Clive Myrie: The Ukrainians I met are not about to give up

The BBC’s Clive Myrie, who has left Ukraine, reflects on the irrepressible locals he met in Kyiv – convinced they would defeat the Russians.

I couldn’t really see her face, but several doves were cooing at her feet. Every now and then a shower of birdseed dribbled from her hand. She was wearing a heavy looking gray coat that kept out the late morning winter chill. I motioned to my colleague, cinematographer David McIlveen, to try to photograph her – but she sensed his approach, emptied the brown paper bag of bird seed and quickly walked away.

It was the first time in 48 hours that I had left our accommodation – an underground car park in the heart of Kyiv that had been turned into a makeshift bomb shelter. A curfew was imposed over the weekend after Russian troops invaded. There was a real fear that foreign saboteurs were moving among the population and anyone caught out in the open would have been arrested.

You could see the nervousness on the faces of the soldiers and partisans manning the checkpoints, despite the black balaclavas protecting them from the cold. Her eyes told stories of apprehension, apprehension, concern and existential threat. Russian spies could plan routes for incoming troops, or smuggle weapons into the Ukrainian capital, or just be there to somehow sow discord among the common people in order to break local unity.

The city was awash with rumor and terror. Who is that in the air raid shelter next to you, who overhears your conversation in the bread line? It’s best to stay indoors and respect the curfew.

The woman feeding the pigeons would have spent the last two days in her own basement too and I found it interesting that she fed the pigeons first – as if nothing was wrong. An ordinary day outside, a little fresh air, with no death threats from above.

A few other people were standing on the streets, queuing in front of a supermarket that had little on its shelves. Most people were locked at home. Villages and towns across the country saw their disappearance as commoners descended into subterranean worlds of refuge.

Vladimir Putin claims to know what the more than 40 million inhabitants of this country want. A few days among these people would have told him a lot more than he seems to understand.

In an elegant block of flats in central Kyiv, an apartment has become a kind of shared apartment for young people who have just moved to the city off the shelf and need a place to sleep while they find their way around. It’s clean and tidy with a mattress for a sofa in the main room – but the paraphernalia of student life are still on display. There are several guitars lying around and posters on the wall. Giorgy, our local fixer and driver, introduces us to some of his friends. All are in their early 20s and have worked as waiters or attended college. Oleksiy, 22, a waiter at a local bar, also plays in a rock band.

Now everything is on hold. Maybe he has to fight the Russians.

“I’m willing to die for my country, for what I love,” he told me in perfect English. “Putin doesn’t understand that we don’t want his authority – his world. All of us here know what we want – the right to live our own lives, the right to choose who leads us. That is our right, not Moscow’s.”

I had met other reserve army volunteers who had volunteered to fight while I was in Ukraine. They all showed the same patriotism and love for their country that Vladimir Putin never thought possible. They were firm in their beliefs and confident that they would prevail – despite the greater numbers of the Russian military.

As he spoke to Oleksiy, there was a commotion outside and police sirens blared in the street below. A long convoy of Ukrainian military vehicles drove up the street, and bystanders applauded the troops. It was clear that the Kremlin thought these people would be intimidated by Moscow’s show of force, as Russian troops had been stationed on the Ukrainian border for several weeks to intimidate them.

No chance. These people will fight.

Teenage Russian conscripts in their tanks and armored personnel carriers who had crossed the border north, south and east quickly became disillusioned with Putin’s biased view of Ukraine. After the invasion, video footage surfaced of Ukrainians berating the foreign army, shouting at them “go home” and “we don’t want you here.”

And this happened even in the Russian-speaking parts of the Northeast. There were images of people lying on the street to block the movement of Russian tanks. Others threw bikes under tank tracks—there were no flowers or garlands to greet them. Images of Ukrainian men urinating on Russian vehicles and a dog slamming a hind leg on the tail fin of a rocket emerging from the ground went viral. Taking to Twitter, one person quipped, “Give piss a chance!”

Visiting the magnificent St. Sophia Cathedral – a stunning riot of frescoes and gold – I watched an interfaith prayer service for peace while war raged across the country. Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim – all were united. A little later, the Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyy appeared in a bulletproof vest and asked for divine advice. Four heavily armed soldiers from the Ukrainian army protected him. I asked him if belief supported Ukraine’s belief that they could defeat the world’s second largest army.

He spoke softly, unequivocally and with a clear gaze – just like the young Ukrainian reservists I had spoken to days earlier. “God is on our side,” he told me with conviction. “We will win.” And to make it clear, he repeated these words in Ukrainian: “My Vyhrayemo”.

Military chaplain Oleksandr Mishura also took part in the service. On his upper right arm he wore a yellow armband, the insignia of the volunteer brigades—or citizen soldiers. He said morale was high among the troops he served and the soldiers had no choice but to fight to defend and protect the country. He took my arm and looked straight at me. He shared a sentiment I suspect many in Ukraine believe: “We all know what the Bible says, when the enemy is evil, God will always intervene.”

Shortly before the end of my assignment in Kyiv, I began to think about the people I would leave to an uncertain fate. Among them were a mother and her 18-year-old daughter who shared our underground accommodation. One morning my daughter’s crying woke me up. She had learned that her father, who had lived near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, had apparently been injured by a group of Russian soldiers. They had searched his house looking for cigarettes and alcohol. The teenager feared the worst.

All day she tried to call her father, but he didn’t answer the phone. All of us at the shelter prayed that he was still alive. When word finally came from his neighbor that he was safe and unharmed, it felt like a small victory for all of us. I thought of the other inhabitants of the underground bunker. The woman with a very large white fluffy cat and the children running around playing games not noticing the madness of the adults above ground.

I am writing this from a hotel in Romania, having left Ukraine via Moldova a few days ago. I can’t get the image of the woman feeding the pigeons out of my head. She risked bombs and missiles to feed the pigeons. To me it represents strength and courage – the indomitability of an independent state, not the cowering fear of the colonized.