The mood in Kyiv was calm on Monday, with shops and cafes busy and few visible signs of panic, despite the decision by the US and UK embassies to evacuate all non-essential staff amid warnings of a Russian attack.
In the capital’s upmarket Podil district, families strolled amid festive lights and skated on an open-air ice rink. There were long queues at the October cinema for a screening of Stop-Zemlia, a prize-winning Ukrainian film about the lives of Kyiv teenagers.
“I don’t think anything is going to happen,” said Sasha, a hairdresser from the eastern city of Kharkiv at a trendy barber shop that was open for business as usual. “There’s no way the Russians could take my home city. We would fight.”
Others said they were making tentative plans about what to do in the event of invasion, while carrying on as before. Maria Glazunova, a communications manager at Ukraine’s national film archive, said she discussed the topic on Sunday over coffee with her mother.
“My mum said: ‘I’m not interested in politics. What would Putin want with me?’ That’s one view,” she said. “People who read the news on the internet are not so calm, but life goes on. We think about war but we have to work and we need fun as well.”
Glazunova said her director had written to Ukraine’s culture ministry, seeking advice on what to do with the archive in the event of Russian bombardment. The ministry had yet to reply, she said. In the meantime, she was working from home as usual.
A woman who declined to be named said she had tried to persuade her parents to take a holiday in Truskavets, an old-fashioned spa town in the west of the country near the city of Lviv. “My mother refused to go. She told me she wants to die in Kyiv,” the woman explained.
On Monday, US citizens living in Ukraine received emails urging them to leave, or – if they elect to stay – to register with the embassy. It said: “There are reports Russia is planning significant military action in Ukraine.
“The security conditions, particularly along Ukraine’s borders, in Russian-occupied Crimea and in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine, are unpredictable and can deteriorate with little notice. Demonstrations, which have turned violent at times, regularly occur throughout Ukraine, including in Kyiv.”
An attack would “severely impact” the embassy’s ability to help Americans leave, it said.
Ukraine’s government, by contrast, has urged citizens not to panic. On Monday the foreign ministry expressed irritation with the UK and US decision to draw down their embassies in Kyiv. The move was “premature and overly cautious”, the spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko told Interfax Ukraine.
Nikolenko said there had been no radical changes in the security situation. He noted that the buildup of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders began in April last year.
In an address last week, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy tried to project an air of normality. He said the invasion had started back in 2014, when Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and kickstarted a violent separatist uprising in the Donbas region in the east.
“Did the threat of war appear only now? These risks have existed for more than a year. They haven’t become bigger,” Zelenskiy said. He suggested that the Kremlin was deliberating creating a “stir” in order to undermine the nation’s morale. “They are actively attacking our land and your nerves,” he said in a video.
Despite these official reassurances, the mood in Kyiv has darkened in recent days. One well-connected former official said his military contacts were insouciant two weeks ago about the prospect of Russian invasion, dismissing it as little more than a fictitious TV scenario.
Recently, however, the same government people had been quietly filling up their cars with petrol and stocking up on food supplies, he said. What was his plan? “Many people have legal weapons and will fight. My wife lives in Brussels and I will go and join her there,” he said.
An article laying out what to do if Russian tanks arrive has been widely shared. It suggests falling to the ground in case of shooting and covering your head with your hands, and – if inside – taking shelter in a bathtub. Hiding in a basement is also recommended.
