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--:-- Noelle King: The day that Russia invaded Ukraine, we called a man and his niece who live in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Now, three weeks into the war, we called him back.
--:-- Noelle King: Aloha. Hello, Mr. Vasil. Yes. Good. We have Mr. Vasil and we have Yulia. Do you remember me?
--:-- Noelle King: This family is divided by a border now, like so many other Ukrainian families. And they wanted to tell us what they were seeing from both in and outside of Ukraine. And I want as many people as it is possible to hear the truth. What is happening here in our country?
--:-- Yulia: Yulia's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, echoed her words on Wednesday. He pleaded with Congress for help. I call on you to do more new packages of sanctions are needed constantly every week until the Russian military machine stops.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explained.
--:-- Noelle King: The city where Kurii Vasil and Yulia Lopushainska are from, Lviv, has been luckier than Kiev or Mariupol. The Russians aren't shelling the city, although air raid sirens sound constantly. Mr. Vasil speaks Ukrainian, so Yulia interprets for him over the phone.
--:-- Yulia: Where are you now and where is your uncle now?
--:-- Mr. Vasil: Well, I am in Poland. My children and I, my husband, stayed in Ukraine. And my uncle, you can ask him later.
--:-- Yulia: Why don't we turn that question over to him now? Mr. Vasile, where are you now?
--:-- Mr. Vasil: In Lviv.
--:-- Yulia: Your uncle is still in Lviv. Is your uncle safe? What is he seeing?
--:-- Mr. Vasil: Lviv, right now for now for today, Lviv is the least dangerous. So the whole territory of Ukraine is dangerous right now. Russian troops, Russian, he called them terrorists. They are shelling it in chaos the buildings schools hospitals kindergartens whatever and whatever and wherever places they want and it is not that in one place or another they in a different places like chaotic you do you know what I mean?
--:-- Noelle King: It sounds like you're saying they never know when the where the shelling is going to hit that's absolutely yes you never know where it is going, what building or what place or what city can be next.
--:-- Mr. Vasil: Do you mind if I ask why you decided to leave?
--:-- Yulia: My husband stays home. He is home right now. He helps, but he wanted us to leave. It's not that he doesn't think that it's not safe, which is not very much, but he, every time he leaves uh he thinks that i my children and i we are at home and every time the siren goes off he he's thinking about us and what we are doing where we are and maybe the next shelling be close to our house you know yes and he is not with us because he cannot stay home all the time with us
--:-- Noelle King: That's why he, because he wants to help. He wants to do things. He wants to protect. And that's why it was mostly his decision for me to go.
--:-- Yulia: I understand. And I would like to know from your uncle, I understand your uncle sounds very brave. I understand that he does not sound afraid. But I wonder, how does your uncle plan to protect himself if Russian troops arrive? Does he have a weapon? Does he have friends who have weapons? How will he protect himself?
--:-- Mr. Vasil: When you ask if I have gun, yes, of course, I do have. A lot of people have gun. Besides, they create local protection army, you know. I am brave because I am among brave people, and it helps me to be brave. I'm not special. I am as some other 40 million Ukrainian people. All people, everybody in Ukraine and myself too, we say we are sure that we will not live in invaded territories, in occupation. Not a single Ukrainian is not even thinking about living in slavery. There is only one variant to win or there will be no Ukraine otherwise.
--:-- Noelle King: What do you think when you hear your uncle say, we will never back down? Do you agree that that's what should happen?
--:-- Yulia: I do. You know, it's very, I cry a lot. It difficult I am not in Ukraine but my heart is there every single morning You know my morning does not start with some people say coffee tea breakfast It starts with the news. I turn it on and I want to see what is happening, what is going on. And I personally, I would not live in an occupied territory. No.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm going to ask your uncle if he could just give me a little bit of a description. I just want to know what are his circumstances of how he is living and is he OK? If you react and push the air on all signals, we will be paralyzed. OK.
--:-- Mr. Vasil: I think at some point it is not good. But when people in Lviv, when they hear the sirens, when it goes off, practically nobody goes to the bomb shelter. Because, for example, last night we had seven hours straight sirens go off and on and off. So it means that the whole night we had to spend in the bomb shelter. And plus, during the day, the situation was the same. It means that we will be all paralyzed. We will not do anything. We will not be able to help our army, to help people who come from the eastern part of Ukraine. We will not be able to do anything.
--:-- Noelle King: It sounds to me like Mr. Vasil is not going to leave Lviv. It doesn't matter what happens. He's going to stay. Is that correct?
--:-- Yulia: Nobody is going to go anywhere. Everybody stays not only in Lviv, but in Kiev also. But what my uncle also said is that what men do a lot, They try to protect their families, their wives and children. So they try to take them away. Because there are no very much safe places, but they try to take them to the most safe, to the safest place they can, or sometimes to send them abroad. But men, they stay in Ukraine, and they are ready to bring them to Kiev.
--:-- Noelle King: What was very surprising to me that two days ago, when I was helping some soldiers to go to Kyiv, and they were going to go by train, train. What I thought is that the train from Kyiv, the train will come full of women and children and then it will be easy to go to Kyiv and the train will be half or even not even half empty and then we can easily go. But what turned out that women and children when they got off the train, then in a few minutes the train was full of men ready to go to Kiev, to the capital, and fight.
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--:-- Noelle King: Hello, Igor, can you hear me? Yeah. OK, it's charging, but, you know, if it dies, just call me back.
--:-- Igor Kosov: Igor Kosov is another person we talked to on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. I-G-O-R-K-O-S-S-O-V. I'm a journalist with the Kiev Independent.
--:-- Noelle King: And where are you now, Igor?
--:-- Igor Kosov: I'm in Kiev.
--:-- Noelle King: What's it like in Kiev? What's happening there now?
--:-- Igor Kosov: Half the city's gone. It's like 4 million people, 3.5-ish. Now there's like less than 2 million left. They're evacuated. The city's real empty. Nobody's outside. It's kind of spooky. It's like horror film spooky. But some people are still walking around. Major supermarkets are open for food. Pharmacies are open, but there are lines you got to stand in and you're not always likely to get your meds. Every couple of hours we'll get air raid alert or shelling alert, you know, a siren. And then once in a while, and depending on the neighborhood, you hear a lot of thunder of artillery or rockets largely towards the western part of the city where there are obviously Russian forces in the western and northwestern suburbs fighting against the Ukrainian forces. That's about it.
--:-- Noelle King: When the air raid sirens sound, what do you do? Do you have someplace safe to go?
--:-- Igor Kosov: I have a lot of work. I mostly stay in my apartment. I got my windows taped up. I got my mattress in the hallway. There are multiple rooms. I want to say there's like multiple walls between me and the windows. So I'm pretty safe, if anything. I also can go downstairs and go to a not far away. There's a train station. Train stations in Kiev are famously deep. So it's very safe there. Although the number of people taking shelter in train stations has come down somewhat from the early days from what I've seen.
--:-- Noelle King: Igor, I apologize for this question if it comes off as naive. But may I ask, how are you feeling?
--:-- Igor Kosov: You know, it varies. It fluctuates. Normally I'm okay. Sometimes I am pretty unhappy about the civilian casualties that are going on everywhere. I'm really upset about Mariupol sometimes. I'm sure you've heard there's close to 2,500 deaths there. I am sometimes feeling angry. I am sometimes feeling inspired by some of the people I talk to, some of the interviews I do. Sometimes I'm feeling a little discouraged about, you know, again, the deaths and destruction. But overall, I'm maintaining the faith that Ukraine will hold because Russia's shown that it's not doing very well. And despite it killing all these civilians, I'm hoping that those deaths aren't going to escalate significantly and that Russian forces will be ground to a halt and destroyed before that happens.
--:-- Noelle King: Igor, we hope to understand why Russia isn't doing well. We know that there's this very long convoy trying to encircle Kiev. What's happening? Why are the Russians stuck? And how are Ukrainians along the length of that convoy responding to the men in those tanks?
--:-- Igor Kosov: I can't really tell you that because I'm not a Russia defense expert. Fair enough. I can say that the Russians have shown some baffling tactics. They advanced through the open in very tightly packed columns, making them excellent targets for either anti-tank weapons carried by infantry or artillery hits or drone strikes. They've presented very good targets. They've really screwed up their logistics. Their destroyed vehicles have gotten stuck in giant traffic jams for tens of kilometers. The Russians have just been acting as a very ineffectively, despite threatening to be this overwhelming force. And I don't know if this is because the commanders in Russia have been told what they want to hear instead of what's actually happening. I suspect that's part of it. I suspect that this happens all the way at the top and people just blow sunshine up the ass of their commanding officers a lot. I'm guessing that's part of it. I don't know for sure why they're just moving and maneuvering so poorly and presenting such juicy targets for Ukrainian weapons.
--:-- Noelle King: Now, the column thing, that's a little bit outdated information. That column has the supplies have been distributed to the forces that are massing around Kiev. And that column has somewhat been dispersed and placed throughout the forests and the roads in preparation for attack on Kiev. So far, we haven't seen a massive push because we believe we at the Kiev Post, that is, believe that we they don't have sufficient strength yet. But that giant traffic jam of a convoy that's been warned about, that's kind of cleared out and dispersed and is sort of regrouping and preparing to move.
--:-- Igor Kosov: As for what the Ukrainians are doing, the Ukrainian forces have been hitting them hard. Ukrainian artillery can be heard working very often throughout the night, throughout the day on the outskirts, on the western outskirts of Kiev. Constantly getting reports of vehicles being shot. There were a couple of heavy firefights between Ukrainian and Russian infantry. So there are constant battles going on. And as Russians try to find a position or try to find an angle for an attack, while Ukrainian forces hold them off.
--:-- Noelle King: From the beginning Russia has said Vladimir Putin has said he would not target civilians. We know from the beginning that that has not been true. But I wonder as Russia has been frustrated militarily have the attacks on civilians gotten worse? What are you seeing?
--:-- Igor Kosov: Yeah, I'm seeing that they have gotten worse. I'm seeing that Russia, when its blitz didn't work, Russia reverted back to its doctrinal tactics of using heavy artillery to just pound cities, pound civilian targets. I think what I'm seeing is that they're trying to demoralize. They're trying to destroy the spirit of the Ukrainians. They're trying to make them want to sue for peace. They're constantly hitting civilian targets with rockets, with artillery, with airstrikes all over Ukraine. It's especially heavy in the south and east. You've seen what happened to Kharkiv, you've seen what happened to Mariupol, but it's also happening near Kiev, as obviously multiple times when people tried to flee from the suburban towns west and northwest of Kiev, Russians have attacked these corridors, famously killing women and children with mortars, with other indirect fire weapons, and sometimes even with direct fire weapons.
--:-- Noelle King: Iguro, the last time we spoke on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, I asked you if you had any hopes for a diplomatic solution. And you basically laughed at me and said, no, you did not. I wonder, we hear about talks between Russia and Ukraine, indirect talks at times, direct talks. As this grinds on, as Russia seems unable to finish this war quickly, which is what it wanted, are you any more optimistic that diplomacy might work here, that some of these talks might come through?
--:-- Igor Kosov: I'm not sure because, once again, this is Russia. All of this is being directed by Vladimir Putin. And he is not the sort of guy. I don't think even if he was the sort of guy to back down, he can't really afford to. He's committed. He's taken huge economic damage. He's thrown Russia into this sort of, you know, in this new kind of narrative of we're trying to reclaim the great empire of the Rus sort of thing. We are trying to restore the unity of one people. And I don't think he can afford to back down. And I think that any negotiations with Russia will involve Russia asking unacceptable concessions from Ukraine. And I would like to hope and I also believe that Ukraine would just find a lot of these Russia's demands which I haven't seen the latest ones but this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that Ukraine would find the majority of Russia's demands to be unacceptable and Russia would find the majority of Ukraine's demands to be unacceptable. So while these talks are going on I hope that this will prevent more civilian deaths, but based on who rules Russia and how, you know, their entire modus operandi, I don't know if the two sides will be able to come to something that both of them are willing to accept.
--:-- Noelle King: Igor, what does Ukraine need now? What does it need most? What will it need down the line?
--:-- Igor Kosov: Ukraine needs weapons. Obviously, it needs humanitarian support. It needs vehicles, ambulances. It needs anti-aircraft, anti-rockets, air defense systems, basically. There is that hope about the jets. I don't know if we're going to see them. Ukraine needs some sort of clear commitment for clear messages, you know, when it's going to be accepted into the EU and whether or not it's going to be accepted into NATO. And also Ukraine needs for the world to maybe try to hurry up and wean itself off faster from Russian gas and oil, because that's what sustains Russia right now.
--:-- Noelle King: Igor, it's six o'clock in Kiev right now. What are your plans? Are you going to stay inside tonight?
--:-- Igor Kosov: Yeah, that's right. At this point, it's two hours to curfew. My fridge is pretty much stocked, and I'm going to continue working on a logistics story about the logistics of bringing in food and produce and medicine for Kiev residents. And I'm also going to be working on a couple of other stories, transcribing interviews. I've got a really great feature coming up that I'm really excited about. And after I'm done with that, I'm just going to relax and maybe, I don't know, watch some old shows. And then sleep on the mattress in the hallway. Exactly. It's a very nice mattress.
--:-- Noelle King: Thank you, Igor. Sincerely. Stay safe. Thanks. Bye.
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--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Victoria Chamberlain, edited by Matthew Collette, and engineered by Afim Shapiro, and fact-checked by Laura Bullard. I'm Noelle King. This is Today Explained. Thank you.
