the times | Wednesday February 23 2022 9News
KharkivMariupolBLACK SEAAZOV SEATaganrog Rostov-on-DonROSTOV
REGION50 milesPokrovskoyeRUSSIA
LUHANSK
REGIONDONETSK
REGIONDonetsk
Luhansk
SchastiaIt is estimated that
Russia has deployed
about 227,000 troops
near the Ukraine borderKurskPogonovoBogucharVoronezhSolotiVesyolaya
LopanStavropolVolgogradFeodosia
Smoke rises from a power plant after shelling outside
the town of Schastia, in the Donbas regionSignificant
armoured force
close to the borderAvilo-Uspenka
refugee crossing pointPutin orders troops
and tanks into
breakaway regionsNumber of deaths 2015 to 2021
Ukranian military Civilians and rebelsDeaths in conflict in eastern Ukraine1,1,8006004002000
2015 2017 2019 2021
Source: United Nations Human Rights Office for the High
Commissioner Ukrainian Museum of Military HistoryPresident Putin’s closest advisers
during the Ukraine crisis are said to be
a group of hardline security officials
who are also among some of his oldest
acquaintances.
These were the men who were with
Putin in 2014 when he made the
decision to annex Crimea, plunging
relations between Russia and the West
to a new low. An old guard of hawks,
they have Putin’s ear, warning him of
alleged western plots to fund the anti-
Kremlin opposition.
Nikolai Patrushev, 70, head of the
Russian security council, has known
Putin since the 1970s, when they were
both KGB officers. He appears to have
influenced Putin’s views on the “evils”
of the West. Putin recently repeated his
comment that children in western
countries were taught to refer to their
mothers and fathers as “parent one and
parent two”.
Sergei Naryshkin, 67, head of the
SVR foreign intelligence service, is
another former KGB officer and has
known Putin since before he became
president. He has said that anyonePutin is ‘isolated’ with his
inner circle of hardliners
who betrays him will “burn in the fires
of hell”.
It is Sergei Shoigu, 66, the defence
minister, who often appears closest to
Putin, however. The two men have
been on holiday together, including
trips to Siberia. Shoigu never served in
the KGB but oversees the work of the
GRU foreign military intelligence
service, which was said to be behind the
Salisbury poisonings in 2019.
Their influence is said to have grown
amid strict measures put in place to
protect Putin from the coronavirus that
have in effect isolated him for long
periods. “The future of Ukraine may
hinge on a man ensconced in a bubble
that both feeds his aggression and
shields him from its consequences,” the
analysts Adam Casey and Seva Gunit-
sky wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Tatyana Stanovaya, a Russian polit-
ical analyst, has called this group “the
protectors” and describes them as “an
informal alliance between many of the
regime’s leading agents of repression
and its conservative ideologists. They
share the belief that tackling Russia’s
challenges requires a harsher and more
conservative approach.”Marc BennettsSt Petersburg
football final
‘inconceivable’
Martyn Ziegler Chief Sports Reporter
Kieran GairRussia’s incursion into Ukraine means
it is now “inconceivable” that the Uefa
Champions League final should go
ahead in St Petersburg, Boris Johnson
has said.
Uefa is holding internal talks about
moving the final from St Petersburg
after President Putin recognised the
Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the
Donbas, eastern Ukraine, as independ-
ent states. Asked whether he would
push for the Champions League final to
be moved, Johnson yesterday told MPs
there was “no chance’’ of holding foot-
ball tournaments in a Russia that “in-
vades sovereign countries’’.
Uefa’s leadership is expected to ad-
dress the matter in the coming days.
The final is due to be played at the
68,000-seat Gazprom Arena on May- Uefa said that it was “constantly and
closely monitoring the situation... any
decision would be made in due course”.
Uefa to strip Russia of final, Sport,
page 72
Emotions ran high at the funeral for Captain Anton Sydorov in Kyiv yesterdayNews
SERGEY DOLZHENKO/EPA‘Russia has power
but we’ll fight to
protect our land’
fighting was just 20 kilometres away
from my home,” said Natalia Pavliuk,
47, who lived in Donetsk before her
family were displaced by fighting eight
years ago. “My family agree with me.
Our judgment over whether to stay or
go is no different now. The danger must
be much closer before we leave.”
Others made different calculations.
In the capital’s gun shops trade was
brisk, as Ukrainians reacted to the in-
tensifying crisis by arming themselves.
“We have had more sales of assault
rifles and pump-action shotguns than I
can ever remember before,” said a shop
assistant in one store visited by The
Times, as buyers clustered around.
The country’s laws allow the pur-
chase of semi-automatic assault rifles
to anyone with a gun licence, and sales
have risen fast as the fighting has
spread along the eastern front. “Mostly,
we are selling pump actions to people
who want to protect themselves from
looters if the war comes to Kyiv,” the as-
sistant said. “But we are selling a lot of
AR-15 assault rifles too, now that every-
one has woken up to the reality of the
invasion threat.”
He pointed to nearly empty racks.
Only a few AR-15s were still on sale, for
the equivalent of £1,000 each. “More
people would buy assault rifles, but for
the price,” the assistant added dryly.
“But you can have a pump-action shot-
gun for just a couple of hundred euros.
We can’t sell them fast enough.”
In her apartment on the left bank of
the city, Mariana Zhaglo, 52, a market-
ing researcher who was photographed
by The Times last month shouldering a
Zbroyar Z-15 carbine as she stood in her
kitchen in her slippers — an image that
went viral as a symbol of civilian prepa-
ration for war — observed that even her
least interested neighbours had woken
to the Russian threat since President
Biden warned last week that he be-
lieved an invasion to be imminent.
“Friends who had talked non-stop
about summer holidays suddenly
changed the subject to talk of war,” she
said yesterday, cleaning and oiling her
combat-grade rifle. “Every conversa-
tion in the city now revolves around the
crisis and possibility of war... [but] I
don’t notice any sense of panic. We un-
derstand the way the Russians work, so
we know that now Putin has taken
Donetsk and Luhansk they will pause
to feel the ground temperature, and
gauge the intensity of western re-
sponse. Once they have made those as-
sessments, it may move again. It’s not
worth exhausting oneself with fear.
Most of us now realise that however
much we’d like this crisis over quickly, it
won’t end soon.”Threat has become
dreaded reality for the
people of
Kyiv, writes
Anthony
Loyd
Gun oil, grief and stoic resolve accom-
pany Kyiv’s preparations for a widening
war. So long a bastion of a carefree
fatalism, almost carelessness, a night
after news that the Kremlin had recog-
nised Ukraine’s eastern territories as
independent, the capital woke from its
slumber yesterday in sombre mood,
aware that the threat of invasion had
become a reality.
For the family of Captain Anton Syd-
orov, 35, a military intelligence officer
and father of three, the day began in
tears. He was killed in Novoluhanske,
on the eastern front on Saturday, hit by
shrapnel from pro-Russian separatist
artillery. The death of the captain, born
in Kyiv, was put in the international
spotlight by President Zelensky, who
spoke of it as he urged world leaders not
to appease Russian aggression.
Sydorov was buried yesterday in his
home city after a service attended by
senior officials and soldiers in which
vows of retribution accompanied the
sounds of weeping. “The ones who have
done this will be destroyed: there is no
other way,” Lieutenant General Valerii
Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of the
armed forces, told the mourners.
The dead man’s comrades were no
less resolute. They were fresh from the
front line, where the separatists they
have been fighting for eight years were
given official Russian recognition of in-
dependence on Monday; a move that
they realise could bring on a war involv-
ing the full might of Putin’s military.
“I tell you this, whatever the back and
forth of the politics, the guys on the line
know what we are fighting for,” said
Chief Lieutenant Olexandr Kohanov,
24, who had been in the trenches when
his friend Sydonov was killed. “We un-
derstand the power of Russia, but we
are fighting to protect our brothers and
our families and our land, and those are
things that we know we must keep
fighting for, whatever the odds.”
In Kyiv, more than 400 miles from
the artillery fire in the east, all appeared
calm — on the surface. Among those
who had previously been forced by war
to flee their homes, a sense of careful
calculation offset potential panic.
“I’ll move only if the situation gets as
dangerous as it did in 2014, when the