Embattled residents’ last chance to leave as ‘truce’ offers a terrifying path to safety
Civilians were told they could get out of Irpin from 9am, but trek was arduous amid reports of street fights and shelling
Everyone who fled Irpin yesterday did so expecting to be shot or bombed at any moment. One group even decided to avoid the ceasefire-protected road route out, opting instead to hoist a white flag and walk across the rough open ground.
“We were in that housing block over there,” said one man, pointing to a row of drab Soviet-era blocks about a mile away. “Russian troops came to the street outside, and so we decided it was finally time to leave. They didn’t hurt us, although I don’t think they know about any ceasefire.”
Another man, sporting two black eyes and a broken nose, added: “A Russian bomb hit near my house and I got a brick in my face and bruises all over my body. People who fire guns at civilians’ houses aren’t interested in ceasefires.”
Like thousands of other residents of the embattled Kyiv suburb of Irpin, they had taken what they thought would be their last chance to leave yesterday, amid talk that Russia would observe a ceasefire from 9am.
The escape route out of Irpin, which can only be done on foot, was one that was intimidating for the able-bodied, let alone the blind.
As one man stumbled along, his wide open eyes saw nothing of the dangers around him. His ears though, would have told him everything: thunderous explosions echoing in the background, and the rattle of occasional gunfire. As he finally staggered his way up the riverbank, guided by a female companion, his 84-year-old legs seemed on the verge of buckling altogether.
To escape, first, the evacuees had to make their way through Irpin itself, trying to steer clear of the Russian tanks and troops that are now in almost complete control there.
Then they had to set off down the half-mile road that leads back over a road bridge towards Kyiv. Ukrainian forces dynamited part of the bridge last week to slow the Russian advance, so now one section of it is a mass of broken, twisted metal and concrete.
At that point, evacuees have to clamber down a steep embankment and forge their way across some slippery planks stretched across a fast-flowing, icy river.
“How dare the Russian soldiers behave to our old people and our nation like this?” said the old man’s female companion. “This old man is 84 years old, and completely blind. What kind of people make a man like this have to flee for his life?”
As she steered him back up the embankment and on to the road again, a volunteer appeared with a battered bicycle to lean his arms on. They then steered him towards a set of ambulances, waiting near a goldendomed church on the Kyiv side of the bridge. For most evacuees, the sight of paramedics and the church signals safety. For some, though, it has been the last thing they have seen alive.
Only on Sunday, a Russian mortar shell landed on the road right next to the church, killing a family of four and wounding a Ukrainian soldier who was trying to help them. And the day before that, the road leading along the bridge came under heavy fire, leaving the abandoned cars still left on it burned to a crisp. One grey chassis husk has so many shrapnel holes in that it resembles a giant cheese grater.
Those who evacuated yesterday were supposed to be spared that kind of terror. According to a statement from the Kremlin, a ceasefire was to go into place from 9am Ukrainian time, allowing civilians in cities caught up in fighting to evacuate. The Russian Defence Ministry said it would apply to anyone wishing to leave Kyiv, the southern port city of Mariupol, and the cities of Kharkiv and Sumy.
Elsewhere, in Kyiv’s northwestern edge, Ukrainian servicemen and fleeing residents described ferocious fighting that could soon spread to the capital.
“There is real street fighting now,” a Ukrainian paratrooper lieutenant who agreed to be identified as Stas told AFP in the flashpoint town of Irpin.
Bursts of automatic gunfire and blasts of exploding shells rang out as he spoke on the 12th day of the Russian invasion. “In some places, there is hand-to-hand combat,” said Stas.
“There is a huge column – 200 men, 50 light armoured vehicles, several tanks,” he said of the Russian threat. “We are trying to push them out, but I don’t know if we’ll be fully able to do it. The situation is very unstable.”
Yesterday’s ceasefire plan was seen as an urgent humanitarian measure, given the scale of the fighting nationwide and the accusations that Russian forces have been surrounding cities and indiscriminately shelling civilian areas.
In the south-eastern city of Mariupol, for example, residents have now endured more than six days of near-constant shelling by encircling Russian forces, who have cut off water, power and heating. “We saw bodies everywhere, Russians and Ukrainians,” one family that made it out told the AFP news agency. “We saw that people had been buried in their basements.”
Shops in Mariupol have been looted as residents search for essential goods, and doctors have performed some emergency procedures without them. On Sunday, an evacuation convoy of cars gathered in a central square was forced to disperse when shells landed nearby. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, described it as “murder, deliberate murder”.
In the eastern Kharkiv region, meanwhile, shelling overnight on Sunday killed at least eight people and wrecked residential buildings, medical and education facilities and administrative buildings. Video footage on social media showed entire 12-storey housing blocks more or less destroyed by shelling.
“Russia continues to carry out rocket, bomb and artillery strikes on the cities and settlements of Ukraine,” said a statement from Ukraine’s General Staff. It also accused Russian forces of taking women and children
‘What kind of people make an 84-year-old, blind man have to flee for his life?’
hostage, but gave no details. Ukrainian officials also released a video showing what they said was a Russian fighter jet being shot down over Kharkiv, bathing the sky in orange light.
The Kremlin’s terms for the ceasefire were circulated in a letter on Sunday night, which specified proposed humanitarian corridors.
However, of the four cities mentioned in Russia’s proposal, only Mariupol and the north-east city of Sumy had evacuation routes that led to other parts of Ukraine. The other routes all led directly to Russia or Belarus, a key Russian ally in the war. Kyiv’s government said it feared that anyone taking the routes might end up detained in Russia.
“This is an unacceptable way of opening humanitarian corridors,” said Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, calling for the routes to be subject to international oversight. “Our people will not go from Kyiv to Belarus to then be flown to the Russian Federation.”
Dominik Stillhart, director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said he had been talking to both sides regarding ceasefires “for days”, but there was still no “concrete, actionable and precise”.
Illustrating his point, he said some ICRC staff had tried to get out of Mariupol along an agreed route on Sunday, but soon realised “the road indicated to them was actually mined”.
He added: “That is why it is so important that the two parties have a precise agreement for us then to be able to facilitate it on the ground.”
Further talks were scheduled between the two warring sides later yesterday, despite little hopes of any breakthrough. Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers are also scheduled to meet in Turkey on Thursday.
Meanwhile, in the city of Mykolaiv, 300 miles south of Kyiv, a Ukrainian colonel vowed to reduce invading Russian forces to “fertiliser” as fierce fighting continued.
Colonel Sviatoslav Stetsenko, of the Ukrainian Army’s 59th Brigade, said that despite the Ukrainian army being outnumbered and outgunned, they would fight to the death.
Aged 56, he served with the
Russians in the Soviet military, but said he had no problem now fighting against his former comrades.
“They are now my enemy,” he told The New York Times. “And each one of them who comes here with arms, who comes here as an invader, I will do everything I can to ensure that he remains as fertiliser for our land.”
Gaining Mykolaiv will give the Russians a springboard to the Black Sea port of Odessa and ultimately a “choke hold” on Ukraine’s economy by cutting it off from global shipping.
For three days last week, Russian forces fought to take Mykolaiv, but by Sunday, Ukrainian troops had driven them back and retaken the airport. By yesterday morning, though, Russian forces had resumed their attack.
The governor of the Mykolaiv region is Vitaliy Kim, a Ukrainian of South Korean heritage who has earned comparisons with President Zelensky for his youth and informal manner. He said that Russian forces were surrendering in unexpected numbers and had abandoned so much equipment that he did not have enough military and municipal workers to collect it all. As a result, he said, the two sides were now in a kind of informal stalemate.
“We don’t shoot anymore. They do not shoot,” he said on his Telegram account. “In general, not a fun situation – they seem to be here, but it seems like they are not in the city.”
Col Stetsenko retired from the military in 2010 but decided to re-enlist in 2020 as Ukrainian forces fought a Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine. As the fighting resumed in Mykolaiv on Sunday, he returned to the front line with his men.
“Few expected such strength from our people because, when you haven’t slept for three days, and when you only have one dry ration because the rest burned up, when it’s negative temperature out and there is nothing to warm you, and when you are constantly in the fight, believe me, it is physically very difficult,” he added.
There also continued to be little evidence of Vladimir Putin’s prediction that once Russian troops entered Ukraine and challenged its government, many of its citizens would feel free to reveal their prorussian tendencies. Footage on social media yesterday showed Ukrainian civilians sticking flags over pieces of captured material. And in the city of Kherson, which is now in Russian hands, a video emerged of a protest in which thousands of flag-waving Ukrainians faced down a group of Russians. The troops backed away, apparently reluctant to use force.
The war is very far from over though, and for many in Kyiv, the Russian encroachment into Irpin is an ominous sign. Andrew Shirimira, an import-export agent, lives in a block of flats overlooking Irpin from the Kyiv side, from where he has had a grandstand view of the invasion over the past fortnight. Sounds of war that were once more distant are now coming closer.
“On the first couple of days I saw Russian helicopters attacking, and now I can hear the shelling in Irpin,” he said. “At that time, I felt scared and also just helpless. But we have to remember that we Ukrainians are far more interested in winning this war than the ordinary Russian soldiers, who are just following orders.”