The skies over Barishivka, located 70 km north of Kiev, have never been so clear, even on the longest, hottest days of summer.
At around 3 am this Friday (11), an explosion produced a beam of light that could be seen from tens of kilometers away. “Day turned into night! I was more afraid of the light than the explosion,” said Serguei, as he calmly tried to balance himself on the rubble of what was left of his livelihood, a car wash built 6 years ago in the back of the old movie theater. of the city.
Barishivka is located along the E40 highway, which connects Kiev with Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and the Russian border.
Since the country began preparations to defend itself against an imminent Russian occupation, the Ukrainian army has taken over the old municipal stadium of Barishivka to use it as a base for some troops and military equipment.
Built in the Soviet period, the stadium is located in the center of the city, next to the old cinema and a few hundred meters from residential buildings that stretch over long blocks.
It is suspected that the Russian army, in its campaign to tighten the siege of Kiev, launched a 9K720 Iskander cruise missile at Barishivka in the early hours of Friday (11).
The Iskander is a missile armed with different warheads, including one for cluster bombs and one for high explosive fragmentation. It also has a ground penetrator for breaking through bunkers and an electromagnetic pulse device for anti-radar missions.
In the center of a devastated land, covered by pieces of iron, wood chips, slabs and twisted concrete columns, countless pieces of bricks, remains of the walls and walls of the houses that used to be there, a tree more than 10 meters tall. had its thick torso pierced in several places and split in half. Leaning over, ready to fall, as if it had been blown away by a hurricane, its roughened shell was dark as if it had been scorched by the heat of something extremely hot.
Inside one of the houses still standing, a group of people had gathered to help Nina, an elderly woman loved by everyone in the neighborhood. A cow milker, she lived alone in the house. “We are here to help Nina, a kind person”, said her friend Helena.
In the space that remained of her friend’s room, Helena slowly dusted the sheets, still neatly folded inside the partially destroyed wardrobe. Lifting wooden slats that had fallen from the ceiling, she carefully piled Nina’s pillows, as well as towels, blankets, pajamas, and a few pieces of clothing on the small single bed where her friend slept.
In the next room, in what was left of the living room, his friends were trying to retrieve the china. Anything that couldn’t be salvaged—shards of glass, pages torn from some books, damaged furniture, even family photos folded into broken frames—was slowly piled up and then carried out of the house.
The resistance of Helena and her friends seems to be something common among those who live (or used to live) in that area. Across the street, families and friends had banded together to immediately rebuild what could be rebuilt.
Two men with a chainsaw were fixing the metal door of a bomb shelter; a group was trying to unblock a garage door, where a car in good condition had been stuck; people were loading groceries in cans from what was a diner into a van; an old man, with a very old tractor, was removing the rubble from the asphalt, raising a cloud of dust that spread haphazardly, with the strong and freezing wind.
There was also a mobilization inside the stadium. A man was trying to fix the engine of a military truck, which was parked next to a tank buried in debris of concrete, iron, wood and glass.
This time, so far as is known, no civilians died in the city. The report could not confirm whether there were deaths among the soldiers stationed at the stadium.
In Kiev, sirens – which warn of the risk of air strikes – continue to sound repeatedly. So far, the city has been spared attacks like the ones that hit Barishivka, less than an hour away. It should not be thought, however, that Moscow is not capable of using weapons as or more destructive than the missile launched on the nearby city against the capital.
Vladimir Putin has made it very clear that he can attack Kiev at any time.
Right now, Russian troops are trying to approach the Ukrainian capital from three fronts.
There are troops advancing from the east, which should soon dominate the city of Brovari. There are Russians coming from the north, who are trying to overcome the defenses of Chernihiv — it is the city where the Russian army would have, according to Ukraine, killed 47 civilians in an attack that hit a residential area. And the troops coming from the west, who were responsible, also according to Kiev, for the death of dozens of civilians in the city of Irpin.
