‘We will fight' Actors and lawyers get ready to take up arms

The mood last week in Ukraine was eerily calm, despite talk of war.

- Luke Harding

The first winter snow blanketed Kyiv. Many were still celebrating Orthodox Christmas – which falls on 7 January – or had left town for the holidays.

Sure, Russia might invade at any moment. But, as Ukrainians wearily point out, the country has already been at war for eight long years, ever since Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and kickstarted a brutish conflict in the east of the country, which has claimed nearly 14,000 lives. Last Friday’s dawn cyber-attack on government websites was the latest in a series of hostile acts.

What to do in the event of a military operation by Moscow, and whether to stay, flee or fight? The consensus – at least according to surveys – is that a third of the population is ready to take up arms. In the upmarket Podil district, with its art deco mansions, a new piece of graffiti read: “Biy Moskaliv!”(“Beat Up Russians!”)

Sitting in a law office just across the road, Serhii Filimonov explained what he intended to do, should the Kremlin attack. “There are about 50 of us. We will meet and decide where we can best fight,” he said. His group is made up of middle-class professionals: IT staff, designers, actors, journalists. Filimonov runs a security business and starred in a film shown at Venice.

None of this is likely to alarm Russia’s defence ministry, which has sent 100,000 troops to Ukraine’s border.

But the Kyiv creatives know how to shoot. All are combat-hardened veterans of the 2014 war. Filimonov took part in the bloody battle for Ilovaysk, when the Russian army trapped Ukrainian forces and was wounded by an enemy mortar strike.