David Francis Blanc, a contributing writer with DollarCollapse, was visiting Ukraine when the fighting started. Here’s an account of life in Kyiv so far:
I was awake and in Kyiv when the Russians attacked Ukraine. I didn’t hear the rockets but I got messages on my phone.
After making sure that the people closest to me were ok, there were some basic questions about who should be evacuated and where exactly they should go. Some people wanted to go to a nearby village to avoid rockets. That was ruled out because we knew that if the Russian army advanced on Kyiv, it would be the most fortified city and the safest city from ground forces and artillery. That later turned out to be true because the surrounding suburbs of Kyiv were subjected to heavy fighting and shelling in Kyiv suburb-cities like Bucha, Brovary, and Irpin.
I believe it was Carl von Clausewitz who coined the term “the fog of war”. That was definitely what I experienced during the first couple of days of the war. It was very hard to get accurate news about what was actually happening and whether or not Kyiv was in danger. The people I was with needed accurate information so they could plan their escape.
On the second day, I could hear the rockets myself. The people I was with did not feel comfortable spending another night in their apartment, so they spent the night in the metro to use it as a bomb shelter. Even though I felt safe in the other apartment where I was sleeping, the people I was with had a one-year-old with them, so I accompanied them to the metro for the night.
Spending a night in the metro is dirty and doing that with a one-year-old in February is exhausting, as myself and two other people had to take turns holding and rocking the baby. Beautiful wool blankets were made dirty on the metro floor so that people could have a place to sit and do baby stuff. Watching mothers change diapers in public in a metro used as a bomb shelter while air raid sirens are continuously sounding is an experience I will never forget.
By then, there had been curfews, and it had been illegal to leave the metro until morning, even if we had wanted to. At that point, just before curfew had ended, Bloomberg announced that Kyiv would fall in a couple of hours. That turned out to be wrong just the Biden administration’s prediction that Kyiv would fall within 72 hours had eventually been proven wrong. In my heart, I knew that neither Kyiv nor Ukraine would fall so easily. I know that ultimately, Kyiv will win this war.
I put the people I was within a car to Romania and returned to my flat. They later told me that they had a long, hard, and dangerous journey on the road. The bordering city they used to cross over into Romania in Chernivtsi, and even there they had to spend the night in a bomb shelter before safely crossing the border into NATO territory.
I spent a week in my apartment getting used to a new normal. Most stores were closed, but it was still possible to buy food, and, more rarely, pharmaceuticals. Sometimes the lines were ridiculously long. I still have electricity and internet, for now.
In addition to rockets, I have been able to hear the distinct sound of artillery. I studied the artillery that was being used in this war and knew that the Russian artillery was not yet within a close enough range of Kyiv to be a threat to me, but I could still hear the artillery being used in the fighting that was taking place in the suburbs. One night, while walking home, I saw anti-aircraft fire light up the night sky.
I am lucky in that I live on the first floor of a building that is unlikely to be a target for rocket attacks. Regardless, I contacted some ex-military buddies to figure out how to make my bathroom rocket-resistant.
My block now has anti-tank structures, hedgehogs, that are used to force vehicles to drive in an S-pattern in order to make incoming tanks a slow and easy target. Some of my neighbors have successfully joined the Territorial Defense Force (Ukraine’s Army Reserve) and have received some type of rifle, usually a variant of Kalashnikov, like the AK-74. Most have not because the number of men who want to fight far exceeds the number of weapons available. Those who cannot get rifles prepare Molotov cocktails.
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