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People are trying desperately to get to safety - in the middle of the heavy bombardment.
The small town of Irpin has been under heavy attack for days.
The town is about 27 kilometers north-west of Kyiv and has about 60,000 inhabitants.
Finally, the residents sought shelter under this bridge, which was blown up by the Ukrainian military to make the Russian invasion more difficult.
The SPIEGEL team made it to this checkpoint in the Novobilychi district, about halfway between Kyiv and Irpin.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
“Two days ago, after a brief check, we turned behind us at this checkpoint and were able to drive the five kilometers through the forest to the bridge in front of Irpin, the very suburb of Kiev that had been difficult for days where the Russian army has now entered and today it is impossible to drive past this checkpoint even through the forest because the forest itself is under fire.«
A team of journalists came under fire during the attempt.
Irpin is attacked from the air with rockets and artillery.
Trying to get civilians out of the city is proving extremely difficult.
As here in Kyiv, the Russian armed forces are increasing the military pressure.
Not only on Kyiv, but again around Kharkiv in the east and Mykolaiv in the south.
The humanitarian situation is becoming more precarious every day.
The commander of the local territorial forces tells the SPIEGEL team that nobody can get out of the town of Butscha behind Irpin.
Russian soldiers - and, he says, Chechen fighters - have already entered the towns - leaving nothing but devastation in their wake.
Stadtwerke buses drive up to the checkpoint.
They're supposed to take in those who still make it out of the encircled city.
Actually, a humanitarian corridor should be set up in front of the Irpin Bridge.
Christoph Reuter, DER SPIEGEL
»This humanitarian corridor now looks like this: drivers and soldiers drive through the forest in minibuses, at absolute risk to their lives, as far as they can come from below and collect the people and then leave them in a zigzag course.
Up here, where it's still reasonably safe and they're distributed on public utility buses that take them somewhere."
Evacuation campaigns had also failed in other cities in the country - due to targeted attacks on evacuation buses and collection points like this one.
