Dispatch 005: A Night In Kyiv
A conversation I had with a friend trying to get out of Kyiv amidst Russian attacks.
Damn - I hadn’t heard anything again.
I mindlessly refreshed my social media to see if there was any response back, but nothing.
It’d been 48 hours since I last hear from my friend who is hunkered down in the Kyiv Metro during some of the worst fighting.
(For this piece, they’re going to remain anonymous for their own safety)
Then, mid day I got a call via Facebook Messenger (despite Facebook trying to take down democracy, their call function has been a game changer)
I’ve patched their story together as best I can from my notes below:
Hey Brendan, I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you, things have been, well you know…
To be honest, I haven’t slept for more than probably two hours the past four days or so. We just never know when the air raid sirens will go off, a bomb will explode, or just what’s happening minute to minute…
No one down there, in the metro, really talks about the big stuff with the war, we all just try to make small talk, trade gossip on who is who, how to get bread, how to get into and out of the city…we’re trying…
It’s been hardest on my dog, believe it or not. Every missile that comes in or explosion or gun shot freaks her out and she’s tried to run away unless I’m clutching her. We’ve got to find a way out of here…
I hired a driver to try to get out of the city tomorrow.
They said if they have enough gas we should be good to go.
I’ll try to get to my grandmother’s house out in Western Ukraine, but you never know.
My job prepaid us a month’s salary in advanced so we’d have some options…
I’m hoping the drive works out, the central train station is nearly impossible to get to with all the barricades, curfews and crowds…it’s definitely not the safest place to be…
It kind of sucks, I just moved into my new apartment in Kyiv last week - great timing right? I started shaking packing together my “go-bag”…it just hit me that I may never see my home here again…
The stress of it all comes and goes like that I guess…
Hopefully I can make it out to my granny in the west, but I don’t think I can do anything to convince her to leave the country. Her plan is just to hunker down in her Carpathian mountain village and see what happens…
We appreciate all the “Are you OK?” questions, but I think everyone’s too dazed to really want to talk about what’s happening the way a lot in the West would like us to…
Shoot - I gotta go, gotta get to the metro shelter before curfew hits.
It was good my friend had avoided the Kyiv train station as it was the target of a Russian missile strike only a few hours later.
A recurring theme in my conversations with Ukrainian friends is just how seismically surreal it is to each of them, who up until five days ago, were living “normal” lives.
For us all, let’s remember what an extraordinary thing it is to wake up to a normal, painfully average day.
The Round Up
Rising civilian casualties result from Russia switching to its barrel bombing tactics it field tested in Syria.
Poland and other Eastern European NATO members send Ukrainian Air Force their old MiG Russia-made fighters.
This bolsters the size of Ukraine’s Air Force by nearly 1/3 and Ukrainian pilots already fly these.
Will make Russian sea vessels rethink their landing attempts.
While the European counties are affraid of threats and intimidation from Putin, emboldened #Poland announced that it is providing the #Ukrainian pilots with 28 MiG-29 fighter jets. It's almost a third of the operable fighter jets fleet #Ukraine had.Rada Najwyższa Ukrainy: Polska przekaże 28 myśliwców MiG-29. https://t.co/Z3pve1zLBX https://t.co/EQ5dTORFkXRzeczpospolita @rzeczpospolita
Hungary remains a hold out in allowing lethal aid to pass through to Ukraine.
Hungary also consumes the most Russian gas out any EU member.
Hungarian PM Orban is a long time Putin apologist.
Germany has pivoted away from Russia and awoke from its delusion of being a pacifist nation by announcing a massive increase in its defense spending to counter Russia.
Belarus votes to renounce its non-nuclear status allowing it to “ask” Russia to place nukes on its territory.
BREAKING: Belarus says constitutional referendum passes, revoking its non-nuclear status and paving the way for Russian nuclear weapons in the countryBelarusian President Lukashenko owes Putin for helping him steal his most recent election in 2020.
Lukashenko failed at, but tried to play the EU and Russia off of each other throughout his hold on power.
Some speculate that we could see within the coming weeks the dissolution of Belarus as a country as Russia annexes it, as some in the Russian media have zealously discussed.
It might be worth checking out this quick video on Belarus’s unique geopolitical challenges
Turkey closed the Bosphorus Straits to all warships into the Black Sea from the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey, a NATO member, may get drawn into a showdown with Russia over this.
#Turkey closes the Bosphorus to the #Russian Navy “In #Ukraine, the situation has turned into a war. Turkey will comply with the Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits" - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.Turkey has toed a tentative line with Russia no going as far as other NATO/EU members in condemning it due in no small part to its reliance upon not only Russian gas but also Russia’s military presence in Syria located on Turkey’s southern border.
Turkey also was angered with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 whose native Tartars are of Turkish descent and has been Ukraine’s number one weapons supplier, namely their cheap but deadly weaponized drones currently wrecking havoc on Russian convoys.
Heartbreaking stuff, man. Prayers for your friend. Thanks for writing these newsletters and for providing your insight. 🙏