3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News

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Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian

attack
By Jeremy Bowen

BBC News, Kyiv

17 hours ago

Russia-Ukraine war

GETTY IMAGES

When the Russian offensive started, as sirens sounded in Kyiv for the first
time some people here feared that the city might fall by the afternoon
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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News
time, some people here feared that the city might fall by the afternoon.

Reports were coming in of a long convoy of armour and heavy weapons

pushing down from the north-west. Military analysts had a high opinion of the
Russian army. It had, they said, been professionalised, with invaluable
experience of perfecting weapons and seasoning men in the war in Syria. The
tactical errors I had seen the Russians commit when they tried to crush a
rebellion in the republic of Chechnya in 1995 were, I was told, ancient history.

The consensus about the Ukrainian armed forces on the first day of the war
was that they were much stronger than they had been in 2014, when they
could not stop Russia seizing Crimea and establishing two breakaway enclaves
in eastern Ukraine. But Russia had the numbers and the firepower. The

Ukrainians, it was said, would rediscover the truth of an aphorism attributed to

Stalin: "quantity has a quality of its own."

The first two weeks of the war proved that those predictions were wrong. The
Russians blundered; the Ukrainians resisted. Around Kyiv the Russian advance
stalled. In the south, it was a different story. They worked steadily towards
opening a land corridor between Crimea and Moscow's enclaves in eastern
Ukraine.

But it has been clear from the outset that control of Kyiv is crucial to winning
arguments in politics as well as on the battlefield. While President Volodymyr
Zelensky's government holds the city, he can claim not to be defeated, and
President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin cannot claim victory.

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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News

The last couple of days have been bright and sunny, after more than a week of
thick cloud. That means satellites have a clear view of movements on the
ground. One conclusion is that the 40-mile Russian convoy north-west of Kyiv
is slowly dispersing and reorganising. The latest word from the US
Department of Defense is that the rear elements are catching up, but the
vehicles closest to Kyiv are not moving.

The fighting around Kyiv has been concentrated in the north-west and has
been going on since the first morning, when Russian airborne troops landed at
a cargo airport near Hostomel and Irpin, small commuter towns that evacuees
say are now badly damaged. They looked to be trying to secure a staging area
for a push into Kyiv. But Ukrainian troops stopped them.

In the last few days, I have seen more defenders moving forward to continue
the fight around Irpin and the Hostomel airport and heard steady artillery fire
from the Ukrainian side from gunlines concealed in belts of thick woodland.

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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News

The heavily contested north-west is just a 20-minute drive from the centre of
Kyiv, which has barely been touched, although sirens sound regular alerts.

In the week or so that I have been here the Ukrainians have improved their
physical defences, which in places barely existed. Checkpoints that were just a
few concrete blocks have become barricades. Across the city men have been
filling and positioning sandbags. Kyiv's metalworkers have been busy. At
strategic junctions, and on the dual carriageways that run out of Kyiv steel
anti-tank obstacles stand ready.

Kyiv is a grand city of broad, sweeping avenues, bisected by narrower streets

often paved with lumpy cobblestones. Many of the buildings have extensive
basements and cellars. Street fighting here, if it happened, could grind on for
months.
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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News

The city sprawls along both banks of the Dnieper, one of Europe's great rivers.
Docks and marinas leading off the river are still frozen. Crossing the water
under fire would be a formidable military undertaking. The bank on the west
side of the river, near the government buildings and the great cathedrals, is
steep and heavily wooded. Defenders would have many advantages.

But crossing the Dnieper might not be on Russia's agenda until it is able to
control both banks. One theory is that the stalled offensive from the west and
north-west is not just because of Ukrainian resistance and what appears to be
the Russian army's own badly handled logistics. A column coming from the
east has been moving slowly, and the generals might be waiting for it to catch
up.

BBC/JEREMY BOWEN

The Russians attempted to move a regiment of tanks into Kyiv's eastern

approaches on Thursday. They were mauled badly as they rumbled slowly
down a highway in broad daylight. Drone pictures showed that the tanks were
bunched together making easy targets for Ukrainian artillery or drones. It was
another tactical blunder for Moscow.

It is not clear whether Russia plans to encircle Kyiv or attempt to force a

surrender by thrusting into the centre with armour supported by infantry. The
choices are not great for them. Direct attacks have so far been stopped.
E i li bi i i h k
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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News
Encircling a big city might take too many men.

One possibility is that President Putin expected the rapid collapse of a

government that he has dismissed with contempt as a Nazi collaboration with
the west and did not think his soldiers would need to do either.

It is certain that Putin and his generals are reassessing, regrouping and will not
accept defeat. Putin's mission has been to restore Russia to what he believes is
its rightful place as a world power. In a country the size of Ukraine - only
Russia itself is bigger in Europe - victory in Kyiv is the most direct way for him
to declare mission accomplished.

Without a doubt the Russian armed forces have been operating at half power
and half speed. That is partly due to their own mistakes, and partly because

the Ukrainians are proving to be formidable, nimble opponents. The stalled

attacks around Kyiv have turned into a respite for the city's defenders,
allowing them time to dig to improve defences that were rudimentary, and
presumably to receive some of the increasingly sophisticated weapons that
NATO is bringing into Ukraine.

BBC/JEREMY BOWEN

A question that nags uncomfortably at the minds of many in Kyiv is whether

President Putin will conclude that the time has come to turn the deadliest
conventional weapons in Russia's arsenal against the city's defenders. So far
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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News
co e t o al eapo s uss a s a se al aga st t e c ty s de e de s. So a
that has not happened. If it does, many more people will die and terrible
damage will be done.

Some people here do not believe President Putin will hammer Kyiv in the way
that cities in eastern and southern Ukraine have been attacked. They argue
Putin will hesitate to destroy an ancient city which has been at the centre of
Russian culture, religion and history. Some of the same people also believed
Russia would not invade.

Others fear that if Russian infantry and armour are held up, Putin and his
generals will default to the tactics they are using in Mariupol in the south,
surrounding the city and attempting to break the will of its defenders with
artillery and air strikes. It is a method that worked well for the Russians in

Syria, and in the 1990s when Grozny, the capital of the breakaway Russian
republic of Chechnya, was flattened.

The next few weeks will be critical for the future of Kyiv, and for the wider war
over the future of Ukraine. If Russia cannot reactivate its attack on the capital,
its defenders will grow in confidence and the strength and the morale of
Russian forces, including conscripts, will take more blows.

If the Putin regime can find a way to end resistance here, the president will be
closer to achieving his war aim of ending Ukraine's independence. Forcing the
country back into Russia's orbit, in the face of what would most likely be a
NATO-backed insurgency, would be an altogether more difficult job.

War in Ukraine: More coverage

LIVE: Latest updates from on the ground

WATCH: On the front line with Ukrainian soldiers

IMAGES: Scale of destruction in Mariupol revealed

WAR CRIMES: Could Putin be prosecuted?

IN DEPTH: Full coverage of the conflict

More on this story

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3/12/22, 1:22 PM Ukraine war: Kyiv prepares for Russian attack - BBC News

Satellites show Russia convoy

regrouping near Kyiv
1 day ago

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