Kyiv/Lviv. Along the tracks in Kiev, billboards calmly parade under a blazing sun the same phrases in Russian: “Russian soldiers, go to hell!” “Don’t become murderers.” “Go back!”
From their trenches and barricades erected in a few days, the inhabitants of the Ukrainian capital say on Monday they are ready to “teach the lesson” of their lives to the enemy.
An old Lada car, two garbage cans, a wardrobe: the inhabitants take everything that is at hand to build makeshift barricades, hoping to stop the advance of Russian tanks.
“We will receive them with Molotov cocktails and bullets to the head, that is how we will receive them,” Viktor Rudnichenko, a bank employee, says under one of those notices.
“The only flowers they will receive from us will be for their graves,” adds this man in his 30s, who went out for supplies when the curfew was lifted at 08:00 on Monday.
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Residents and volunteers of Kiev prepare to set up a rear post with trenches in the Ukrainian capital, on February 28, 2022. Photo Afp
Residents and volunteers of Kiev prepare to set up a rear post with trenches in the Ukrainian capital, on February 28, 2022. Photo Afp
This short pause, thanks to the ongoing negotiations between the two countries on the Belarusian border, gives the inhabitants of Kiev time, after the shock of the first offensives against their city, to organize their defense.
The capital acquired in just four days reflections of a war zone.
“Don’t go to the meadow,” a young man tells bystanders as the air raid alert begins to sound. “There could be explosives! We heard that the Russians hide mines under the grass,” explains Oleksiy Vasilenko.
At checkpoints, where any vehicle is searched, people greet each other with “Slava Ukraina!” (Long live Ukraine) to which one responds “To the heroes of Ukraine!”, a patriotic formula that now serves as a safe-conduct. Another driver adds “Death to Muscovites!” and reboot quickly.
“¡Y boom!’
Battalions of Ukrainian soldiers, busy repulsing the Russian offensive at the gates of Kiev, are few in the capital. But you do see “territorial defense” volunteers and armed civilians.
Arriving by bus, dozens of them have just been called to install a defense point in the Obolon neighborhood, in the north of Kiev, which has already been attacked by the Russians.
Beneath the residential towers built in the Soviet era, a unit of uniformed volunteers work and place their materials in a children’s play area.
Along the sidewalk, several deep trenches two meters deep were dug. At the entrance to the device, a public works vehicle lifts and places cement blocks.
Yuri Gibalyuk, 50, a veterinarian, joined the fighting with his brother and says that Ukraine has “many resistance” to repel Vladimir Putin’s soldiers. “If it is necessary for me to kill 100, I will do it,” says this volunteer with a long gray beard, sporting his kalashnikov.
Three volunteers in military uniforms and masks place a camouflage canvas on a tank.
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A resident prepares boxes of Molotov cocktails, in Kiev on February 28, 2022. Photo Afp
A resident prepares boxes of Molotov cocktails, in Kiev on February 28, 2022. Photo Afp
Another team is kneeling in front of boxes full of beer bottles. Inside them, “a third of diesel, two thirds of gasoline”, a cloth fuse “and boom!” Says the volunteer dedicated to the preparation of Molotov cocktails.
Volunteers check their equipment, reload their weapons, and those who have adjust their bulletproof vests.
Among them, Andrei Ivanyuk, who already has the synthetic language and the threatening look of the fighter. The successful actor and filmmaker from Kiev, who managed to get his wife and son to safety in the west before returning to Kiev to fight, says the Russians will get “the lesson of a lifetime from him.”
“Russia is not at home here, it never was,” says this man from the bottom of a trench, promising that “our land will be his grave.”
From beer to Molotov cocktails, the struggle of a Ukrainian brewery
In an industrial area of Lviv, the main city in western Ukraine, workers at a brewery have stopped making drinks and are now producing Molotov cocktails to use against the Russian army.
“We have to wait for the rag to be well soaked and when it is, then the Molotov cocktail is already prepared,” explains a smiling young employee dressed in a red coat and a cap, as he pushes a rag to the bottom of a bottle of beer. , filled with a mixture of oil and gasoline.
At the same time, next to him, two other employees repeat the same gesture in a relaxed atmosphere.
Molotov cocktails that are already prepared are put on top of some boards to protect them from falling snowflakes.
Fearing the arrival of Russian tanks in Lviv, a stronghold of Ukrainian identity, these street weapons seem laughable, but Iuri Zastavny takes their manufacture very seriously.
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Ukrainian policemen stop cars in search of suspicious men on a street in Kiev, on February 27, 2022. Photo Afp
“Do all the possible”
Founded in 2014, Pravda is a well-known company in Lviv, where it has already made waves by naming one of its best-known beers “Putin Huilo” (“Putin dick head”).
Its employees began on Saturday to manufacture Molotov cocktails, intended for the Ukrainian territorial defense.
The checkpoints are already well equipped at the entrance to this city of 720,000 inhabitants, where police, military and volunteers strictly control the passage of all vehicles.
The brewery said on social media Sunday that it had opened its stores to serve as an underground shelter in the event of an aerial alert.
But he plans to continue making Molotov cocktails. “We must do everything to help win this war,” says Zastavny.