"Sheer Horror" - What's going on in Ukraine?

Created: 2022-02-25Updated: 2022-02-25 9:28 PM

Blood is seen in the snow next to a wrecked Russian military vehicle on the outskirts of Kharkiv.

© Vadim Ghirda/AP/dpa

For the second day in a row, Kremlin chief Putin has unleashed unprecedented brutality on Ukraine, Russia's brother nation.

What's going on in the country suddenly at war?

KIEV - The Russian tanks set in motion by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin are rolling through Ukraine and driving tens of thousands to flee.

After occupying the radioactively contaminated Chernobyl zone, the soldiers of the military superpower also reached the capital Kiev on Friday.

In the city of over a million inhabitants, the day begins comparatively quietly for many after a sleepless night and repeated explosions.

Many people go to work.

But when it became known that the Russian soldiers were marching in, panic broke out, as a reporter from the German Press Agency reported.

Many people go to a metro station that serves as a bunker.

They are looking for protection, only have the bare essentials with them, some dogs or cats.

Armed men can also be seen.

Nobody knows what's coming.

The only thing that is clear is that with every siren, with every audible bang, with every explosion, the fear becomes more unbearable.

Officials will start issuing guns and ammunition at three points in the city.

People pounce on it.

Selenskyj reports via video

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sometimes in a T-shirt, sometimes in a military-style pullover, repeatedly spoke up via video clip from a safe position, criticizing the West for leaving Ukraine alone and not coming to help.

And in the raspy voice of a former actor, he calls on his compatriots to defend their country.

The Ministry of Defense advises the people of Kiev to prepare so-called Molotov cocktails - incendiary devices - for battle.

They are supposed to report sightings of Russian military technology.

The social networks are full of pictures of rolling tanks.

The security situation in the city with the once 2.8 million people, which has been swept empty, is intensifying by the hour.

Those who can flee for fear of being caught between the fronts in possible street fighting between Ukrainians and Russians.

At the same time, Zelenskyy reached out to Russia again and offered Putin peace talks for the second time.

This time he is proposing neutrality for Ukraine, i.e. renouncing the country's entry into NATO, which Russia is opposed to.

A good step, Putin agrees, as the Kremlin announced late in the afternoon.

Russia pushes "denazification" before

The Kremlin chief has always justified the start of the unprecedented military operation by saying that he wanted to "disarm" Ukraine, which had been heavily armed by the United States and other NATO members for years.

And he emphasizes that Russia is not interested in occupying the country or Kiev, but in "denazification".

The Russian leadership is convinced that anti-Russian neo-Nazis prepared to use violence have nested in the Ukrainian leadership, sitting at the control centers and using someone like Zelenskyj, the comedian who has also long been popular in Russia, only as a nice face.

Putin says every name of the anti-Russian forces is known.

He wants to destroy them - and on Thursday in Moscow's Security Council he even calls on the Ukrainian army to take power in order to get rid of these "terrorists".

The Right Sector forces, which have been active since 2014, are said to be responsible for the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Putin has now recognized the Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.

From Moscow's point of view, these areas are lost for Kiev.

It is unclear what will happen to the rest of the country.

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What is certain, however, is that an occupying power of Russia would have to reckon with great resistance from the Ukrainian population, with constant terrorist attacks and with a permanent source of conflict.

The damage and pain for the often family-related people of Ukraine and Russia is already immeasurable.

Many people across Ukraine are now experiencing violence and fear like those in Donbass, where Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian insurgents have been fighting for eight years.

"You just want to get away"

"It's indescribable, this feeling when you hear rockets whistling for the first time," says Marichka Kormuschkina from Kiev on the phone to the German Press Agency.

"In addition to this thunder, the helicopters - it's sheer horror, you just want to get away." Kormushkina actually lives in the north of Kiev, in a high-rise building on the 24th floor.

"But the way to the basement is just too far, down as up," says the Ukrainian to the German Press Agency.

She and her adult daughter stayed with relatives in the west of the city in a private house.

People sleep in a subway station in Kiev that is being used as an air raid shelter.

© Emilio Morenatti/AP/dpa

Several male acquaintances had enlisted in the army - a friend's husband, her daughter's friend's father, a relative who was in the police force.

"They want to defend their country," she says.

She too will stay in the country.

"We'll hold on."

Night in the air raid shelter

Evgeniya Andreevna spent the night with her family in an air raid shelter in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

"More and more people came the longer the night lasted," she says via Whatsapp.

"Everyone came with their pets." She has neither been able to sleep nor eat a bite since Russia attacked.

A family sits in a Kiev subway station that is being used as an air raid shelter.

© Emilio Morenatti/AP/dpa

The people around her are all like sleepwalkers who can't come to themselves - or don't want to, given what happened.

"But we are proud of our armed forces and support them where we can, thank them for their protection," the 34-year-old continues.

No one even tries to guess what may come next.

"We're all frozen."

The 25-year-old employee Julia Mukhina in Kharkiv said on Facebook Messenger that she was sitting in a subway station in the north of the city.

"The city has been under fire for two hours." The overall mood is eerie.

"There are long queues in front of supermarkets and shops, in some places the petrol ran out." dpa