The driver of a blue van full of people was desperately trying to close the door. Then I watched as a frantic woman stopped him from leaving – handing a newborn girl to one of the passengers.
After the vehicle left, the middle-aged woman, crying softly, told me that her sister was on board, taking the last bus to Uman, a city in the center of the city. Ukrainewhere she would join their parents.
So why not go? “Why should I leave? If they start bombing cities, they will bomb them all. It’s not safe there, but at least it will be with the family.
The heartbreaking scene was eerily reminiscent of flickering footage from the early days of World War II.
I found myself in crowds of desperate people clutching bags, suitcases, pets, and the hands of their partners as they tried to escape an advancing army invading their country from three sides.
Congestion is seen as people leave the city of Kiev, Ukraine, on Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine
To make matters worse, I later saw footage from a video surveillance camera showing the deadly blow of Vladimir Putin’s armed forces in Uman – the destination for this bus – when a rocket tore apart a 39-year-old cyclist and wounded five others.
It was just one desperate story among many I came across yesterday on the streets of Kiev, the capital of a country facing the tragedy of our time, as a malevolent dictator unleashes the infernal power of his massive military machine to crush its desire for democracy.
My day started about five hours earlier – when military targets outside Kiev were targeted by missile strikes shortly after 5 am.
I heard a loud bang in the distance. I realized that the war had indeed begun – and Putin was carrying out his crazy threat.
I found my Ukrainian colleague and photographer Kate Baklitskaya looking out the window on the balcony. ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked. – It began.
These were two spiritual words I heard many times yesterday when the fears of millions of Ukrainians became the most horrific reality with an attack on their land, which was brutally announced by rockets and shells falling on at least ten cities.
My early morning shock was shared by countless others in this city on the Dnieper River, the capital of a land facing the tragedy of our time.
A woman is waiting for a train trying to leave the Ukrainian capital on Thursday after major explosions were heard in Kiev, Kharkiv and Odessa before dawn.
A quick look at the social media on my phone showed me that a military airport near Kiev had been hit – where a young mother named Natsa also heard the rocket fire before dawn.
She told me what she looked like outside her home in Vasilkov, a city 25 miles from Kiev – and to her horror saw the nearby Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter base being hit by shells.
“I heard it and saw it through the window,” she said. “So I packed my things, packed my son’s clothes and we left. I’m not panicking, I just want my child to be safe.
I met 28-year-old Nasya, standing with her ten-year-old son Vanya in bus queues with thousands of other fearsome Ukrainians.
“I leave everything behind – my home, my job. None of this matters when my son is in danger. That was the only thought that came to my mind when I woke up to the sound of shelling today. I knew right away that we had to get as far as we could.
The nation has acknowledged that it has not prepared for this catastrophe despite the build-up of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders.
“Whenever I heard bad news, I always thought it sounded as unrealistic as a nightmare. I couldn’t believe that something like this would happen.
“I still hope that I will just wake up and everything will be normal, that life will be fine.”
But things look far from good.
My colleague Kate and I left the apartment we are renting in the center of Kiev shortly after 7 am.
A bearded man with a sleeping roll hanging on his red backpack followed us down the stairs and told us to take care.
People hug as a woman with a suitcase passes in front of a metro station in Kiev on the morning of February 24
Vitaly was too hasty to speak correctly, but said: “I go to my elderly parents, who live on the outskirts of the city, because they are very nervous. I have a small child. Yesterday we went to kindergarten, but today is a war. It started.
On the other side of the yard, a middle-aged couple with their son were also leaving with suitcases. The man opened the car door, then shouted back at his wife to ask her why she was so late.
“I can’t find the keys,” she shouted back. A brief outburst of panic. Then howls of sirens all over the city.
Still, the atmosphere seemed calm in our local cafe when we went to buy croissants – and some people obviously seemed determined not to ruin their lives.
This showed a surreal eavesdropping conversation between the staff at the counter. One woman, whose daughter worked in a beauty salon, said: “We woke up to the sound of shelling and my daughter started calling her clients to cancel appointments. But one girl refused to cancel. She kept saying, “What’s up? I have to do my nails.
Roads seemed so quiet after the imposition of martial law by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the exception of thunder traffic outside one of the cities, which was congested with people fleeing to join their families.
“It’s like the first days of the pandemic,” said my colleague Kate.
Inevitably, despite the early hour, queues began to form in front of ATMs, gas stations, supermarkets, and later in pharmacies.
“We are at an age when medicines are as important as food,” said the 81-year-old, who is waiting with 15 others. “But we are not afraid because we were born during World War II.”
Social media was filled with photos of shell strikes, including a battered military building and a torn pavilion on the outskirts of the city, with the wreckage of a destroyed drone smoking on a nearby street.
A woman with a suitcase and a closed basket checks her phone at a Kiev metro station on Thursday after air sirens sounded in central Kiev
A friend of Kate posted on Facebook details of the beginning of her day, which began with her young children, asking why they were not awakened for school.
– Is there a holiday? They asked excitedly. “No, dear, the war has begun,” their mother replied.
Such chilling words are the ones that no child should hear. Yet in this country of 44 million people, the innocence of too many children has been torn apart by the unique grotesque barbarism of war.
We returned for half an hour to the station, where there were scenes of chaos, with police guarding the entrance to the station, very late trains and scenes of despair at the neighboring bus station.
People told me about their frustrated efforts to escape, with canceled flights, closed ticket offices, and the immediate emergence of war profits.
“We have to run away,” said Tatiana, 32, who was with her husband and two young daughters.
The family – based in Poland and visiting their parents in Ukraine – was already at the airport only to find that their flights home had been canceled.
After hearing the disgusting sound of bombing, they jumped into a taxi to the train station – but found armed police banning anyone from entering without pre-booked tickets.
However, there do not seem to be any departing trains – only arriving. Later at the station I saw queues of people trying to return tickets from canceled trips.
A woman holds her child in her arms while sitting at the Polish-Ukrainian border in Medica
Unable to get money from ATMs that were empty, Tatiana’s family found scandals offering scandalous prices and minibus drivers raising prices to charge 2,000 euros – equivalent to the average five-month income in Ukraine – for a ticket to Lviv, a city near Poland in the western part of the country.
“How is this even possible?” We are a family of four. We don’t have that kind of money, ‘said Tatiana desperately.
‘It’s awful. My daughters are so tired. So we spent the whole night. This is a war and we cannot escape – and even if we do, my parents are still in Ukraine. But what can I do? How can I help them?
Another man explained that he worked for a travel company touring Europe and that his company had lent him three evacuation buses to Lviv. Among his passengers were a woman with her daughter, grandchildren and two Yorkshire Terrier dogs.
Stas Mukhin, a drama student, said he could not buy tickets to reach his parents in the Dnieper, taking only personal files and a laptop with him.
He said: “I do not want to die at the age of 20. I am afraid that many people will be killed. I thought the information about the Russian invasion was spreading to scare people. But now it has happened and I am trying to escape.
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion and now mayor of Kiev, posted on social media a few hours later that the city was building “protective structures” on key roads to the city, so “entry can be difficult.” .
Returning to the city center, we stopped at a local cafe.
There were a handful of customers, including two 18-year-old students, who told me they had bought their first bus ticket out of town and were waiting to leave.
The heartbreaking scenes were compared to the first days of World War II. Pictured: People waiting in the subway in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, on Thursday night
A fellow journalist called me to tell me that he had encountered a drunken group of vigilantes armed with weapons – probably the unfortunate result of a presidential order to hand over weapons to civilians, issued earlier in the day “for the defense of the country”.
There was also a strange warning from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, which told citizens not to wear red so as not to be attacked. Shortly after 3 pm, sirens sounded over the city again, urging people to take shelter. Numerous explosions were heard.
There have been reports that Russian helicopters have taken over Antonov International Airport in Hostomel, 21 miles from the city, and that their tanks are just six miles north of Kiev – although last night Ukraine claimed to have taken over Hostomel Airport.
A few hours later came alarming speculation from credible sources on social media that 18 paratroopers were heading for Kiev.
Still, in front of my window, things seemed eerily calm with a few people walking down the street, including a man holding his young child’s hand as he passed some swings.
However, they all seemed glued to their phones in a nation under a savage siege.
A young man I met in a melee at the bus station was begging for help from the world amid the unfolding tragedy and terror facing his nation. “I try not to panic, but it’s hard,” he said. I don’t know what will happen.
Unfortunately, no one knows what will happen to Kiev and Ukraine.
But as I walked the empty streets in the descending darkness, it was impossible not to feel the pain of these people, suddenly immersed in terror and anguish amid the terrible ferocity of war.