‘Welcome to hell, Russians’
The blunt message is scrawled across a banner on a bridge over the entry road to Kryvyi Rih, the mining city whose most famous son, once a stand-up comedian, now leads his country in war. ‘‘Welcome to hell, Russian occupant’’, it says.
As they toil in preparation for street battles with the Russian troops pushing north, erecting barricades and digging trenches and tank traps, every man and woman here expresses their respect for President Volodymyr Zelensky and their readiness to fight for him.
There is only one route for the Russians towards the large industrial city of Dnipro. It runs straight through Kryvyi Rih. To the south, Russian forces have captured Kherson. To the east, they have seized Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Now the inhabitants of the city where Zelensky was born and brought up are girded for a fight. They want their president to know that they will not be found lacking.
‘‘He is a brave fighter who chose to stand among his people and unite them,’’ said the city’s head of military administration, Aleksandr Vilkul, once a political rival of Zelensky, whom he has known since they were students at the local university.
‘‘He has inspired us. He should know that his city is ready to fight.’’
Even the gravedigger where Zelensky’s grandparents are buried – in a cemetery on the city’s west side, beside one of the main axis routes of the Russian advance – repeated the refrain.
‘‘I’m ready to chop and burn
the Russian invaders,’’ said Oleg, 43, as he pointed to where Zelensky’s grandfather, Semyon Ivanovych Zelensky, a Red Army soldier who fought as a member of the Soviet 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division against the Nazis in the World War II, lay beside his wife. ‘‘Other presidents would have run away or surrendered by now. Not Zelensky. We will not let him down.’’
The war has already reached Kryvyi Rih. On the first day of the invasion missiles, struck two military installations in the city,
which was founded by Cossacks in the 18th century and has spread along its iron ore seams.
An attempt a day later by Russian units to land an Il-76 transport aircraft loaded with paratroopers at the airport was thwarted when the runway was blocked with tanks. Then, three days ago, a huge armoured column pushing towards the city was driven back after twice being attacked by missiles fired from Ukrainian helicopters.
Now, as invading units consolidate their captured territory along the coast and
again move north, Kryvyi Rih officials are sure that their city is the next objective.
Vilkul’s battle plan to defend Zelensky’s birthplace is simple. Using the thousands of civil volunteers and territorial defence forces that have rallied to the president’s call to arms, he has transformed the streets into segmented lines of defence.
Ukrainian troops and antitank weaponry protect its northern and southern approaches, while armed civilians are ready for street fighting behind barricades of sandbags and iron ‘‘hedgehogs’’.
‘‘We’ve been stockpiling food, ammunition and weapons,’’ Vilkul said. ‘‘We won’t retreat. We’ll stand and fight.’’
Zelensky was born to Jewish parents in 1978, the son of a professor and an engineer, and studied law at the city’s university. Many of his classmates are on the barricades.
‘‘He was a natural leader within his group at university, energetic and great at organising,’’ said Vadim, a 43-year-old volunteer who was leading workers pulling iron hedgehogs into position at a street junction. ‘‘We used to hang out as students and swap jokes.
‘‘I was amazed when he went into politics and, like anyone you’ve been to school with who ends up in politics, I was dubious as to how he would do. But since the invasion, he has inspired every one of us in this city. He’s our man.’’
Loyalty for the president runs especially deep in the Kvartal 95 (Quarter 95) housing complex, where he lived as a child and which later gave its name to his comedy troupe and first film production company. Zelensky’s parents still own an apartment there, though they have been whisked away by security forces to a secret location.
‘‘He’s a cool guy,’’ said Yulia, 37, a Kvartal 95 resident whose family shared holidays with two of Zelensky’s principal friends and collaborators, Sergei and Boris Shefir, in his days as a comedian.
‘‘I always thought of him foremost as a comedian rather than a politician, but all that has changed since the Russian invasion. We’re very proud of him.’’