It was a few hours before the first missiles landed. The last day of an era in Europe. On the evening of February 23, the world prepared.
On the Ukrainian border, thousands of Russian troops had received his orders. One president in Kyiv and another in Moscow prepared the most significant directions of their lives. In Western capitals, officials worked to avoid what now seemed inevitable: the end of three decades of peace between major European powers.
Volodomyr Ksienich: “No one really thought it would happen.”
And the end of an idea. That trade and prosperity could dissolve old European rivalries. That access to Ikea iPhones, Instagram, and furniture could cool the sexist impulses that had fueled centuries of bloody history.
Despite unusually specific warnings from the US government of an impending invasion and the build-up of forces in Russia and Belarus, the Ukrainians did not panic. There were no queues on the western borders. The cafes and bars of Kyiv had been packed to capacity the previous Saturday evening. People continued to make plans for vacations, dates, and swimming lessons for their children.
Volodomyr Ksienich, 22, a student organizer, spent the night with friends. They talked about the war, of course. “No one really believed it would happen,” he says.
Many analysts agreed. Russian forces concentrating on the border were too few to occupy the country, they argued. The state media had done little to prepare the Russian public for the war. An invasion would trigger such dire economic sanctions on the Russian economy that no leader would dare risk it.
All this was true, and they were wrong.
Day 1: Thursday, February 24th
The Russian invasion begins
Firefighters working in the eastern Ukrainian city of Chuhuiv after the Russian bombing on the first day of the invasion. Photo: Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appears on television in the early hours of Thursday with terrible news. Dressed in a suit, his face still childish and wrinkled, Zelensky informs the country that after weeks of recreation, Vladimir Putin has authorized military action against Ukraine. All of Europe is on the brink of a war that could “burn everything,” he says.
At 5:30 a.m., Russian state media began broadcasting a presidential speech. Angry at what he describes as the creation of an “anti-Russian” border, Putin is announcing a “special military operation” aimed at “demilitarizing and denazifying” Ukraine. As he speaks and in later hours, explosions are recorded in Kyiv, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mariupol and other cities.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy holds a briefing on 24 February. The Ukrainian president warned that the war could “burn everything”. Photo: Presidency of Ukraine / AFP / Getty Images
Ksienich is abruptly awakened by his father. “Did you hear that?” he asks. “I think they are bombs that explode. I think Russia has started the war.”
The family collects their belongings and goes to their grandfather’s country house on the outskirts of Kyiv. It is on the way, when Ksienich stops to refuel his car, that he hears a dividing line between pre-war and post-war life.
“I got out of the car and heard explosions a couple of hundred yards from me,” he says. Everything is still new: the noise, the trembling terrain, the urge to flee and seek refuge. He will get tired of these sensations in the coming weeks, but the memory of that moment will still run through. “It was the first explosion I can remember.”
In the course of a chaotic day, Russian troops and military vehicles have been found less than 18 miles from the capital; having swept away Tornnobile and taken the workers hostage there; having pushed into eastern cities like Sumy; and having rained missiles on port cities across the Black Sea. Russian attack teams are searching for the Ukrainian president and gunfire can be heard near the presidential palace. There is a sense of doom in Kyiv and around the world.
At sunset, Ksienich’s family gathered at the cottage. Tomorrow they will have to decide whether to stay or go west. But first, they must survive the night. “My family and I had a long discussion before going to bed,” he recalls. “The Russian army may be trying to invade the place where we were staying. So we decided that some of us would sleep, some would not.”
Ksienich is part of the first sleeping shift. He has a spell in bed, ruminating. “You understand that something terrible is happening in your country,” he says.
After four hours, he gets up and takes his place on guard duty.
Day 2: Friday, February 25
‘The president is here’
Volodymyr Zelenskiy reappears alongside senior officials in a Facebook video shot on the streets of Kyiv. Photo: Volodymyr Zelenskiy / Facebook / AFP / Getty Images
Kyiv is being attacked from three directions. Explosions are being reported throughout the city. Armed battles are taking place in its northern suburbs as Russian forces approach. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry urges those who have not fled to make Molotov cocktails and prepare to use them.
Mario Draghi, the Italian prime minister, told parliament that Zelenskiy had missed a scheduled call this morning, pausing as his voice faltered. The chamber fills the silence with spontaneous applause.
Europe unites in revulsion and solidarity, imposing new sanctions, debating whether to exclude Moscow from the Swift payment system. Russia is expelled from the Eurovision Song Contest.
A few tens of miles from the city, Ksienich and his family decide to stay. “We decided that we should try to protect ourselves, then protect our family and then protect the whole country, if possible,” he says.
The family set to work building makeshift barricades around their neighborhood to stop approaching tanks or armored vehicles. They come into contact with other men in the area and form a local defense unit. Ksienich receives a Kalashnikov rifle a few decades older than him.
Forty-eight hours ago he was a data analyst, but now he’s learning to fight like an insurgent. “They told us what to do when there’s a column near you,” he says. “What to do when you see a tank.”
In the few moments of silence, he feels a moral vertigo. “You have to change a life where you’re trying to resolve all your conflicts verbally, by talking … But now you have ammunition and a gun.”
That night, during a break in the bombing, the Ukrainian president resurfaced. He posted a 32-second video filmed on the streets of Kyiv.
“Good evening everyone,” he says, dressed in clothes and surrounded by four other officials. He passes the camera on each side: “The party leader is here. The head of the presidential administration is here” – and finally decides on his own. “The president is here.”
Day 3: Saturday 26 February
Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are rushing to enlist
Ukrainians enlist in the territorial defense forces in Kyiv. Photo: Mikhail Palinchak / EPA
Kyrylo Demchenko, a Dnipro history student, joins the rush of young people signing contracts to enlist in the Ukrainian army. They immediately give him a gun and send him to a road on the outskirts of the capital.
Hours after arrival, 20-year-old Demchenko and his unit detect Russian soldiers and open fire. He survives, but has little recollection of the exchange, only fleeting images. “It’s so terrible, so cruel,” he says.
“I remember the music of the war: the bombings, the gunfire. I remember the tracer bullets that fire when they fly. I remember the anti-aircraft missiles. I remember short, separate details.
“It’s like a terrible story from a previous life.”
Day 4: Sunday 27 February
The West unites in response to the invasion
Pro-Ukraine demonstration in Trafalgar Square, London, on February 27. Photography: Leon Neal / Getty Images
It’s 3 o’clock in the morning, in a forest on the outskirts of Kyiv. Ksienich and a small unit of volunteers sit in silence, waiting for the revealing crack of a tree branch under a boot, or the sound of a helicopter.
Russian battalions are 5 or 6 kilometers away, he says, but the mood on the ground is good. “The first day a lot of people were depressed, we didn’t know how our army would do,” he says. “After two or three days we understand that our army is very well prepared … We are planning to get rid of all Russian occupiers and recover Crimea and the occupied territories.”
Roads in the west of the country are congested with traffic and more than 300,000 Ukrainians have already fled the country. Virtually all of them are women and children; martial law has been instituted and men between the ages of 18 and 60 are forbidden to go out. Across the country, families, friends, and lovers are divided, some forever.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz receives a standing ovation after a speech in the Bundestag announcing a € 100 billion boost to the armed forces. Photography: Hannibal Hanschke / Getty Images
The old maxims of European security are collapsing every hour. Germany is sending anti-tank weapons and Stinger missiles to Ukraine, breaking the post-war taboo against arms exports to conflict zones. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the creation of a € 100 billion (£ 85 billion) fund to boost the country’s armed forces. He calls it “Germany’s historic responsibility” to ensure that Putin “does not turn back the clock.”
Four days later, Ukraine appears to have absorbed the initial Russian blow. Zelenskiy is still alive and in control of the government. Russian forces are uncoordinated, unable to take control of airspace and running out of fuel and food. Hostomel Airport on the outskirts of Kyiv is the site of fierce fighting that prevents Russia from using it as a bridgehead to the capital.
In Bukha, a suburban town near Kyiv, an invasive Russian column is devastated by Ukrainian artillery and retreats. But the soldiers return after a few hours, occupy the local houses and dig.
Putin’s plan does not seem to have …