. I will stay for this time to help with his mother because she would be alone,” Kate said.
“Now we will wait because there is information that maybe this night will be more difficult for us because they have some plans to take our city very quickly.”
During the day, hundreds of people lined up to donate blood after President Volodymyr Zelensky put out a call for donors.
Last night, an overnight curfew was in place in the city from 10pm to 7am local time.
Public transport wasn’t running but metro stations stayed open to serve as bomb shelters. Many residents spent the night underground.
Ukraine’s defence ministry told civilians to resist Russian forces, saying: “We urge citizens to inform us of troop movements, to make Molotov cocktails, and neutralise the enemy.”
The ministry said that over 18,000 assault rifles have been distributed to volunteers.
Since Russia’s invasion began yesterday morning, at least 137 soldiers and civilians have been killed, according to a Ukrainian count earlier today.
Amnesty International said that the Russian invasion has been “marked by indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and strikes on protected objects such as hospitals.”
Ukrainian officials reported that in Vorzel, a suburb of Kyiv, an orphanage housing 50 children was hit by Russian fire.
AFP journalists in Obolonskyi, a northern district in Kyiv city, saw a deceased man in civilian clothes lying on a path. Nearby, medics helped another man whose car was crushed by an armoured tank.
The United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 100,000 people fled their homes on the first day of the invasion.
In particular, Poland and Moldova are seeing large numbers of refugees, with Ukrainians also escaping to Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.
Cars have been backed up for several kilometres before busy crossings, while other people travelled on foot to reach the border.
But many adult men are not being allowed to leave.
Last night, President Zelensky announced a general military mobilisation and banned men between the ages of 18 and 60 from leaving the country.
American man Manny Marotta, 25, who walked 20-hours from the city of Lviv to Poland, described seeing Ukrainian soldiers pulling men from buses that were heading for the border and conscripting them ‘on the spot’.
“They were saying, ‘say goodbye to your girlfriend, to your wife, say goodbye to your mothers and daughters, you’re going east’,” Marotta told the Associated Press.
“I started seeing these surreal scenes of fathers saying, ‘I don’t want to leave my family,’ and Ukrainian soldiers yanking them away … Mothers were protesting, they were screaming: ‘Why are you doing this?’ There was this guy standing up on a box saying ‘forget your wives, forget about your girlfriends – you need to defend your country. Don’t be a coward.’”
Kate urged people in other countries to call on their governments to support people in Ukraine.
“Our people, we really need help,” she said.
“There are a lot of young people, soldiers who are very young. They are very brave.”
“If people could go outside, go on the streets and ask their government to help us – not only sanctions, because they don’t work on Putin.”
“He doesn’t think about his people. He doesn’t think about others. I don’t know what he thinks.”
After Putin announced the invasion around 5am local time yesterday, Russian forces entered Ukraine from its border on the east, through Belarus from the north, and through Crimea from the south.
Missile strikes began at various locations in the country, including in Kyiv, as well as other cities like Kharkiv, Odessa, and the Donbas region.
In a northern suburb of Kyiv, Ukrainian and Russian forces have battled for control of Hostomel Airport (also known as Gostomel Airport or Antonov Airport). Airborne Russian troops first seized control. Ukrainians launched an apparently successful counterattack yesterday, but the Russian Ministry of Defence says that it has retaken the airport today.
Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to have been destroying some bridges that lead to Kyiv to prevent Russians from using them to advance.
At a press conference this evening, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that additional air defence systems would be sent to Ukraine, as well as more weapons.
Stoltenberg said that Ukrainian forces are resisting Russian attackers moving in across the country.
“It is still a fluid situation. What we have seen is that the Ukrainian forces are fighting bravely and are actually able to inflict damage on the invading Russian forces,” Stoltenberg said.
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