From their trenches and barricades erected in a few days, the inhabitants of the Ukrainian capital say on Monday they are ready to “teach the lesson” of their lives to the enemy.
An old Lada car, two garbage cans, a wardrobe: the inhabitants take everything that is at hand to build makeshift barricades, hoping to stop the advance of Russian tanks.
“We will receive them with Molotov cocktails and bullets to the head, that is how we will receive them,” Viktor Rudnichenko, a bank employee, says under one of those notices.
“The only flowers they will receive from us will be for their graves,” adds this 30-year-old man, who went out for supplies when the curfew was lifted at 08:00 on Monday.
This short pause, thanks to the ongoing negotiations between the two countries on the Belarusian border, gives the inhabitants of Kiev time, after the shock of the first offensives against their city, to organize their defense.
The capital acquired in just four days reflections of a war zone.
“Don’t go to the meadow,” a young man tells bystanders as the air raid alert begins to sound. “There could be explosives! We heard that the Russians hide mines under the grass,” explains Oleksiy Vasilenko.
At checkpoints, where any vehicle is searched, people greet each other with “Slava Ukraina!” (Long live Ukraine) to which one responds “To the heroes of Ukraine!”, a patriotic formula that now serves as a safe-conduct. Another driver adds “Death to Muscovites!” and reboot quickly.
Battalions of Ukrainian soldiers, busy repulsing the Russian offensive at the gates of Kiev, are few in the capital. But you do see “territorial defense” volunteers and armed civilians.
Among the civilian groups, the Revolutionary Action group stands out, an anarchist movement that seeks to combat the Russian invasion with weapons. In addition, strongly equipped anti-fascist movements are also observed, prepared for the defense.
anti-fascist militia in Kiev.jpg
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Arriving by bus, dozens of them have just been called to install a defense point in the Obolon neighborhood, in the north of Kiev, which has already been attacked by the Russians.
Beneath the residential towers built in the Soviet era, a unit of uniformed volunteers work and place their materials in a children’s play area.
Along the sidewalk, several deep trenches two meters deep were dug. At the entrance to the device, a public works vehicle lifts and places cement blocks.
Yuri Gibalyuk, 50, a veterinarian, joined the fighting with his brother and says that Ukraine has “many resistance” to repel Vladimir Putin’s soldiers. “If it is necessary for me to kill 100, I will do it,” says this volunteer with a long gray beard, sporting his kalashnikov.
Three volunteers in military uniforms and masks place a camouflage canvas on a tank.
Another team is kneeling in front of boxes full of beer bottles. Inside them, “a third of diesel, two thirds of gasoline”, a cloth fuse “and boom!” Says the volunteer dedicated to the preparation of Molotov cocktails.
Volunteers check their equipment, reload their weapons, and those who have adjust their bulletproof vests.
Among them, Andrei Ivanyuk, who already has the synthetic language and the threatening look of the fighter. The successful actor and filmmaker from Kiev, who managed to get his wife and son to safety in the west before returning to Kiev to fight, says the Russians will get “the lesson of a lifetime from him.”
“Russia is not at home here, it never was,” says this man from the bottom of a trench, promising that “our land will be his grave.”
Source: Ambito
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