Here is my long promised story. Because of obvious reasons there will be not much of pictures. And this will be a short stories about some interesting and not-so-obvious facts.
Sooo. From what to start?
How I met the war(So true)I woke at 5.30 AM of February 24th because of sounds of explosions. I was not fully awakened and I lied in bed with thougths like "Omg, i hope this is storm, not
what_I_think_it_is". After 15 minutes I got out of my bed, went to my panorama window and saw some
Mordor-style horizon on the north. Then I had checked news before understood that it isn't a joke. A war
FINALLY started.
Yep, because of two month of unrest about main question
"Will there be war or not?" my first thought after accepting the fact was "Oh, FINALLY it happened!". At least i will not be thinking about
potential of war anymore
The same vibes were also between my friends, no panic, just accepting the fact and move forward.
And yeah, I was fully prepared for such scenario: I had (!) a gun (which i gave to my friend on frontline later), military equipment (yep, i gave it too), a lot of cash,
alert-backpacks, I knew safe place where i can take my relatives. Sometimes paranoia is for better , because a lot of my friends really do not know what to do.
The situation in Kyiv in the first days of warGENERAL(russian X-31P air-to-surface missile downed by ukrainian SAM at the morning of 24th of February)February 24 and February 25 was the hardest days, because people didn't know what will be next and how it all will end. I've heard a lot of coolstories, like
"Oh, this is just for 2-3 days, until russians will conquer all Ukraine territory and after that there will be order and the law" (LOL). Also, at first days Kyiv was heavily bombed and a lot of people who didn't run on 24th, after the first night understood that to stay in potentially besieged city is a bad idea .
Here is photo from my friend who lived at Poznyaki
I'm not sure what is this part of, maybe another russian cruise missile.
Many services (like Uber taxi) suspended their work, most of restaurants and bars did the same. Mostly because of the reason that many workers lived on the left side and all restaurants are on the right side of the city. And bridges was mostly impossible to pass.
(because of common services suspended their work it was impossible to repair or take out your car, so the guy just left his broken car on the street. In high resolution it can be seen yellow "SOS" on rear glass of the car) As you can see, only one side on Northern Bridge worked, and all cars and people were heavily checked by army and police. When I tried to pass through this bridge, soldiers had checked my passport, pockets, backpack, asked few cunning question (To know did i was really from Kyiv or not)
In first 2-3 days public transport worked, but in the next days it also suspended it's own work (as I know)
SUBWAYSubway worked at the same time as the only arteria which connect different areas of the city and as a shelter. At every station only one entrance with a lot of armed police worked and if you wanted to enter, police would check your ID, all your backpacks, pockets and may ask you some specify questions.
Inside of subway one line is worked (train moved in one side and then to another) and the second line served as a shelter with a trains where you can live as long as you want. Here is how it looked:
Also, a lot of people lived on the station itself in tents.
Here is a map of Kyiv subway in the first month of the war:
FOODWith food things happened to be really funny:
While there were empty shelves with some cheap stuf, all expensive food was at it's place in great numbers. Hamon, oysters, salmon, expsnive chocolate shrimps, lobsters, snails, crayfish. Yeah, crayfish:
(Screenshot from video sent to me by my friend Kvanko. As you see, it was a horrible death )What I did during the warFirstly, take my relatives to safe place outside the Kyiv.
Secondly, went to territorial defence near safe place, but it happened to be really lame, it was more about standing on blockposts than something really useful. And I was the only guy who know some basic tactic skills and medicine. So i left this guys (I was able to do that since i didn't sign anything by the time) and went to Kyiv.
Yeah, because of first two points, I've lost needed time to be drafted. I came to Kyiv at 2nd of March and by that time they didn't accept any new people (because of a lot of volunteers)
So, I started to volunteer. Since I have my own tactical equipment store, I gave everything with a 50 % discount (zero interest) and start to buy equipment outside of Ukraine (in German and Poland mostly).
(this is the second consignment of military equipment. As you can see, this is mostly high tech thermal vision. Thanks to one good user of Bitcointalk!)Small results of my work:
Translation:
Pointing those to whom you help But this story I will tell you tomorrow (or later, ha ha)