He sounds calm, but the war is deep under his skin. Aleksandr shows a video, made near his house. Charred bodies, a dead dog, a car shot at, blood on the asphalt. “This is the worst thing I’ve seen so far. This is what the ‘liberation’ of the Russians looks like.”
Sleep is okay. Not good, but adequate. “I’m not a robot, I just need to get some rest. I manage to sleep while missiles are targeting Kiev. I just think: I don’t let those bastards ruin my sleep and then I fall asleep.”
‘Difficult to shoot at young Russians’
Kiev is holding out for now, though a military column of 60 kilometers from the north has approached and will possibly surround and besiege the city. “We were insufficiently prepared for an attack from Belarus, that’s why the troops were able to get so deep in the country. We let them go deep in the country, so they now have supply problems because of obstacles,” he says.
“There are also many young soldiers on the Russian side, aged 18 to 20 years,” Aleksandr said. “I hear from the Ukrainian side that they find it difficult to shoot at them, at such young, ignorant guys.”
Aleksandr hears from soldiers that some Russian soldiers run off and turn around. “They thought they would be welcomed with flowers as liberators; they were told that. And they were surprised that almost every village in Ukraine has streetlights and asphalt roads, it is different in many Russian villages.”
The Spirit of Kiev
Reports about deserting soldiers are widely shared in Ukraine, but cannot be verified. In any case, such stories serve as a moral impulse. The same goes for the story about ‘The Ghost of Kiev’, an unknown fighter jet pilot who has acquired almost mythical proportions after one week of war. He is said to have shot down six Russian planes on the first day of the invasion; by now the counter would already at 21.
Former President Poroshenko shared a photo of the alleged ‘ghost’:
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