With a military airfield and control centre to defend, Vasylkiv’s mayor and populace are learning about war in real time
Natalia Balasynovych, the mayor of Vasylkiv, woke up at 5.13am last Thursday and thought there was a fireworks display outside.. Missiles were raining down on her town.
There have been surprises about who turned out to be the most resilient among her team of local administrators, now cast in the role of military organisers and local defenders. Also hit was a technical college on the main street, blowing a huge crater in the centre of the building, and tossing pipes and debris over a wide area.
On Monday, after a 39-hour weekend curfew, residents emerged to stock up on supplies, and there were long queues at pharmacies and supermarkets. Other shops remain closed. “So far, there has not been evidence of a Russian airborne assault on Vasylkiv, though Russian forces may have sent a ground force detachment there early on from the north,” said Michael Kofman, a military analyst who has been closely tracking the Russian assault.
Even now, part of her family lives in Belarus, and her cousin is a paratrooper in the Belarusian army. With Belarus edging closer to full participation in Putin’s war, she now faces the prospect that her own cousin could be fighting to take over her town.Photograph: Maksim Levin/Reuters On the way to meet the captured Russian, she drove past a checkpoint where a man was giving lessons in how to make molotov cocktails, the symbol of this new Ukrainian resistance.
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