Flames and smoke rise from a fire following a Russian attack in Kharkov, Ukraine, on Friday. The nights are spent crammed underground by Russian strikes hitting their besieged city in ruins. The hours of the day are dedicated to the hunt for drinking water and the danger of standing in line for the little food available as it rains shells and bombs. This is what he now lives for in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine where death is everywhere. It is not – yet – as synonymous with horrific human suffering as the dusty southern city of Mariupol became in the 31 days since Russia invaded Ukraine. But equally besieged, besieged and pounded from afar by Russian troops, the remaining Chernihiv residents are terrified that with every explosion, bomb and body found on the streets, they will be caught in the same macabre trap of inevitable assassinations. “In the basements at night, everyone is talking about one thing: Chernihiv is becoming the next Mariupol,” said Ihar Kazmertsak, a 38-year-old linguist. He spoke to the Associated Press on his cell phone amid intermittent beeps signaling that his battery was running low. The city is without electricity, running water and heating. In pharmacies, the lists of drugs that are no longer available are growing day by day. Kazmerchak starts his day in long queues for drinking water, with 10 liters per person. People come out with empty bottles and buckets for filling when water trucks go around. “The food is over and the bombing and the bombing is not stopping,” he said. On Wednesday, Russian bombs exploded on the Chernihiv main bridge over the Dessna River on the road to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. On Friday, artillery shells made the remaining footbridge impassable, cutting off the last possible route for people to leave or food and medical supplies to enter. Refugees from Chernihiv who escaped the siege and arrived in Poland this week spoke of widespread and terrible disaster, with bombs leveling at least two schools in the city center and strikes also hitting stadiums, museums, kindergartens and many homes. They said that with utility companies stalling, people were taking water from Desna to drink and that strikes were killing people while waiting in line for food. Volodymyr Fedorovych, 77, said he escaped shortly after a bomb fell on a line of bread in which he had been standing a few moments earlier. He said the blast killed 16 people and injured dozens, blowing hands and feet. The siege is so intense that some of those trapped can no longer muster the strength to fear, Kazmerczak said. “The destroyed houses, the fires, the corpses in the streets, the huge aircraft bombs that did not explode in the yards no longer surprise anyone,” he said. “People are just tired of being scared and they don’t always go underground.” With the invasion in its second month, Russian forces have seemingly stalled on many fronts and are even losing ground previously seized by Ukrainian counterattacks, including Kiev. The Russians attacked the capital from the air, but did not capture or encircle the city. US and French defense officials say Russian troops appear to have taken up defensive positions outside Kyiv. However, as Russia continues to strike and encircle civilian populations, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the north to Mariupol in the south, Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday they could not trust Russian military statements on Friday suggesting the Kremlin planned to focus its remaining power on destroying the entire eastern Donbass region of Ukraine from Ukrainian control. The area has been partly controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. “We can not believe the statements from Moscow because there are still many inaccuracies and lies in this regard,” Markian Lubkivskyi, an adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister, told the BBC. “That’s why we understand his goal. (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is still the whole of Ukraine. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz has expressed hope that Putin may pursue some sort of “exit strategy that saves the face.” “Certainly Russia has not achieved its goals. “It has not occupied Kyiv, it has not changed the government of Ukraine,” Pridax told the BBC. “And this is only due to the fact that the Ukrainian army is doing so well.” The British Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that it does not expect a postponement for the citizens of the bombed cities of Ukraine soon. “Russia will continue to use its heavy firepower in urban areas as it seeks to reduce its own already significant losses, at the cost of further civilian casualties.” said the British ministry. Earlier bombings of hospitals and other civilian areas, including a theater in Mariupol where Ukrainian authorities said a Russian airstrike was believed to have killed about 300 people last week, had already sparked war crimes allegations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appearing on video at the Doha Forum in Qatar, on Saturday compared the destruction of Mariupol with the destruction of Syria and Russia in the city of Aleppo. And he warned that people beyond Ukraine could find food shortages if the invasion did not stop. “Russian troops are mining fields in Ukraine, blowing up agricultural machinery, destroying the fuel reserves needed for sowing. Our ports are closed. Why are they doing this? ” Zelensky asked. “Our state will have enough food. “But the lack of exports from Ukraine will hit many nations in the Islamic world, Latin America and other parts of the world.” The invasion has driven more than 10 million people from their homes, almost a quarter of Ukraine’s population, and of those, more than 3.7 million have fled the country altogether, according to the United Nations. Thousands of civilians are believed to have lost their lives. In Chernihiv, hospitals are no longer operating and residents are cooking over fireplaces in the streets because the power has been cut off. Chernihiv Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko said more than half of the city’s 280,000 residents had fled amid relentless attacks. Russian forces, he said on Ukrainian television, “are deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure – schools, kindergartens, churches, apartment buildings, and even the local soccer field.” It was impossible to count the dead, but Atroshenko estimated the number was “in the hundreds”. Located just 70 kilometers from the border with Belarus on the road to Kyiv, Chernihiv was attacked in the early days of the war and was surrounded by Russian troops this month, but its defenders have so far prevented the occupation. “Chernihiv has become a symbol of the Russian army’s failed blitzkrieg, in which the plan was to occupy the city in one day and move on to Kyiv,” said Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military analyst at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank. Ever since a Russian bomb struck a Stalin-era cinema next to his 12-story apartment building, Kazmerczak spent his nights in a bomb shelter. A Russian rocket also destroyed the hotel near his home. “The walls were shaking so much,” he said. “I thought my house would collapse every minute and I would be left under the rubble.”
