The center of Kiev is calm, with the streets empty and silent, like big cities are on a holiday.
It seems that people do not go out into the streets because of the cold of this early spring in Ukraine, not because of the fear of war that, in the most central regions of the capital, only reveals itself in the form of control barriers that limit or prevent the transit of cars or in plastic bags full of sand, all still very clean — even shiny — that protect windows in public buildings.
The explosions earlier this morning in Kiev neighborhoods halfway to Irpin, however, prove that fear is keeping those who remain in the city hidden inside their homes.
At 5 am on Tuesday (15), three large Russian bombings hit the capital. Since then, both the city’s sirens that indicate the danger of attacks and the cell phone app that issues an alert equal to the sound of sirens have sounded 23 times by early afternoon, Ukrainian time, morning in Brazil.
The impact of one of the projectiles, which hit a garden in front of a building in a residential complex, opened a crater five meters in diameter and three meters deep. The facade of the building was completely destroyed, and firefighters used trucks with ladders to reach the upper floors, in flames.
Thus, many civilians, mainly elderly people, were rescued. On the other hand, the charred body of an unidentified person was found next to a playground a few meters from the building and taken to the city mortuary. The commander of the rescue operation, Andrei Kovalenko, said the chance of finding more victims once firefighters had accessed the building and apartments was certain.
Outside, a lady, crying, was trying to free herself from the arms of a man who, without success, was trying to stop her from approaching the firefighters. Sometimes talking, sometimes attacking the journalists who followed her, she tried to convince the rescuers to save members of her family, pointing to the right corner of the most destroyed face of the building, where almost all the windows were covered by fire.
A girl, standing on pieces of glass in the windows of the building next door, was also crying. With no one to comfort her, she covered her mouth with her hand and stared into the flames, following the pieces of metal that dangerously detached from the rubble and fell, nearly hitting the rescuers to the ground.
In contrast to the heat given off by the fire, the water used to put out the fire turned to ice on the bare branches of the trees around the building. The branches made it difficult for the cranes to move, and a team of firefighters had to cut down the trees so that the residents could be rescued.
A woman, unable to walk, dressed in an orange robe and velvet slippers, was carried like a doll by a man who took her to an ambulance, where she was rescued and comforted by paramedics who were present at the scene.
With Tuesday’s bombings, the region near the center of Kiev suffered at least five major attacks, in actions that follow the same pattern: with high destructive power, they hit civilian areas without military or strategic importance for the advance of Russian troops towards to the center of the capital.
The war is increasingly intense in the Ukrainian capital, and the message that Putin is trying to convey to the Ukrainian government is very clear and precise: surrender or you will all die.
