Bravado is mixed with expressions of exhaustion and fear in the rapidly thinning streets of Kiev.
Kyiv:
The young Ukrainian filmmaker stood with a rifle over a trench while his friends prepared Molotov cocktails. The exhausted but rebellious inhabitants of Kiev dig in for war.
Three volunteer fighters in olive costumes worked up a sweat a few paces away, placing a piece of artillery on a patch of grass separating two lanes from a major city road.
Electronic billboards around them flashed messages warning Russian soldiers that “you will be greeted with bullets instead of flowers”.
Filmmaker Andriy Ivanyuk took it all in with the confidence of a man who hasn’t seen actual combat yet, saying the Russians were about to learn a lesson they wouldn’t forget.
“The Russians know very well that our country is on fire under their feet,” Ivanyuk said.
Kiev woke up Monday after a 36-hour military curfew – enforced by shoot-on-sight orders – to prepare for the stalled Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital.
The hardened soldiers of the Western-backed government are strained at the front.
They are fighting well-armed Russian forces near the Belarusian border to the north and Kremlin-annexed Crimea to the south.
‘Flowers for their grave’
The war-ravaged eastern Ukraine has been pitting Kiev troops against Russian-backed insurgents for eight years.
But the historic city of Kiev is now being defended by its own inhabitants – from artists like Ivanyuk to bank employee Viktor Rudnichenko.
Both are in their thirties and smiling.
Both lived normal lives until Russia stunned the world and attacked Ukraine last Thursday.
And both are bursting with confidence.
“We will greet them with Molotov cocktails and bullets in the head, that’s how we will greet them,” Rudnichenko said.
“The only flowers they can get from us are for their graves.”
But bravado is mixed with expressions of exhaustion and fear in the rapidly thinning streets of Kiev.
Bravado and exhaustion
Groups of people lug their bags to the train station shortly after the curfew was lifted.
There were rumors that the city had organized two more evacuation trains.
Officials could not say how many of Kiev’s original three million residents had already fled.
But many of those left behind stood for hours in the lines that formed outside the city’s shops and kiosks, looking for bread and cigarettes.
The city itself is gradually taking on the characteristics of a conflict zone.
The blasts of Grad rockets and mortar fire largely fell silent as delegations from Moscow and Kiev met for talks at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border on the fifth day of the war.
But this only gave the Kiev volunteers more time to roll out everything from furniture and tires to trash cans to reinforce the checkpoints that divide the city into zones.
“Don’t go on the grass,” volunteer Oleksiy Vasylenko yelled at a passerby as an air raid siren disrupted the still sky.
“There could be explosives! We’ve heard that the Russian is hiding mines in the grass,” the 27-year-old warned.
‘Saboteurs’
The air in Kiev has been poisoned for days with suspicions that secret Russian units are already hiding and carrying out attacks in the capital.
The city issued a warning on Monday to drivers who use phone numbers registered in Kiev not to use bus lanes on the right side of the road.
“If you drive on the bus lane, you are a saboteur and will be dealt with accordingly,” the city’s message warned.
The checkpoints are manned by nervous and sometimes angry men who demand identity papers while pointing their Kalashnikovs at cars.
The access code for easier passage is “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine) – the national greeting deeply despised in the Kremlin and traditionally followed by the answer: “Geroyam Slava” (Glory to the heroes).
The new crew of volunteers who were being bussed to the trenches exchanged greetings regularly as they walked around preparing battle plans under a clear blue sky.
“There are enough people here to resist,” said veterinarian Yuriy Gibalyuk,
“We will resist, all of Ukraine will resist, be it Kiev, Lviv or Donetsk,” said the 50-year-old.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
