Crying for Ukraine
I woke up, saw the news of air raid sirens over Kyiv, cried my eyes out for half and hour, and then started to report on what is happening. The worst fears have come true.
I went to bed late last night and it was clear then the Russian army would move in during the night. I woke up around 6am Vienna time to air raid sirens going in Kyiv and Russian air attacks on Ukraine across the country: military bases, airports, naval bases.
Russian troops and equipment have reportedly crossed into Ukraine at four different border crossings: Chernihiv, Sumy, Luhansk, Kharkiv. Russia is attacking from by air. People in Kyiv and Kharkiv have taken cover in Metro stations, are queuing for petrol, buying up food, running to bank machines, and the roads heading west are packed. One woman in Donetsk cynically posted this morning “Well, Ukraine, welcome to our world. We had war for eight years. It only just came to you.”
I think it’s fair to say we are all in a state of shock still, so I will simply share with you what I tweeted out this morning, to give you an idea of what has happened so far.
I unrolled here my thread of video and photo images from Telegram and TikTok users from this morning. Russia bombed Kyiv’s Boryspil main commercial airport and military airports around the country. Russia bombed a naval base in Odesa. Russia hit an army barracks in Kyiv. Russia hit a residential area on the outskirts of Kharkiv. There are reportedly little green men already on the streets of Kharkiv. Air raid sirens were even heard as far west as Lviv. The Russian army is advancing through LNR, taking village after village. There is no one left, remember, who lives there? Mostly pensioners. They have been living through years of war already.
The entire thread here:
So Putin has gone completely psycho. He has completely lost his mind. And he has the Belarus army and Lukashenko helping him.
So, American intelligence was right. When one amasses 190,000 troops, it isn’t just for exercises. Putin has lost it, and no one is apparently capable of doing anything about it. His so-called inner circle of co-criminals must be paralysed. I cannot imagine the Russian public support this madness. I still don’t understand how they convinced Russian pilots to drop bombs on Ukraine.
None of us who have been writing about the for months wanted to be right. We all wanted to be wrong. No sane person wants war, anywhere, ever.
I’m going to go back to following the news for you all now. Just in: reports of fire from the Belarus border near Slavutych. This is just to the east of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, where I was on Feb 8. There was also just an explosion in Odesa, per Telegram reports.
As we think about Ukraine and its people and pray for them (if you believe in that sort of thing), here are links to my recent writing from magical Kyiv in early February.
Yanukovich’s dacha and Putin’s white table
Ukraine 20th century history lessons
For more news and updates, follow me on Twitter. I had a long cry and now I am ready to do whatever I can to get information out to the world so that we can all work to bring peace as soon as possible and and end to Putin’s terror of his own country and now his neighbours.