Citizens are adapting by making Molotov cocktails, hunting spies

Sixty-five-year-old Nikola Tkachenko was walking his dog in a residential area of ​​the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, part of his role as a neighborhood watchman between long stretches in the underground garage of his building, which serves as a bomb shelter.

Then he caught what he believed to be a Russian spy.

“My father found a saboteur not far from his house in a basement yesterday,” Tkachenko’s daughter Natasha told CNBC. “He had no documents, he said he was Ukrainian, but he spoke with a Russian accent.”

Natasha and her father questioned the man, about whom she said she could not name a single street in Kyiv or a word from the Ukrainian national anthem. He was immediately handed over to the police.

Ukrainians from all walks of life – programmers, teachers, parents – have switched to full-time warfare, making Molotov cocktails, camouflage tents, collecting provisions and money to send to their troops less than a week after Russia’s invasion. their country.

“I work like hell,” Natasha said when asked how she was, saying she couldn’t imagine it just a week ago. He worked as an art curator at a local gallery. “Now it’s hell around Kyiv.”

“Everyone I know – friends, friends, relatives, everyone – they do at least something,” she said. “We stand as one, each of us doing what we can now.”

The building’s unheated garage, now a makeshift bunker, has its own “Molotov cocktail department,” as she called it, referring to improvised explosives made from glass bottles. When she is not assembling weapons or protective equipment with her parents, she gives reading lessons to her little godfather in the bathroom, one of the few relatively safe places because there are no windows.

On February 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” Ukraine, a country of 44 million people and the second largest in Europe, after months of denying US warnings of invasion. The offensive came after Moscow repeatedly demanded that Ukraine abandon its goal of joining NATO, which it considered a direct threat to its border security, and Putin’s complete denial of Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state.

As air raids sounded in Kyiv, Russian forces – which had amassed more than 150,000 on Ukraine’s borders in recent months – have invaded the country on multiple flanks. Putin said only military targets would be targeted, but missiles and bombs have hit civilian infrastructure in several cities.

The government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has refused to surrender, calling on its population – which has been independent as a state for 30 years – to fight. Strongly superior and superior in weapons and left by NATO to fend for itself because it is not a member of the treaty alliance, Ukraine’s armed forces have managed to slow down Russia’s offensive aimed at capturing Kyiv.

But military experts expect the war to move to a far more deadly phase and fear much greater civilian casualties.

“I have small children. I take care of them first and foremost,” said Yuri Veligorski, a 38-year-old health coach in the northern city of Chernihiv. He shared footage of several bombed-out buildings and streets in his neighborhood.

“We support ourselves with food and goods,” he said. “People organize in groups to protect their houses, their yards. Veligorski says he and his neighbors are sending money to the Ukrainian army and local civilian defense forces. “Tomorrow I will send power banks to our defenders,” he added, adding that people also communicate and plan through social networks, which are still operational while the internet in the area is intact.

He says people are still trying to stay calm amid the bombings. “Yes, we are afraid, but they are even more afraid of us,” Veligorski said, referring to Russian forces.

“People support each other. But I’m afraid for my children and loved ones.”

Hundreds of civilian and Ukrainian soldiers have already been killed, according to the Ukrainian government, which also claims that its forces have killed several thousand Russian soldiers. These numbers are difficult to verify and have not been independently verified by CNBC.

The UN estimates that at least 800,000 Ukrainians have fled the country as refugees. Meanwhile, men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country during martial law, they are obliged to stay and fight.

Zelenski called on every citizen who wants to fight for his country to do so and issue firearms to aspiring civilians. Tens of thousands of people have signed up to join these “territorial defense forces”.

The account manager at Natasha’s art gallery has just joined the Ukrainian army – he is still training, but his team is ready to fight, she said.

Sergei Maidukov, a fellow artist, is a volunteer, supplying medicine and protective equipment to Kyiv’s territorial defense teams – all while still working his normal job as a cover illustrator for Western magazines such as the Guardian and the New Yorker.

“During the day he delivers helmets and vests, and in the evening he illustrates covers for the Guardian,” said Natasha. “I have no words.”

Employees of a local digital marketing agency are adapting their skills to carry out cyber attacks against Russian entities in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. Others have set up a logistics center on the Polish border to help deliver supplies. Psychotherapists in Kyiv volunteer every day to provide free therapy to local defense forces.

Another local company, Interpipe, is a manufacturer that used to supply pipes for utility systems. He now uses them to build anti-tank barriers.

The photos show empty shelves in supermarkets and pharmacies in Ukraine, with long queues outside and along the streets. But people are trying to stay calm, CNBC residents say.

“After all, people are polite, people support each other,” said Natasha, describing the all-encompassing sense of solidarity among the besieged residents.

Ukraine’s military has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds and cryptocurrencies alone, and multinational companies such as investment bank Jefferies and consulting firm McKinsey have pledged donations to support groups in the country. EU governments, meanwhile, say they are sending more weapons to Ukraine, while heavy Western sanctions have severed dozens of companies’ ties with Russia.

However, with each passing day, the situation becomes more desperate as Russian attacks increase and more people die. As of Wednesday, a 40-kilometer convoy of Russian armored vehicles was heading for Kyiv, and strikes on key Ukrainian cities intensified on the seventh day of fighting in the north, east and south.

For so many Ukrainians who remain in the country, the only choice is to resist and fight. “I see the world helping us, sending help in different ways,” Natasha said. “But it is still our land, and above all we must protect it ourselves. And we do it.”