When war is imminent, emotions get mixed up.

Maria Symtschytsch, her husband Volodymyr and their three children have had this experience in the past few days.

Russia is massing soldiers around Ukraine.

Should President Putin's ground troops advance from the north, for example from the territory of their ally Belarus, past the contaminated zone of Chernobyl, they would reach the capital Kiev after about eighty kilometers.

Gerhard Gnauck

Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.

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Obolon is a district in northern Kiev, where the tanks would hit the capital.

It is known for the beer of the same name brewed here.

This is where the Symtschytsch family lives.

She owns a condominium in an eight-storey block of flats built in 1978.

Son Ivan is already grown, Solomiya is nine, Marko is seven years old.

The black cat Warwara looks young, but is already 13.

During this week, the children of the family made new experiences.

Her mother Maria, called Mascha, works as a photographer for international picture agencies.

Now she sat down and said: "War or no war, that was the big topic this week, also for the children.

Yesterday Marko came home and announced with conviction: Putin will not attack.

He'll get tired, he'll get stuck in the mud.

Solomiya was more skeptical and at the same time more specific.

She said: When we're in the bunker, we're not allowed to scream.

Because if you scream, you use up more oxygen.”

This week, the children in Kiev, a city of three million, had to get to know bunkers.

They weren't enthusiastic, at least that's what their mother reports.

"Marko said: There's a lot of old furniture in there." Even finding the bunker is difficult.

After all, the city administration has published a bunker map on its website.

Small red houses flicker on the screen, one every few hundred meters.

Each one represents a bunker.

This is often on the ground floor or basement of a block of flats, but many are locked.

“Who has the key in an emergency?” Masha asks.

She does not know.

Much has been prepared for these days of war danger, but in the end not everything.

Volodymyr, called Vova, 46 years old, is the head of marketing for a company.

He found information on the Internet from a volunteer group that gives instructions on how to behave in the event of war.

Masha: “We discussed it with the mothers at school while the boys were playing football.

So: Make copies of the most important documents and keep them waterproof.

Withdraw plenty of money.

Put a piece of paper with the parents' telephone numbers and address in the children's jacket pockets.

And now I've always filled up the car with fuel."

"Bomb alert!

get your kids"

Millions of Ukrainians have already had a taste of worse: hundreds of anonymous bomb threats have just flooded the country.

Masha says: “Suddenly the teacher calls: Bomb alert!

Please come and pick up your children, we have gathered them on the sports field.

Please keep as far away from the building as possible!

My God, what a crowd it was on the sports field until I found Marko!"

If the worst comes to the worst, the Symtschytsch family's motto is: the wife and children drive in the car towards the Polish border to visit relatives.

The old cat Warwara has to go too.

She has a kidney problem.

"That's why I give her dialysis two or three times a week," says Masha and smiles.

In the next room, the needle needed for this is hanging on the bedpost.

Volodymyr, on the other hand, wants to stay.

When Ukraine turned its back on Russia in the pro-European Maidan revolution eight years ago, he threw stones at the barricades.

Now he's a reserve officer, and if war really comes and conscription comes with it, he'll turn himself in.