“Horror, everything is on fire, people are being shot” in the suburbs of Kyiv

Belogorodsky bridge, fifteen kilometers northwest of Kyiv, at first glance, does not represent anything special. It is not very long – forty meters – and not very wide – two lanes – and not very beautiful – dirty concrete. It overlooks the small river Irpin, the waves of which are hard to guess. But the Belogorodsky bridge has a double feature: it is mined and the last to connect the Ukrainian capital with the west of the country. “The principle is simple. If Russian tanks and armored vehicles enter the battle, we will blow them up,” explains 46-year-old Alexis.

A round belly and a pleasant smile, Aleksey, who sold cars before the war, is one of the ten fighters of the territorial troops stationed on the bridge, on the Kiev side. They have brand new Kalashnikovs and Molotov cocktails on the embankment. They haven’t been attacked yet, but they expect it. Russian forces have made progress in the region over the past three days. “If you had come last night, you would have seen all the explosions, the fighting did not stop,” he says. On this Monday morning, only artillery fire regularly slams. Russian soldiers ten kilometers away, in the village of Shevchenkov. A little further north they came to the outskirts of the capital.

“The hottest sector in the region”

A few kilometers from the bridge, in the center of Belogorodka, anxious-faced men wait in a small corridor to sign up for the territorial forces. At the offices and their computer, they are received in turn by the soldiers who replaced the municipal agents. Nicola, 43, is their leader. Dressed in civilian clothes, with a revolver on his hip, he is the military leader of the region, which stretches from Gostomel airport to the cities of Bucha and Irpin, bordering the capital. “This sector is the hottest in the Kiev region,” he says.

Residents were evacuated outside the city of Irpen, north of Kyiv, on March 7. (Rafael Yagobzadeh/Liberation)

From the first day of the invasion, February 24, the forces of Moscow made its conquest their main goal. If successful, they can launch an assault on the capital from the northwest or reach its outskirts to besiege it along with other forces advancing from the north and east of the country. In both cases, the main route of exile for the Kievans who want to get to Poland or cities in the west, temporarily spared by the bombardments, will be cut off.

From dawn on February 24, Russian helicopters dropped soldiers near Gostomel Airport, also known as Antonov, to make it a base for transport planes to land. Ukrainian special forces pushed them back several times. They retreated in the middle of last week. “The Russians are in Gostomel,” Nikola explains. They hide in houses, their tanks are next to them. They kill the men who are left behind and steal everything they can, food, money, jewelry. They won’t even let us take away the wounded and the dead.” Mayor Yuri Ilyich Prilipko was killed while distributing humanitarian aid on Monday, according to a statement by local authorities.

“There is no safe way to escape”

The Russian military also captured the city of Bucha, less than five kilometers to the south. It was in this city, famous in Soviet times for its sanatoriums, that they suffered a major setback on February 27: about fifteen armored vehicles that fought on the station street were destroyed by Ukrainian army drone strikes, leaving only smoldering corpses, corpses and fleeing soldiers. But they returned with tanks and won. Since then, the fighting has been concentrated in the nearby city of Irpin, separated from the capital by a destroyed bridge. “Irpen is still holding out, our fighters are fighting there,” says Nikola.

In the small office of the Belogorodka city hall, 38-year-old Oksana has a closed face, her features are hidden in a castle to hide her sadness. As a reservist, she was called up and sent to the front in the first hours of the war. She left her four children, aged 4 to 17, with their parents at her home in Bucha, rue de la Gare. She hadn’t heard from her since the end of last week. “Phones don’t work anymore. I know they don’t have electricity and gas. They had food for a week, and they stayed there for nine days.”

A little girl was evacuated on a bus leaving the city of Irpen, north of Kyiv, March 7. (Rafael Yagobzadeh/Liberation)

The soldier shows a video on his phone: a Russian tank and a soldier walking next to it. “They are in the school yard, the same one where my youngest son goes. The Russians are shooting at civilians, whether on foot or in cars. The Red Cross is not allowed into the city. My children have no safe escape route.” She picks up her phone and wants to show another video dated January 31st, her 4 year old son’s birthday. He unwraps his gift, some sort of Styrofoam axe, laughing. She breaks down and cries quietly.

“We have lost everything”

In Kyiv, on the western outskirts of the city, exhausted faces, pale but relieved, emerge from the road through the woods. They come from Irpen after days and nights spent in cellars or cellars. Families with babies, older people, young women, less often single men. Sometimes they pull suitcases on wheels, but often they only have a few small bags. Ambulances or cars pick up the wounded, like this man, his left cheek and arm covered in hastily made bandages, stained with blood. Volunteers distribute coffee and bottled water.

On Monday, civilians tried to leave Irpen, where the fighting has been concentrated in recent days. “This sector is the hottest in the region,” the Ukrainian soldier said. (Rafael Yagobzadeh/Liberation)

38-year-old Natasha, her 50-year-old husband Mikhail and 14-year-old daughter Yana rest at the foot of a construction beam. “It’s terrible there. Everything is on fire, people are being shot in the streets,” says Natasha. She would have tried to escape earlier, but Mikhail was hospitalized. They had met a few hours before. He stands next to the bags they may have taken, has a sallow face, and wears pajama bottoms and slippers. Their house in Irpin was bombed, the roof collapsed and the windows were broken. “We lost everything, everything we worked for, but we are still alive,” says Natasha. Artillery strikes echo through the forest, and a young girl jumps up and covers her face with her hands.