He is 24 years old, he comes emboldened, he wears the AK-47 and he points. Nothing he says is understood, but the message that this young Ukrainian soldier intends to give is clear. Those sent from Clarion they raise their hands and a long hour of questions and tension begins.
The episode takes place at a checkpoint on the way to the Bucha area, where fierce battles are taking place near kyiv. From early on, a black smoke fungus it was installed on the city skyline and was the reference of the day. The plan was to get as close as possible to be able to account for what is happening on the other side of the forest.
All the noises come from that area: the shots, the detonations, the thunderous sequence of anti-aircraft defenses. From that area, but from the part taken by the Russians, also come the missiles that hit different districts of the capital.
In the universe of war there is no idea of concession. Sometimes, by taking one shot too many, the picture can get dark. The soldier shouts with authority. He does not appear to be of the age that he will later reveal. A gate opens behind him. Four more soldiers are coming. Not a word of English. The interpreter of Clarion He has a tough job ahead of him.
Journalists moving around kyiv have a credential from the Ukrainian war ministry. It is the safe conduit that allows you to pass checkpoints. But in the last few hours, something has begun to change. Ukrainian soldiers mistrust credentials of press.
They are paranoid about it.
They say that they may be false and ask for more confirmatory elements. There seems to be no way to convince the crew that they are now holding up the Clarion.
The place where the Ukrainian soldiers stopped the Clarín envoys and made them erase their material.
They ask for the cameras. They say that we will have to leave them. Also the phones. They want more data. The chief, who is no more than 30 years old, says that he understands all the explanations but that he cannot let the envoys go because he does not believe them. He makes calls. They ask for credentials again. He takes photos of each credential and each passport. He begins to relax and suddenly confesses.
He takes out a pack of cigarettes, offers them to the latecomers. “Does anyone smoke?“, question. He wants to talk: “Before the war I didn’t smoke. Now I smoke two packs a day. The same thing happens to me with coffee, you know? I already had a liter this morning.” While the soldier becomes friendly, the shots do not stop: they are heard closer and closer, as well as the detonations.
Clarion asks him how far he is from the battlefront: 10 kilometres, answer back. He sends a WhatsApp message to one of his bosses with the photos of each of the journalists. “Ten minutes”, it says. A soldier several years older than him approaches with a gift for the retarded: missile shards.
He does a pantomime, as if a shrapnel hit him in the body and will leave him badly injured. It is a small piece of lead that as soon as you grab it, it seems that it will cut your fingers.
“I understand, but we no longer trust journalists. We do not trust your social networks. We don’t trust the photos they take”, speeds up the chief smoker. He already looks like a friend. “Do you know why the Russians blew up a mall? Because a guy posted a video on Tik Tok. A boy showed that the weapons were behind the mall. And do you know how old that boy was?” He asks again and is observed by everyone present: “Only 19 years old.”
Think a bit: “So, if you put a photo of this place on the networks, you give us away and then they throw a bomb at us, that’s understandable. Also, the Russians are inside the city, spying, there are spies everywhere”.
Around noon on Friday, the official newspaper The Kyiv Independent, published the version that the Russians had entered kyiv through an area of the Obolon district. Clarín was in that same place, trying to obtain authorization to visit the Municipal Hospital, when the shots began to ring out again nearby.
Later, the same residents of Obolón explained that the area is full of snipers. Nobody wants to talk. No one wants to be photographed in the hot areas of kyiv. In the last 48 hours, more and more journalists have had problems at checkpoints or closed areas.
The main explanation for this is that the Russians exhausted their forces in the north, in the fighting of Irpin and Bucha, and are rethinking their way to enter the big city, even though Russia is hinting that it lowers its intentions in this “first stage”. from the war.
“How old do you think I am?”now asks the young man with the AK-47. He has it across his back, like a musician would carry his guitar. “24 years old,” he says and lights a cigarette. “And he comes to fight from Lviv a month ago, the first day, he just started everything.”
He looks relaxed, despite the noise that surrounds the scene. It’s a big soldier project and everyone around him seems to know it.