The country's airports have all been closed since February 24.
It is therefore necessary to cross the border between Poland and Ukraine by road on Friday 11 March.
After the Hrebenne border post stand the first checkpoints, where armed Ukrainian civilians monitor the comings and goings of vehicles and sometimes check identities.
It remains 70 kilometers to reach the city of Lviv – still spared by the conflict at that time – where most Western embassies have withdrawn.
At the station of this "cultural capital" of Ukraine, signs "free buses to Poland", vestiges of the scenes of panic from the first week of the conflict, are still visible.
In front of the National Opera, families take pictures.
On the walls, posters encourage citizens to resist the Russian invasion.
Alcohol is prohibited and the curfew begins at 10 p.m.
#Ukraine️ On war posters, in the beautiful city of #Lviv with an Austrian and Polish past, #Russia is a bear with broken knees or a two-headed imperial eagle with severed heads pic.twitter.com/RacF924ybO
— David Gormezano (@dgormezano) March 12, 2022
From Lviv to Kyiv
On the road to the capital, most gas stations are stocked with fuel.
Trucks and vehicles cross without incident the center of the country, these Ukrainian "black lands", breadbasket of Europe.
Approaching kyiv, we join a road along the Dnieper, the great river that crosses Ukraine from north to south.
There, the traffic is rarefied, the checks at the roadblocks are much more insistent, the inhabitants fearing infiltrations of Russian agents.
Any unknown face or vehicle looks suspicious.
In a gloomy atmosphere, we enter the Ukrainian capital.
Concrete blocks and anti-tank devices block the highways and the large deserted avenues.
"Putin is the devil"
Sunday March 13, the capital wakes up in an icy silence.
A few faithful attend mass at the Saint-Michel-au-Dôme-d'Or monastery.
Names and portraits of Ukrainian fighters who have died in Donbass since 2014 cover the walls surrounding the building in places.
Metropolitan Epiphanius, Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, tells us that he prayed for those who are bombed, for those in the shelters and for the salvation of the country.
He repeats that Vladimir Putin is the embodiment of the "devil" and that this war is nothing but a "confrontation between good and evil".
Bishop Epiphane Doumenko, Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, celebrates Sunday Mass in kyiv on March 13, 2022. © David Gormezano, France 24
A little earlier in the morning, the Ukrainian authorities announced that in Lviv, a base used for joint military exercises between Ukrainian and NATO forces had been bombed overnight.
By attacking western Ukraine for the first time, Russian forces demonstrate that they can target any location in the country.
"I know that tomorrow there may be no more water or electricity"
Monday, March 14, in the streets of kyiv, rare passers-by are queuing in front of pharmacies and supermarkets that are still open.
We meet Yuri, who contemplates the city from the balcony of his apartment, located on the 13th floor.
His wife and daughter fled to Sweden.
Mobilizable like all men from 18 to 60 years old, he explains to us that "the war will be long because Putin hates the Ukrainians".
Every morning, Yuri comes to the terrace of his building to make sure that kyiv hasn't fallen.
© David Gormezano, France 24
In this huge tower in the south of the city, only a few families remained.
According to the municipality, almost half of the inhabitants have left Kyiv.
In another district of the capital, we come face to face with a young man, Edward, suitcase in hand and tears in his eyes, who explains to us that he wants to go to France.
Edward leaves kyiv and swells the ranks of millions of Ukrainians who seek refuge in neighboring countries, March 14, 2002. © David Gormezano, France 24
On the threshold of the house he has just left await us four women living in expectation of the great catastrophe which they think is imminent: massive bombardments or the encirclement of the city by Russian troops.
They sleep in the basement.
Natalia, whose companion is fighting in Mariupol with the Ukrainian army, confides to us her feeling of rage but also her certainty that Ukraine will win the war.
>> To read: "In a city under Russian fire, the inhabitants of kyiv hold their breath"
"I broke up with my Russian family"
Tuesday morning, apartment buildings were hit, as the day before, by Russian strikes inside the perimeter of the city.
Former boxer Vitali Klitschko, mayor of kyiv, arrives on the scene, bulletproof vest on his back.
"It's a difficult and dangerous moment," he said as the firefighters finished putting out the fire.
Surrounded by journalists and frightened passers-by, the emergency services extracted four bodies from the building.
Not far from there, several buildings were damaged by a powerful explosion.
The windows were shattered and residents threw debris, furniture or destroyed door frames out of the windows.
On the eighth floor, Nina, a well-made-up old lady, has packed her suitcase and is waiting for her son-in-law to leave her apartment, which has become uninhabitable.
Nina, retired, leaves her devastated apartment in kyiv and wants to join her daughter in Poland, March 15, 2022. © David Gormezano, France 24
Born in St. Petersburg, the daughter of a soldier in the days of the Soviet Union, she doesn't have enough harsh words for Russia.
"I hate them, they are hordes of savages. I now feel Ukrainian," she says.
kyiv is placed under curfew for 36 hours;
residents are prohibited from leaving their homes, except to reach a shelter.
“We have tanks, artillery, ammunition”
When Moscow launched its "special operation" in Ukraine, the Russian military immediately attempted to storm the Ukrainian capital by seizing Hostomel airport and sending armed elements into the city.
After fierce resistance, the Ukrainian army pushed them back;
for days, bloody battles raged in the communes bordering kyiv.
In Irpin in particular, but also in Bucha or Brovary.
It is on this front, north of kyiv, that we are going on Thursday 17 March.
The 72nd Mechanized Brigade has state-of-the-art weaponry to fend off Russian tanks.
© France 24
02:34
Our military guide asks us not to take any images that could reveal the precise location of the trenches, bunkers and other lines of defense that we are going through.
Along the way, we discover dozens of empty cases of anti-tank missiles on the roadside, including the famous Javelins, "made in the USA", which have become symbols of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion.
[INFOWAR] Meme from the first hours of the conflict, the Saint Javelin, supplied by the English to Ukraine before the start of hostilities and having apparently made it possible to inflict painful damage on the Russian armored weapon.
pic.twitter.com/wFGrGAmhgi
— djonne mcfly #СдаваУкраїні 🇺🇦 (@DjonneMcfly) February 25, 2022
At the end of the day, the Ukrainian authorities accuse the Russian troops of having bombarded and destroyed the theater of Mariupol, where 500 to 1,200 civilians, including many children, are said to have taken refuge.
A week later, the human toll of this attack is still unknown.
"I want to do my job"
In kyiv, localized explosions have not ceased.
But little by little, the inhabitants seem to get used to the wait, to the anxiety.
In a supermarket, employees are busy stocking the shelves.
Among them, Galyna tells us that she "swarms" to come to work, because she has known "her" clients for a long time, that they need her and that she feels safer at work than At her place.
Aged about sixty, she seems to have seen others and hopes that peace will come.
The accesses to the south of the city remain open to traffic and the capital does not suffer from a food shortage, except for bread, which is always a little difficult to find.
>> To read: "In kyiv, mutual aid and solidarity to resist at all costs"
Business leaders participate in their own way in the war effort, like this boss who converted his industrial paint company into a logistics platform at the service of combatants.
>> To see: "In kyiv, the inhabitants join the resistance for their survival"
Ultranationalists with a sulphurous reputation
Since the Maidan revolution and the outbreak of the war in Donbass, Ukrainian ultranationalist groups have been viewed with suspicion by the West and branded as Nazis by the East.
For Moscow, their existence alone justifies the invasion of Ukraine.
The most famous of these groups, the "Azov Regiment", is integrated into the Ukrainian army and is currently fighting Russian troops in Mariupol.
For our part, we meet the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (Oun), which we follow in training in the woods around kyiv, guided by Oleg Magdych, a former pastor supervising the unit of young volunteers.
03:17
Blow up the Kremlin, like Tom Cruise in "Mission Impossible 4"
As the temperatures warm and spring is on its way, the meeting with a small theater troupe quickly took on the appearance of a reunion of friends.
Jokes and great bursts of laughter erupt before tragedy takes over.
The Russians are "murdering" the country and it's time for solidarity and combat, until the final victory, assert Alex and his thirty-something friends.
The history of Ukraine and its encroaching neighbor is littered with corpses and atrocities, they add, regretting that Europe did not come sooner to regard Russia as a mortal enemy.
Three weeks of war have definitively swept away all forms of pacifism.
>> To read: "In kyiv, the entry into war of the small theater of Alex and his friends"
Leaving Kyiv
Monday, March 21, the capital wakes up to discover images of "Retroville", a brand new shopping center completely destroyed by a powerful Russian strike.
The explosion was heard throughout the city and caused at least eight deaths without it being possible to determine with precision whether the victims were civilians or soldiers.
The Russian military says this fashionable shopping center served as an arms and ammunition depot.
The Ukrainian capital has been holding its breath for days and the threat is getting even closer.
Before leaving the city, we meet in front of the station a former member of the Foreign Legion and a French military orderly who have come to enlist with the Ukrainian army.
#Ukraine At #Kiev station this morning, brief meeting with two volunteers who came to sign a commitment with the Ukrainian army.
"Malachenko" is from Luxembourg and a former legionnaire.
Boris is French and a military nurse.
"We came to defend our values" pic.twitter.com/yuLiwRyiIZ
— David Gormezano (@dgormezano) March 21, 2022
Scrutinized by the whole world, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict raises the specter of a third world war.
For their part, the inhabitants of kyiv are preparing for a new curfew of 36 hours, torn between the fear of a long dirty war and the irreducible conviction that Ukraine will come out of it.
This report was produced from March 11 to 21, 2022 with James André, Jonathan Walsh, Oleksii Gordieiev, Natalia Parubocha and all the France
24 teams.
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