A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022
russia invades ukraineweapon.
“They’re really scared, they’re
afraid that I’m a girl and that it’s
too dangerous for me,” she said. “I
really wish I could do more but
right now I do whatever I can.
Whatever my parents let me.”
Her father said he also tried to
enlist in the defense forces, and
offered to carry a gun.
“But they didn’t let me join,” he
said, and shrugged.
Many members of his congre-
gation have fled the city, as have
the residents in neighboring
apartment complexes. “Yesterday
evening, I went to the street, and
the lights were on only in 30 to
40 percent of the apartments,” he
said.
Neighbors lined up at a bread
shop. Some were buying supplies
for three days or longer, con-
vinced that the conflict is going to
get worse.
A tall man walked past with his
wife and small daughter. He was
wheeling a large silver suitcase.
The family was headed to the
train station, where his wife and
daughter would travel south to a
relative’s home.
“Yesterday, there was a curfew,
and we couldn’t move,” said Alex-
ander, 37, who declined to give his
last name. “I don’t know what
tomorrow will bring. It may not
be possible to move.”
“I will stay h ere,” he added. “We
will give some bullets to the Rus-
sians.”
A line of armored personnel
carriers flying Ukrainian flags
crossed the fortified intersection.
Oleg looked at the cluster of
residential buildings, home to
thousands. “Everyone who want-
ed to be evacuated has been,” he
said.
Many residents have opted to
remain. They included Alla Pich-
kur, 49, and her daughter Diana,
28, who were out to buy bread.
They had already stocked up on
food at the grocery stores and
taken cash out at the ATM in case
the banks close.
Asked how she felt about the
conflict reaching Kyiv, Alla Pich-
kur’s eyes welled up and she
couldn’t speak.
“We are scared, but we will
win,” Diana said, and the mother
nodded. “She can’t talk about it.
It’s so awful what has happened.”
“But we believe in our army,”
she added.
Alla Pichkur composed herself.
She said they haven’t f led because
“it is our home and we have lived
our entire lives here.” They have
hidden inside their bathroom
many times — whenever the air
raid sirens go off.
A retail worker, she donated
1,000 hyrvinia — roughly $33 —
to assist Ukraine’s armed forces
after seeing the soldiers fortifying
the highway.
“This is our way of helping
protect our motherland,” said her
daughter, who works in a beauty
salon.
Yuriy Syrotyuk signed up to
fight for another reason. Both of
his grandfathers were killed re-
sisting the Nazis and later the
Soviet Union in the 1940 s, he said.
He wants to see his own grand-
children one day.
“I don’t want to see my son
killed,” he said.taken refuge outside of the city.
He said he’ll fight until the Rus-
sians are pushed out of the coun-
try.
“I don’t have any fear in me,”
he said. “I want to fight for
Ukrainian independence and
freedom.”
Four days earlier, Volodymyr
Nazrenko was an entrepreneur,
running an information and data
company in the capital. Now, the
30-year-old was holed up in a
newly established operations
base for Kyiv’s territorial defens-
es.
Clutching his rifle on the steps
of the makeshift camp, Nazren-
ko said he fought Russian-
backed separatists in the eastern
Donbas region. Now he was in
charge of helping train recruits
in defense tactics while also
helping track Russian move-
ments.
“It’s very likely they’re going to
target more civilians,” he said.
“My job is to prevent that.”
Fellow volunteers passed in
and out of the building with
weapons. Across the way, others
were filling a shopping cart with
glass bottles. Behind the base, a
team was turning them into mo-
lotov cocktails.
Fresh recruits lined up for a
leader who wrapped yellow duct
tape around each of their right
arms — officially indoctrinating
them as allies in the fight against
the Russians.
“Glory to Ukraine!” the new-
comers shouted in unison.
They included Vitaliy Belinsky,
25, who then joined the molotov
cocktail efforts, filling bottles
with plastic foam and fuel and
stuffing a cloth into the top for a
fuse.
Belinsky ordinarily works in
advertising. He has some conflict
experience but said he wanted to
leave the most intense fighting to
more experienced soldiers. He
was offering his services during
the daytime, building barricades
and now petrol bombs.
“I decided that my skill is not
enough to defend with a weapon,”
he said. “I want to help by myself
as I can, so I came here.”
In the basement of Mileyko’s
church, about a dozen civilians
— mostly women and girls —
stood a round a long table, filling
pockets of dough with potato
and spices to serve to the troops
nearby. They sang Ukrainian
folk songs, grinned and
laughed.
They carefully pressed piles of
dough into vareniki, a traditional
Ukrainian dish similar to p ierogi.
Maria Mileyko, 18, the pastor’s
daughter, said she hopes the food
will give strength to the local
forces. It’s simple to make them
en masse, very filling and easy to
transport, she said. She began
cooking for the troops on Mon-
day.
“We are helping our soldiers,
we are helping our people,” she
said. “We are actually sick of
sitting at home and doing noth-
ing. I just feel like somebody
needs me... that I’m helping
someone.”
If she could, she said, she’d be
on the front line beside them. But
her parents refused her demands
that she be allowed to carry ahis shoulder.
As Ukrainian and Russian
envoys held peace talks at the
Belarusian border Monday,
Ukrainian forces here, driven
by deep mistrust of the Rus-
sians and a desire to protect
their homeland, were preparing
for the worst-case scenario.
That scenario was Russian
tanks and soldiers pressing into
Kyiv and seizing the seat of
government.
This highway stretching
through the city’s northern Obo-
lon district is one of the main
routes by which the Russians
could attack.
A visit Monday to this forti-
fied patch, an area the Ukraini-
an fighters described as “their
second line,” opened a window
into the courageous efforts by
everyday Ukrainians to stand
up to Russian aggression. But it
also portended a violent urban
conflict, with the prospect of
street-to-street fighting and
guerrilla tactics and thousands
of civilians trapped in the cross-
fire.
“This is their shortest path
into Kyiv,” said Oleg, the 53-
year-old commander of the
Ukrainian army forces at the
intersection, who declined to
give his last name for what he
said were security reasons. “We
have weapons for defense and,
of course, to attack back, includ-
ing those we got from the United
States. Thank you!”
He was referring to the Jave-
lin antitank missiles that ar-
rived recently as part of a
$200 million security package
sent by Washington to bolster
Ukraine’s capability to fight
Russia’s superior military forc-
es. The missiles were not visible
at the intersection.
Ukrainian fighters were block-
ing parts of the highway with
large blocks of concrete. Bulldoz-
ers were gouging more trenches
into the ground. Armed fighters
in camouflage kept watch on a
nearby overpass.
Reports emerged of a large
column of Russian military
trucks and other weaponry and
personnel moving toward Kyiv,
presumably to reinforce the inva-
sion forces in the northern por-
tion of the highway.
Three days earlier, the Rus-
sians had entered Obolon, com-
ing as close as six miles to Kyiv’s
city center. But Ukrainian forces
pushed them back in fierce fight-
ing that in some areas left Rus-
sian tanks and armored vehicles
burned and destroyed, according
to Ukrainian security officials
and media reports.
Oleg said the Russians were
positioned Monday along the
highway just beyond Vishorod, a
satellite city about 12 miles from
central Kyiv.
Ukrainian military command-
ers and government officials say
the Russians have dispatched
saboteurs — infiltrators who
have entered the capital to sow
mayhem.
The Rev. Viktor Mileyko, pas-
tor of a Ukrainian Orthodox
church nearby, said he witnessed
a clash between Ukrainian de-
fense units and men he thought
were Russian agents in front of
his church on Sunday. “The gun-
men fired bullets at the apart-
ment buildings,” he said, shaking
his head.
The report could not be inde-
pendently confirmed. But it was
clear that tensions and anxiety
remained high along the high-
way on Monday.
At 5 p.m., a gray sedan pulled
up to a checkpoint and a single
gunshot was fired. Security forc-
es pinned a man wearing black to
the ground and dragged him out
of the street and into a wooded
area.
“We captured someone!” the
troops yelled to Oleg. The com-
mander halted an interview
with The Washington Post to
order his soldiers to assist. It
was unclear what the man had
done to provoke such a re-
sponse.
Across the street was Syro-
tyuk’s 17-year-old son, Sviatoslav.
He’s been handling a weapon
since he was 8 at a s cout camp, he
said, since Ukraine’s 2014 revolu-
tion, which ousted the Russian-
backed president, Viktor Yanuk-
ovych.
Now Sviatoslav is training oth-
er recruits in how to use a gun.
“From 2014, I knew I would
have to fight at some point,” he
said.
Short and well-built, with a
small brown braid hanging out
of his army green winter cap, the
archaeology student has taken a
break from school to join his
father in the territorial defense
forces. His mother, grandmoth-
er and 13-year-old brother have
KYIV FROM A1
Trenches, barriers, bombs and food: All aim to fortify K yiv
PHOTOS BY HEIDI LEVINE FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTFROM TOP: An antiaircraft gun is dug in at a Ukrainian military position near residential buildings in
the Obolon district of Kyiv. Tanks displaying the Ukrainian flag pass a checkpoint on Monday in K yiv.
Armed Valeriy, 38, who works as a cook, and Olena, 42, a lawyer, are female members of a territorial
defense unit in Ukraine. With them is Oksana, 52, a graphic designer who works as a builder. The
women were guarding a residential area. Irina, also a member, at a headquarters in Kyiv.