When everything seems over, months later The Ukrainian army managed to foil their plans. Kremlin take the capital and decapitate your government, Kyiv walking on the wire again. constants Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure when the first frosts of autumn appeared on the calendar, they imposed a strict diet of kilowatts on the population. deployment 9,000 Russian soldiers in the neighbor Belarus fueling speculation that it will reopen. new facade in the north. And some drones that sound like a seized motorcycle and fly as high as the best kites don’t stop wreaking havoc. None of this will be enough for the city to surrender, but anxiety returns to take over its peopleit was as if a rage of matryoshkas clicked in the mass stomach of the city.
Sometimes it is only a few minutes that separates life from death. Víktor learned that he was fighting at the front, but misfortune confirmed this when he last came home on leave. It was last Monday, the second consecutive Black Monday in Kiev, in the middle of the morning rush hour. She was with her family when the anti-aircraft sirens sounded and Viktor descended the stairs of the historic building in the center of Kiev, where he lived. “My mom told me to put on her shoes and go downstairs,” she says, now 34. These would be his last words. An enemy drone crashed into the building and the explosion destroyed everything. Five people died, including a young couple expecting their first child, as well as their parents.
“Up front, you normalize these things, but it’s still very difficult,” she says, hugging one of her neighbors. It is possible that this is not necessarily something else deliberate attack on civilians. Across the street from his house is a small thermal power plant scraped from days ago. It happens often, as seen in Zaporizhia and Dnipro. Russian missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles It falls tens of meters away from a barracks, a security headquarters, or an energy facility, killing civilians. “The city has been away from the front for a long time and now it is afraid again. Fear and stress are back. People stopped ignoring air raid alerts,” says Viktor.
No barricades and everything is clear
So what kyiv today almost looks nothing like the city at the beginning of the world. warwhen he is afraid of being conquered. The streets regained their hustle and bustle. Everything is open. There are no barricades at intersections or many parapets on the fronts. Neighbors stopped sleeping in the bowels of the subway to escape the bombing. And even at the train station, passengers are not registered. But the attacks have returned, and citizens are wondering if there is anything behind the Kremlin’s atrocities. more than an attempt to terrorize the public and leave the country glistening at its gates in winter.
“They’re attacking again because they lost the initiative on the battlefield and couldn’t regain it even after mobilization,” says Mijailo Samus, director of the New Geopolitics Research Network think tank. The novelty is the Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze aircraft. According to Kiev, more than 230 were seized last month, 85% of the time, but still trace of death and destruction. “They make a lot of noise and they’re slow but they fly so low it’s hard to spot them with radars and eventually they penetrate deep into our lands,” explains Samus. In fact, they fly so low that some of them were shot down by armed police as if they were shooting at a clay pigeon shooting competition.
Artillery and drones
Samus claims Ukraine recalibrated its radars let them spot them and soon start using artillery instead of neutralizing them with missiles. “These drones are too cheap and their anti-missile systems are too expensive. Exhausting our air defenses so that we can attack more easily with ballistic and cruise missiles may be nothing but Russian strategy.” For now, anyway, they’ve forced the city to live on alert again. Conversations Every time the alarm goes off, parents with children flock to, and many go into hiding again. this is a tired city after eight months of war,” says Olga Oibrova, 37-year-old psychotherapist and mother of two.
“There is more depressed and disorganized people anxiety. Many have lost their jobs and cannot even meet their basic needs. Couples, friendships and family relationships are also broken, and they cannot cope with this much stress,” she adds. He adds his special diagnosis of the city. Oibrova is one of those who returned to Kiev after taking refuge in Germany for five months with her family. “Loneliness and alienation are very common among those living abroad. It is very difficult to share grief with people who have not experienced something similar.
A new front from Belarus?
And as if that weren’t enough, he came back, this time with the Russian army, about the possibility of a new Russian attempt to attack the capital from the north. direct participation of Belarus, already lent its territory for aggression in February. Moscow formed a joint regional power with the Lukashenko regime and redeployed 9,000 troops to Ukraine’s northern border. “The idea of reopening the northern front is on the desk of the Kremlin and the General Staff. The plan is being prepared by General Sergey Surovikin,” says analyst Samus. Surovikin, the new commander of Russian “special operations” in Ukraine, is such a brutal military man in Syria and Chechnya that they call him “general of the end of the world”.
“The problem for Russia is that, does not currently have enough soldiers or weapons to attack again from the north. They will need at least 50,000 men, and although they will try to mobilize them, most are just civilians in uniform.” In Belarus, this idea lacks popular support, according to various sources. It could be suicide for Lukashenko. “If they attack from Belarus again, this time Ukraine will not stop at the border. Our troops will continue to Minsk until the regime is overthrown.” For the time being, the former dictator continues to resist directly involving his country in the war.