Air raid sirens sounded overnight as the city was hit with fresh bombardment.
An eery quiet hung over the streets early this morning.
But Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky issued a chilling warning on the Russian threat to Kyiv, saying: “They know nothing about our capital. About our history. But they have an order to erase our history. Erase our country. Erase us all.”
His grim words came after Russian missiles targeted the TV tower in the city yesterday, striking the nearby Babyn Yar Holocaust memorial site and killing five people, according to the Ukrainian authorities.
A UN convoy was reportedly due to have left Kyiv at about 9am, with residents able to join the exodus in cars.
Video footage from Kyiv station showed hundreds of women, some with young children, desperately seeking to clamber onto a packed train last night for a journey to greater safety in the west of the country.
More than 450,000 people have entered Poland from Ukraine since the Russian invasion began last Thursday, said Poland’s deputy interior minister Pawel Szefernaker.
Many have harrowing stories of how they fled to safety in Poland, as well as to other countries.
Russian software engineer Mikhail Liublin and his Ukrainian girlfriend travelled on trains and buses for five days to get to Hungary from Kyiv, hearing bombs go off en route and sometimes thinking they would not make it.
This story is from the March 02, 2022 edition of Evening Standard.
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This story is from the March 02, 2022 edition of Evening Standard.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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