“We woke up with a start at 5 a.m. There was such a violent explosion.” – BILD reporter Paul Ronzheimer after another rocket night in the heavily contested Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Day 20 of Putin’s merciless war of aggression against Ukraine: once again, the people of Kiev have woken up to new devastation. A series of violent explosions rocked the city early Tuesday morning. At least three powerful detonations were heard; an AFP journalist saw a column of smoke rising over the city.
Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko posted a photo on Twitter showing a damaged block of flats with smoke billowing out. “The Podil district of Kyiv is a place to drink coffee and enjoy life,” Vasylenko wrote. “Not any longer longer. 30 minutes ago (Podil) was hit by explosives.”
Foto: STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAINE/via REUTERS
” data-zoom-src=”https://bilder.bild.de/fotos/ueber-opfer-ist-bisher-nichts-known-doch-das-wohnhaus-im-district-podil-ist-durch-den- don’t attack-325b01c4dfad43d6b82163692b01861a-79455658/Bild/4.bild.jpg”/> So far nothing is known about victims. But the residential building in the Podil district is no longer habitable due to the attackFoto: STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAINE/via REUTERS
Photo: THOMAS PETER/REUTERS
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Rockets instead of peaceful life – and yet BILD reporter Paul Ronzheimer reports of a kind of “cruel normality”. As he describes the destruction, residents of the bombed home clear debris from their damaged balconies; A mobile task force routinely documents a crater that one of the rockets made in the ground in front of the house.
Ronzheimer: “People seem to be getting used to this war. The people who used to go into the subway shafts in the first few days have got used to it a bit.”
But the noose is slowly but steadily tightening: Putin’s troops are still in the process of encircling the city.
Half of the once three million inhabitants are still in Kyiv. You can now only leave the city in a southerly direction. The northeast and northwest suburbs are heavily contested. An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky recently said that Kyiv was preparing for a “fierce defense”.
A foreign journalist was killed for the first time on Sunday in the suburb of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv. The 50-year-old US journalist was killed by gunfire in a car, and a US colleague and the Ukrainian driver were injured. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured in one of the suburbs on Monday. According to BILD information, Hall will survive the attack.