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A checkpoint in the middle of the street and suspicious checks for those who venture outside despite the curfew, back and forth to shelters between two bombardments: on the fourth day of the Russian invasion, the inhabitants of Kiev enter the everyday life of the war.
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Flora Stepanova, 41, went out for a walk in the small Kiev park below her home, her eyes reddened with fatigue, she sat down on a bench to smoke a cigarette, but remained on the alert.
“Of course it’s a bit dangerous. I think if you’re careful and look around, it’s safer than sitting in front of the TV and watching the news all the time, because it will drive you crazy,” said a resident of the Ukrainian capital. .
Behind her, a unit of Ukrainian soldiers has set up a checkpoint. Machine guns pointed at every car or passerby, soldiers and volunteers control everything that moves.
“We won’t see you again on the street,” said a policeman who was patrolling a little further.
A man explains that he just went out to get bread and couldn’t find any.
Victory Square, Kiev’s main avenue, looms on the horizon like an empty strip of asphalt for miles. Everyone prefers to avoid the artery pounded the day before by Russian gunfire. For the benefit of the smallest streets.
Kyiv City Hall announced a strict curfew until Monday 8 a.m. (local time) on Saturday. No more shops or petrol stations are open. Leaving the house is in theory prohibited.
“All civilians who are in the street during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” threatened the mayor of the city Vitali Klitschko.
To limit the progression of Russian forces in the capital – some of which, according to Kiev, would act under cover, dressed in civilian clothes, in ambulances or even in the uniforms of Ukrainian soldiers – instructions were given to the inhabitants.
Everyone is called upon to cover their street number with paper, to remove the location function from their telephone and all the traffic lights have been disconnected.
Any interaction between strangers is done in a tone of suspicion: we track down an accent that is too Russian, a particular gait or questions that are too intrusive.
During the night, Russian gunfire ripped through the sky and the shelling intensified. Kiev dreaded the fateful moment, a Russian air force “blitz” and a carpet bomb, but finally calm returned in the early morning to the city.
Between two sporadic bombardments in the distance, while the fighting continues north of the city, on the Dnieper, we hear especially Sunday morning in the city, the chirping of birds.
Olena Vasyliaka, take advantage of this lull to bring supplies from her apartment down to the shelter where she has settled.
“We live on the top floor and I will never stay up there with the children,” says the 50-year-old producer, whose husband has been on the “front” in the East since the first day of the invasion of the forces of Moscow.
“Of course we are suffering. But it’ll be fine, it’s our life now. The shock happened, but now we have to get used to it, ”she adds before returning to her underground shelter, installed in a neighborhood bookstore.
Under the vaulted cellar, in the middle of the camping mattresses, we left a computer connected to Ukrainian news continuously. A woman watches on a loop the speech of President Volodymyr Zelensky, considered the hero of an entire people in Ukraine, and even beyond.
For the inhabitants of Kiev who chose not to evacuate, after the shock, the spirit of resistance sets in.
“We love our army. We love them because they do things that weren’t expected of them. We are the coolest nation in the world,” enthuses sitting in the bunker-bookstore Andriï Vasyliak, 23, a lawyer.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca