Huddling in shelters, fearing the worst

KYIV • People in Kyiv were told to make Molotov cocktail petrol bombs yesterday as they hid in makeshift shelters and basements, awaiting a Russian assault on the Ukrainian capital.

Missiles pounded Kyiv overnight and air raid sirens wailed, increasing fears among residents who did not flee the city of three million on Thursday that an assault was imminent.

"Make Molotov cocktails, neutralise the occupier!" the Defence Ministry said, while the local authorities told people in the northwestern Obolon area of the city to stay off the streets because "active hostilities" were approaching.

Some residents took refuge in subway stations being used as air raid shelters, or rushed to basements of apartment blocks or other buildings when air raid warnings sounded.

"The kids were scared. They cry and ask, 'Mum, will we all die?'," said Alla, a woman in her 40s.

The basement where she took cover was packed with hundreds of people, with no place to sleep - only chairs and some water.

Even finding a place to sit was difficult.

"We don't know how long we have to stay here. Good we have chairs at least," a 35-year-old woman who gave her name only as Viktoria said, while her children aged five and seven slept without taking off their winter coats.

"We are shocked, we didn't expect that. How can you wage a war against peaceful people?" she said.

Ukrainian leaders evoked memories of a Nazi German attack on Kyiv in 1941. Damage to the centuries-old city during World War II took years to repair.

One resident of south-east Kyiv, who gave his name only as Sergei, said he woke at around 4am and went out to the balcony of his apartment for a smoke.

He heard an explosion and saw a flash in the skies in front of him. Five seconds later, an explosion shook his 10-storey residential building not far from Boryspil international airport. "Glass flew all around. There is now a shell fragment in my kitchen. I was shocked," he told Reuters. Nobody in his family was hurt.

A Reuters reporter saw a 2m-deep crater full of rubble in the ground next to the building, and windows had been shattered. A policeman on the scene said nobody was killed, but several people were badly hurt.

One resident, Ms Oxana Gulenko, a military medic whose father fought for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said she was thrown from her bed by the explosion.

"How we can live through it in our time? What should we think? (Russian President Vladimir) Putin should be burnt in hell along with his whole family," she said, cleaning away broken glass in her apartment.

Others cleared away rubble in the street.

Mr Anatoliy Marchenko, 57, who served in the Soviet army, will have to repair his balcony after the strike and he could not find his cat, which ran away during shelling.

" I am ashamed that I speak Russian," he said, and switched to Ukrainian. "I know people there (in Russia), they are my friends. What do they need from me? A war has come to my house, and that is it."

REUTERS