KYIV — SPORT LIFE gym in the Vynohradar district of north-western Kyiv is an electronic phantom. On its website sleek patrons continue to dive into its swimming pool, pump iron or cycle for all they are worth on rows of exercise bikes. But at 10.46pm on March 20th a Russian missile pulverised the place, sending shock waves across the Ukrainian capital. Debris from the gym, the adjacent Retroville shopping centre and an office building were hurled for hundreds of metres. At least eight people were reported dead.
Thanks to an impressive defensive operation by Ukraine’s army, Russian forces near the capital have not advanced for two weeks. There are even some areas where Ukrainian troops are reported to have succeeded in pushing the invaders back, though some of those reports have turned out not to be true. Yet every day for more than a week now, a handful of missiles have struck, ratcheting up the pressure on the city.
Two hours before the Sport Life attack the boom of anti-aircraft fire could be heard in the area and fiery missiles were seen streaking skywards. The target was a Russian drone or drones. At first sight most of the recent missile strikes in the city appear to be random, as they clearly are in Mariupol and Kharkiv, for example. In Kyiv, for now at least, they might not be.
According to Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, of every four missiles that have hit the capital recently, two on average have struck a civilian target, one has been intercepted (often causing random damage as it falls) and one has hit a military target. “I can’t say that in Kyiv they are trying to hit civilians on purpose but a lot of times they miss,” he said, adding that elsewhere this was not the case and residential areas were the deliberate targets.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, which produced a video to support its claim, the Vynohradar gym was hit because the Ukrainian armed forces were hiding missile launchers in a parking area underneath the building and were using another next to it. If true, this could explain the force of the explosion; Ukrainian missiles may have been set off by the explosion.
Kyiv, says Kira Rudik, a member of parliament, is the “best defended place in Ukraine”. This explains why Russian forces attacking in a pincer movement in the north-west and north- east have stalled. Rather than moving closer, the Russian forces are now building defensive positions to fend off Ukrainian counter-offensives which have begun and, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, are achieving some success on the main road leading out of the city to the west.
No one now believes that Russian forces have anywhere near enough men to actually take and occupy Kyiv. But it is unclear why the capital has not been subjected to massive and sustained rocket attacks, as other cities have been. A security official, who did not want to be identified, said that Ukrainian intelligence had had several warnings that just such an attack was imminent. For unknown reasons, it has not happened.
In the wake of every attack that has hit a block of flats, clean-up crews of municipal officials and local residents have been out sweeping up rubble within an hour. Officials take statements from residents whose flats have been damaged and which may be used in future claims for compensation from Russia. Patient queues form to collect heavy-duty plastic sheeting to seal shattered windows.
So far the attacks have only served to strengthen resolve. Ask stunned residents gathering their possessions if they think their government should surrender to Russian demands and the answer is uniformly negative. “We should fight more aggressively, with more anger and with more fury. There is no way to step back in this situation,” said Mykyta Kartashov, a 25-year-old intellectual-property lawyer whose flat had just been wrecked by a blast.
While deadly attacks plague mostly, but not only, the city’s north-western suburbs, in the city centre a few signs of normal life are returning. There is more traffic on main roads than at any time since the invasion began on February 24th. Petrol is not being rationed any more and, thanks to a tax cut, is far cheaper than in most of the rest of Europe, at the equivalent of $1.46 a litre. The exchange rate for the Ukrainian hryvnia is now almost back to where it was at the start of the war.
In the first two weeks of the conflict there were queues at supermarkets; now they have gone. Bread, which disappeared from the shelves, is back, and most basic goods are available. Queues at chemists have dwindled thanks to a website that tells customers which one has the medicine they want in stock and whether it is open.
Across town checkpoints and firing-positions, which mostly consisted of sandbags and tyres in the first days of the war, have been fortified. They are manned by civilians who have signed up for Ukraine’s new Territorial Defence Force (TD). Volunteers drive circuits between them delivering hot food. Roadblocks now have road signs telling drivers what to do, and at some of them TD fighters with flags direct the traffic. Roads to the south of the capital remain open and trains continue to run to most of the country, even including the embattled second city, Kharkiv.
The security official said that the Ukrainian military has done a fantastic job in defending the country so far, but now Ukraine is moving to a new phase of the war. “It is a race against time,” he said. The risk is that Russian troops are not strong enough to advance while Ukrainian forces are not strong enough to defeat them either. The Russians are mostly bogged down, their morale is low and they are running out of supplies. Ukrainian morale is high, but troops are running out of supplies too. New weaponry promised by America and other countries needs to arrive now, not in a few weeks, he said.
Ms Rudik concurs that time is of the essence, especially as she believes that even if it is “almost impossible” for the Russians to take Kyiv, “they will try”. At the same time, she said, “The Russian economy is collapsing but we are dying, so the question is who falls first.”
By The Economist
