Lydia Tikhovska is scrutinizing the crater left by Russia’s latest missile that struck Kyiv on Monday, imagining her son’s charred remains in the scattered debris.
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The 83-year-old stands perfectly still in the afternoon sun and stares at the twisted metal remains of car wrecks and a green trolley bus, strewn across this street in the Ukrainian capital.
Her 58-year-old son had just left the corner store where he had gone to buy food and other basics. And then the missile – the second of the day to fall on this city, increasingly besieged and traumatized by Russian attacks – exploded.
“He’s lying near the car, but they won’t let me pass,” Lidia Tikhovska whispers.
Police and rescue workers, crushing piles of shattered glass under their feet, gauge the depth of the crater left by the missile near M’s apartment buildingme Tikhovska.
The black hole in the ground looks big enough to swallow up a car.
But Lidia Tikhovska is only staring at the place where, according to an ambulance driver, lies the remains of her son Vitali, behind the police cordon. “They say he’s too badly burned, that I wouldn’t recognize him, but I still want to see him,” the mother said in tears.
“Now I will be alone in my apartment. What will I use it for?” she asks.
Tears stream down her pale cheeks and she clings a little more to her grandson’s elbow in search of support.
“I wish Russia to experience the same grief that I feel now,” she said, shaking her head gently.
“Putin is finished”
Russia’s assault on Kyiv, launched on February 24, but initially repelled by an enthusiastic Ukrainian army consisting mainly of volunteers, has resumed with renewed vigor.
The fierce clashes on the northwestern edge of Kyiv are now accompanied by long-range Russian missile strikes, which left at least two dead and a dozen injured on Monday alone.
A second front is also opening up in the vast industrial districts of northeast Kyiv, a more remote area.
With the danger growing, armed volunteers at checkpoints in the capital are demanding ever-different passwords from the drivers of passing cars.
The soldiers alternate the color of the ribbons they wear on the elbow and calf, to better distinguish the Ukrainians from the Russian saboteurs.
This almost tangible paranoia in the deserted streets of Kyiv is accompanied by an attitude of defiance towards the forces of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“They killed my cat, now Putin is finished,” says Oleg Sheremet, rummaging through the debris of the first attack of the day, a few streets away.
“The cat was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says this middle-aged man wearing a black leather coat.
“Panic”
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, stands with clenched fists a few steps from the body of the son of Lidia Tikhovska.
The bulletproof vest of this former boxing champion, surrounded by heavily armed bodyguards, looks tiny on his square chest.
“The Russians want to sow panic in our city”, exclaims Vitali Klitschko in an imposing voice. “But that will never happen. This will only motivate every Ukrainian to defend our city more”.
A new series of distant detonations coming from the northern front of Kyiv suddenly forced him to return to his car.
It leaves behind residents who are still trying to figure out why Russia decided to strike this sleepy part of their city twice in the space of a few hours.
“They want more terror”
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian parliamentarian turned volunteer fighter, doesn’t even try to contain his anger at Russia and what he sees as a lack of Western support.
“There are no military targets here,” said the 42-year-old man after shuttling between the scene of the two attacks.
“They just hit for the sake of hitting. They just want more terror, to scare people more,” he continues.
In fact, many are afraid.
Vera Rechechkova, a 26-year-old hairdresser, stands with her boyfriend a block from the site hit by a missile and sobbes into her handkerchief.
“We bought food from that kiosk the other day and now the person who worked there may not be alive anymore,” she said, in tears.
“It’s just awful. I don’t want to wish harm to anyone, but Putin…”, she says, before interrupting herself.