For the second day in a row, I woke up yesterday to the sound of sirens warning of air attacks.
I had covered the windows of my rental apartment with blankets as protection from flying glass in case of explosions nearby.
My colleague and photographer, Kate Baklitska, was sleeping behind a safety sofa.
Ian Birel in Chernobyl, Ukraine. He writes: “For the second day in a row, I woke up yesterday to the sound of sirens warning of air attacks.”
Residential homes in the Ukrainian capital Kiev were shelled overnight and images on social media show a Russian plane shot down just ten miles away, ravaging an apartment building.
I looked down the street as several groups of people hurried to shelters, some taking cats or dogs.
Others headed for the precarious eviction from Kiev – about 100,000 people fled the evil attack on Moscow on the first day alone.
The key question facing me – along with other foreign media here – was whether it was better to stay or leave.
I decided it was time to leave, instead of risking being trapped in a basement for days unable to report freely amid escalating shelling and street fighting.
First, we needed a car – not an easy task when the streets were deserted. However, a minibus driver agreed to pick us up.
But he failed to find petrol at four petrol stations and needed 100 liters of fuel to return 1,000 km (620 miles) to Lviv, in western Ukraine.
Fortunately, we managed to secure two seats in a car with an almost full tank, driven out of town by another journalist. I agreed to meet with him in the area of the central government – where street fights broke out less than five hours later.
I went on my last walk in the Ukrainian capital after two weeks here. The sun was shining as I walked to the botanical garden, passing scattered groups of tense people carrying bags and suitcases. It was 8.30 in the morning – usually rush hour – in the European capital.
Rescue act: 23-year-old Carolina and her cat. Ian Birel writes: “We passed more military vehicles passing to the city. More armored vehicles. More mechanized ambulances “
But the roads were almost empty, except for a few packed cars coming out of town full of frightened people. All cafes were closed.
In the center of the city, the sound of shelling resumed. I passed groups of well-armed soldiers and policemen.
There was no one around the famous tourist site “St. Michael” – a beautiful cathedral with golden domes.
It was there, in 2014, that pro-democracy protesters fled the massacre that killed 104 people and effectively began the long-running conflict that erupted last week.
After sticking “Press” and “TV” inscriptions on our silver Skoda, I noticed a young soldier who had just left his teens, walking with a holder to join his unit. I wondered if he would survive the day.
We left at 10 in the morning, but soon we were stuck in a crowd of cars, vans and trucks. At the Beresteiska metro station, there were several Ukrainian soldiers at the entrance in an armored car lurking in the trees behind them.
Across the road, a soldier stood on a mound with his legs outstretched and a rifle hanging as he scanned the road. A colleague sat casually on the grass with several grenade launchers leaning against a tree, hidden behind blue sandbags.
Many of the cars were full of families. A 24-year-old man named Maxim told me that he was traveling with ten members of his family in a convoy of three cars, including his mother, father, three-month-old baby and their pet spaniel.
It had already taken them two days to reach Kiev from the city of Chernihiv, east of Chernobyl and in an area where some of the fiercest battles against the Russians have been fought in the last 24 hours.
Ukrainian troops occupy positions in central Kiev, Ukraine, today as Russia continues its invasion
“Yesterday we drove to stay with friends in Kiev and planned to leave on Thursday,” he said.
“During the night we heard planes flying over the apartment building. Judging by the sounds, they went down to drop something, be it bombs or fighters. We were so scared.
“We packed everything in our cars, then sat there until we could leave. My only job now is to protect my family.
As we advanced west, we began to see military vehicles heading toward downtown Kiev: tanks, armored personnel carriers with grim-looking soldiers sitting on top, Humvees waving the Ukrainian flag from their radio mast, army trucks, fuel tanks, and several motorized vehicles. rulers. An hour later we were barely a mile away.
Next to us was a steady stream of human misery struggling across the pavement, an endless procession of people with hastily packed backpacks and suitcases.
Family with a little girl on her father’s shoulders. Three teenage girls in bright coats. An elderly couple pulls covers on wheels. A young man with a cat in his arms.
Ruslan, 45, was walking alone. He told me that he was a taxi driver who worked in Kiev and was trying to return home to Khmelnytsky, halfway to the Romanian border.
“There are such problems to get out of town,” he said. He had tried to buy a bus ticket, but it wasn’t available, so now he was walking to Dachna Bus Station. We passed the station six miles later. It was closed.
These scenes were a pathetic sight. So many lives have been lost as a traitorous dictator tries to thwart democracy in a neighboring nation for fear that it could infect its own besieged and repressed citizens.
We passed a digital billboard. At one point, he displayed the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, and then announced the recruitment of volunteers to the Territorial Defense Forces – although it was almost certainly too late to count in this brutal war.
Crowds of people waiting to board an evacuation train from Kiev to Lviv at Kiev Central Station, Ukraine today
One showed a cyclist delivering food who had decided to save his city at this time of danger. Another involved a female doctor who registered, saying, “I’ve always wanted to save others.”
We were still crawling. Shortly after noon, a series of earthquakes exploded a few miles to the right of the car.
They came from Obolon, a district of Kiev and the site of fierce street clashes between Russian forces.
According to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the Russian contingent arriving in the city was led by soldiers dressed in stolen Ukrainian uniforms – with tanks and mechanized artillery after them.
I saw more troops and armored personnel carriers heading into battle, with groups of Territorial Defense men marching toward the city.
The sirens rang again. Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion who is mayor of Kiev, has issued a warning that people should stay at home and enter bomb shelters when they hear the sirens.
He said: “There are battles in several parts of the city and you can hear the shooting. The Ukrainian army destroys Russian sabotage groups.
We passed more military vehicles passing to the city. More armored vehicles. More mechanized ambulances. And more from the depressing blunt blows of Russian bombs and missiles hitting the unfortunate people of Kiev.
President Vladimir Zelensky imposed martial law on Thursday and ordered the opening of state arsenals so that citizens could receive firearms to protect their city.
As we moved forward, Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov announced that 18,000 semi-automatic rifles and ammunition had been distributed.
“The number of people who want to defend their homeland as part of the territorial defense against the Russian occupation is growing and sending us more weapons,” he said.
At 15.00 on the opposite side of the road we passed a checkpoint of the National Guard, monitoring the vehicles entering the city. Officers dressed in black with rifles in hand and pistols on their hips in holsters ordered five men to get out of a car to search it.
I talked to other families in cars crawling up to us. They all had stories of escaping in fear of the hail of terror falling from the sky on their homes. Julia, 30, told how her mother woke her up at night.
“The sky seemed to be on fire, and I knew it was the shelling. I was really scared. I woke up my husband and told him we had to leave, but he said we had to wait until morning.
“We ran to the bomb shelter and sat there for several hours. I started calling everyone I knew to ask if they could drive us out of town.
They found friends driving West who offered to help. Julia said: “If it was just me and my husband, we could have left town, but we have a six-year-old daughter. My husband stayed. I hope he can take a bus or a train.
Irina, 28, told me she was with her husband, who drove their two young children, her mother and grandmother, but they had no idea where they were headed, except, hopefully, safely.
Queues of cars in a traffic jam on the highway outside the Ukrainian capital as people leave Kiev today
“Today we woke up to the sound of shelling very close to our place. It was still night, but we decided to leave, “she said.
Then we passed an abandoned concrete building where six soldiers in balaclavas were standing while two colleagues were talking on the phone – and then we saw their tank’s pistol sticking out of the woods by the road.
When I looked back to the city center, I suddenly noticed a large empty road just behind us. Apparently the traffic has stopped. It was not possible to say whether he was stopped by Ukrainian or Russian soldiers.
My colleague Kate started receiving voicemails from her lawyer friend Anna in Kiev, who told her that she had entered the basement of her apartment, for safety, with her partner, their dogs and food and water supplies.
She said: “There are a lot of people here. People are crying. It is very tense and people are nervous.
As darkness fell, we began to see empty tanks and trucks roaring down the wrong road on the other side of the road.
There were three surface-to-surface missile launchers on the edge – and some unfortunate people were still moving with their bags in the direction of Poland.
Kate’s text messages to Anna were not received. It is assumed that she was still in the basement.
It is now nine o’clock as I write these words. We were on the road for 11 hours and covered 70 miles. Lviv remains far away; maybe we will go somewhere else to cover the suffering of this nation. But at least we are – for now – safe, along with all those others in the thousands of cars fleeing Kiev.
Additional report: Kate Baklitska