It was only hours before the first missiles landed. The last day of an era in Europe. On the evening of February 23, the world prepared.
Thousands of Russian soldiers had received orders over the border with Ukraine. One president in Kyiv and another in Moscow prepared the most significant addresses of their lives. In Western capitals, officials are working to prevent what now seemed inevitable: the end of three decades of peace between major European powers.
Volodomir Ksienic: “Nobody believed that would happen.”
And the end of an idea. This trade and prosperity could dispel old European rivalries. This access to the iPhone, furniture from Instagram and Ikea can cool the chauvinistic impulses that have fueled centuries of bloody history.
Despite unusually specific warnings from the US government about an impending invasion and the build-up of forces in Russia and Belarus, Ukrainians did not panic. There were no queues at the western borders. Kyiv’s cafes and bars were crowded last Saturday night. People continued to make plans for holidays, meetings and swimming lessons for their children.
Volodomir Ksienic, 22, a student organizer, spent the night with friends. They talked about the war, of course. “No one believed it would happen,” he said.
Many analysts agreed. They say Russian forces gathered at the border are too small to occupy the country. The state media did little to prepare the Russian public for war. An invasion would inflict economic penalties so devastating to the Russian economy that no leader would dare take the risk.
It was all true, and they were wrong.
Day 1: Thursday, February 24
The Russian invasion begins
Firefighters work in the city of Chukhuev in eastern Ukraine after Russian bombings on the first day of the invasion. Photo: Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky appeared on television in the early hours of Thursday with terrible news. Dressed in a suit, his face still boyish and not folded, Zelensky informed the country that after weeks on the brink, Vladimir Putin had allowed military action against Ukraine. All of Europe is on the brink of a war that could “burn everything,” he said.
At 5.30 in the morning, the Russian state media began broadcasting the president’s address. Angered by what he described as the creation of “anti-Russia” along its borders, Putin announced a “special military operation” aimed at “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine. While speaking and in the hours after, explosions were reported in Kyiv, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mariupol and other cities.
Vladimir Zelenski holds a briefing on February 24. The Ukrainian president warned that the war could “burn everything”. Photo: Ukrainian Presidency / AFP / Getty Images
Xienich was abruptly awakened by his father. “Did you hear that?” he asks. “I think they’re detonating bombs. I think Russia started the war.
The family gathered their belongings and went to the village home of his grandparents on the outskirts of Kyiv. It was while driving, when Ksienic stopped refueling his car, that he felt that he was crossing the dividing line between life before and after the war.
“I got out of my car and heard bursts a few hundred meters away,” he said. Everything is still new: the noise, the trembling of the ground, the impulse to flee and seek cover. He will get tired of these feelings in the coming weeks, but the memory of that moment will still pierce. “It was the first explosion I remember.”
In the course of a chaotic day, Russian troops and military vehicles reportedly approached 18 miles from the capital; to go through Chernobyl and take the workers there hostage; to have pushed into eastern cities like Sumy; and to fire rockets at port cities across the Black Sea. Russian strike forces are searching for the Ukrainian president, and gunfire is heard near the presidential complex. There is a sense of doom in Kyiv and around the world.
By sunset, Ksienic’s family had gathered at the village house. Tomorrow they will have to decide whether to stay or go west. But first they have to survive the night. “We had a long conversation before bed, me and my relatives,” he recalled. “The Russian army may be trying to invade the place where we were staying. So we decided that some of us would sleep, others would not.
Ksienic is part of the shift that sleeps first. There is a seizure spell in bed, ponders. “You understand that something terrible is happening in your country,” he said.
After four hours he got up and took his place as a guard.
Day 2: Friday, February 25
“The president is here”
Vladimir Zelensky reappears with senior officials in a Facebook video taken on the streets of Kyiv. Photo: Vladimir Zelenski / Facebook / AFP / Getty Images
Kyiv is under attack from three directions. Explosions have been reported throughout the city. Shootings rage in its northern suburbs as Russian forces approach. The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine calls on those who have not fled to make Molotov cocktails and prepare to use them.
Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, told parliament that Zelenski had missed an scheduled call this morning, pausing as his voice trailed off. The camera fills the silence with spontaneous applause.
Europe is uniting in disgust and solidarity, imposing new sanctions, discussing whether to cut Moscow off from the Swift payment system. Russia has been expelled from the Eurovision Song Contest.
A few dozen miles from the town, Ksienic and his family decided to stay. “We decided that we should try to defend ourselves, then protect our family, then protect the whole country, if possible,” he said.
The family set about building makeshift barricades around their neighborhood to slow down oncoming tanks or armored vehicles. They made contact with other men in the area and formed a local defense unit. Ksienic received a Kalashnikov rifle several decades older than him.
Forty-eight hours ago, he was a data analyst, but now he’s learning to fight like a rebel. “We were told what to do when the column was right next to you,” he said. “What to do when you see a tank.”
In a few quiet moments, he experiences a moral vertigo. “You have to switch from a life in which you are trying to resolve all your conflicts orally, by speaking… But now you have ammunition and weapons.”
That night, during a pause in the shelling, the Ukrainian president emerged again. He published a 32-second video shot in person on the streets of Kyiv.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said, dressed in uniform and surrounded by four other employees. He points the camera at each person – “The party leader is here. The head of the presidential administration is here “- and finally settles himself. “The president is here.”
Day 3: Saturday, February 26
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are rushing to enroll
Ukrainians enlist in the Territorial Defense Forces in Kyiv. Photo: Mikhail Palinchak / EPA
Kirilo Demchenko, a history student from Dnipro, joins the influx of young men signing contracts to enlist in the Ukrainian army. He was immediately handed a pistol and sent to the highway near the capital.
Hours after his arrival, 20-year-old Demchenko and his unit spotted Russian soldiers and opened fire. He survives, but has few memories of the exchange, only fleeting images. “It’s so awful, so cruel,” he said.
“I remember the music of war – the bombings, the shooting of weapons. I remember the tracer bullets that glowed when they flew. I remember the anti-aircraft missiles. I remember short, individual details.
“It’s like a terrible story from a previous life.”
Day 4: Sunday, February 27
The West is uniting in response to the invasion
Pro-Ukrainian demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, on February 27. Photo: Leon Neal / Getty Images
3 am in the woods on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ksienic and a small group of volunteers sit in silence, waiting for the treacherous crowd of a tree branch under the boot or the roar of a helicopter.
Russian battalions are 5-6 kilometers away, he says, but the mood on earth is lively. “The first day many people were depressed, we didn’t know how our army would cope,” he said. “After two or three days we realized that our army is very well prepared … We plan to get rid of all Russian occupiers and regain Crimea and the occupied territories.
Roads in the western part of the country are congested with traffic and more than 300,000 Ukrainians have already fled the country. They are almost all women and children; martial law was imposed and men between the ages of 18 and 60 were banned from leaving. Across the country, families, friends and lovers are divided, some forever.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz received a standing ovation after a speech to the Bundestag announcing a 100 billion-euro increase in the armed forces. Photo: Hannibal Hanschke / Getty Images
The old maxims of European security are crumbling every hour. Germany is sending anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles to Ukraine, violating a post-war taboo against arms exports to conflict zones. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the creation of a € 100 billion fund (£ 85 billion) to strengthen the country’s armed forces. He called it “Germany’s historical responsibility” to ensure that Putin “does not turn his clocks back”.
Four days later, Ukraine appears to have taken the initial Russian blow. Zelenski is still alive and in control of the government. Russian forces are uncoordinated, unable to take control of the airspace and lacking fuel and food. Hostomel Airport, outside Kyiv, is a scene of fierce fighting that prevents Russia from using it as a springboard for the capital.
In Bucha, a town near Kyiv, an invading Russian column was devastated by Ukrainian artillery and retreated. But the soldiers returned in a few hours, occupied local homes and dug in.
It seems that Putin’s plan does not …
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