War in Ukraine: Citizens evacuate town of Irpin as homes are destroyed

 Ukrainian civilians, assisted by the country’s military, are evacuating the small city of Irpin, which sits just 20km (12 miles) north-west of Kyiv.

The route is a difficult one, with many having to travel by foot along shelled roads and damaged bridges.

Irpin has found itself on the frontline between Russian and Ukrainian forces over the past week.

Artillery and air strikes have caused severe damage in the area, with at least one attack leaving a residential tower block almost completely destroyed.

In recent days, trains have been transporting evacuees, mostly women and children, from Irpin on the outskirts of Kyiv into the capital.

Earlier this week, the shelling of a residential block in Irpin was captured in video footage.

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From Grozny to Aleppo to Ukraine, Russia meets resistance with more firepower

 

As I write this, the centre of Kyiv and much of its suburbs are largely untouched. Sirens and alerts punctuate the day.

Everyone here knows that could change, very quickly. By the time you read this, it might have.

Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, has already felt some of the force of the Russian way of war. So have Mariupol and other cities in the east.

Russia answers resistance with firepower. Rather than send in men to fight from house to house and room to room, their military doctrine calls for a bombardment by heavy weapons and from the air to destroy their enemies.

Kharkiv and the other cities and towns have suffered grievous damage, and as far as we know many civilian casualties. The seat of Kharkiv’s local government was badly damaged in a missile strike that was filmed. Russian President Vladimir Putin might be sending a message to Kyiv – look to the east, because this could happen to you.

The depressing conclusion I’ve drawn from other wars in which I have seen Russians in action is that it could get much worse.

‘The ground was shaking’

So far, Mr Putin has not given the order to inflict the kind of damage that Russian forces brought down on Grozny, when the Russian republic of Chechnya rebelled in the 1990s, and in Syria since Mr Putin intervened in force in 2015.

I covered the first Chechen war when it started in the winter of 1994-1995. Just as in Ukraine, the Russian army made serious military blunders in ground operations. Armoured columns were ambushed by Chechen rebels in narrow streets and destroyed. Many conscript soldiers did not want to fight and die.

Before the invasion of Ukraine, military analysts assessed that Russia’s forces were now much more professional. Perhaps they are, but Russia’s invasion has once again been slowed by logistical bottlenecks, tactical mistakes and terrified teenagers who had not been told they were going to war – as well as resistance as fierce as anything the Chechens offered in 1995.

Chechnya declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and in 1994 Russian forces invaded. The bombing of Grozny was intense

In the second Chechen war from 1999-2000, Russian forces again laid siege to Grozny, and intense fighting lasted weeks

Jeremy Bowen (left) with colleagues Scott Hillier and Steve Lidgerwood reported from Grozny in January 1995

In Chechnya, Russia’s answer was to use its firepower. In a few weeks, artillery and air strikes reduced the centre of Grozny, a typical concrete and steel Soviet city, to rubble. I was in Minutka Square, a centre of Chechen resistance, on a day when it was hit by repeated air strikes. Civilians were mostly in cellars, risking death every time they went out to find water or food.

In Minutka Square that day, Chechen fighters were killed by cluster bombs, and buildings set on fire. Twenty-four hours later, the entire main avenue of the city was hit by missile strikes and enveloped in smoke and flame. The ground was shaking where we were filming.

Overwhelmed from the air

The most devastated places I have seen in years of war reporting, apart from Grozny, were in Syria. The connection is the destructive power of the Russian military.

Mr Putin’s decision to intervene in Syria saved the regime of Bashar al-Assad and took a big step towards his objective of restoring Russia as a world power. Two decisive victories over rebels in Syria, vitally important for the regime, were delivered by the ruthless use of Russian firepower.

The first was in Aleppo at the end of 2016. The eastern side of the city, which had been held by a variety of rebel factions throughout the war, fell after it was pulverised by shelling and air strikes. The Assad regime did not need any encouragement to shell Syrians, but the Russians brought a much greater level of destructive power. Strategic bombers based at home and in Iran delivered devastating strikes.

The tactic used in Syria was to encircle and besiege rebel-held areas, pound them from the air and from artillery batteries, and in the end exhaust the defenders and any civilians who had not managed to escape. Many of them were killed.

In a devastated street in Aleppo in January 2017

In Eastern Ghouta in Syria in June 2018, with BBC cameraman Nik Millard

When I was able to drive through Eastern Aleppo a few weeks after it fell, destruction went on for mile after mile. I couldn’t see a building that was untouched. Entire neighborhoods were left in ruins. Streets were blocked with mountain ranges of rubble.

The same tactics worked in Eastern Ghouta, a string of rebel held towns and farmland on the edge of the Syrian capital. Its capitulation in 2018 was the end of the battle for Damascus, that had looked at first as if it could go the rebels’ way. That changed after the US decided in 2013 not to strike the Assad regime when it used chemical weapons in Douma, one of the area’s towns. The long fight turned decisively in the regime’s favour after Russia entered the war in 2015.

Eastern Ghouta’s defenders dug an underground tunnel city to escape the air strikes and shelling. But siege and overwhelming firepower wins battles. That is because defenders get killed and exhausted, and civilians, however defiant, are subjected to such fear and misery that they welcome the respite that surrender brings.

In Kyiv, one of the big questions on everybody’s minds is whether they are going to get the treatment meted out not only to Kharkiv, Mariupol and the rest, but also to Chechnya and Syria.

Will the sanctity of Orthodox shrines create the restraint that was absent in attacks on Muslims in Chechnya and Syria? Putin himself has written about Ukraine’s significance in Russia’s history. Will he be prepared to destroy Ukraine to regain it? If sanctions and Ukrainian resistance threaten his regime’s stability, will he take more extreme measures?

The record shows that the Russian military compensates for weaknesses in the capabilities of its ground forces by turning to the big guns. Ukrainians are praying that will not happen here.

Kharkiv residents told the BBC that attacks on civilian targets made them feel like they were living in hell

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War in Ukraine: BBC suspends its journalists’ work in Russia

 

The BBC is temporarily suspending its journalists’ work in Russia, in response to a new law which threatens to jail anyone Russia deems to have spread “fake” news on the armed forces.

BBC Director-General Tim Davie said the legislation “appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism”.

The Kremlin objects to the conflict being called a war, instead calling it a “special military operation”.

BBC News in Russian will still be produced from outside the country.

Access to BBC websites had already been restricted in Russia. News outlets Deutsche Welle, Meduza and Radio Liberty also had their services limited, Russia’s state-owned news agency RIA said.

Later on Friday, Canada’s public broadcaster and Bloomberg News said they too had temporarily halted reporting from Russia, and news channel CNN said it would stop broadcasting in the country.

And on Saturday, German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF announced they were stopping their reporting from Russia – as did Italy’s Rai

Responding to the legislation passed by the Russian authorities, BBC Director-General Tim Davie said: “It leaves us no other option than to temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation while we assess the full implications of this unwelcome development.

“Our BBC News service in Russian will continue to operate from outside Russia.

“The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs. I’d like to pay tribute to all of them, for their bravery, determination and professionalism.

“We remain committed to making accurate, independent information available to audiences around the world, including the millions of Russians who use our news services. Our journalists in Ukraine and around the world will continue to report on the invasion of Ukraine.”

Record numbers of people have read the BBC’s Russian language news website since the invasion, seeking up-to-date information on the conflict.

The announcements from global media outlets come a day after one of Russia’s last independent news outlets, TV Rain, stopped broadcasting after coming under pressure for its coverage of the invasion.

The channel ended its final broadcast by showing staff walking off set.

Russia’s telecommunications regulator had accused the channel of “inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, causing mass disruption of public calm and safety, and encouraging protests”.

“No to war,” said Natalia Sindeyeva, one of the channel’s founders, as employees walked out of the studio.

The channel then began playing footage of a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

The ballet was used in Soviet-era broadcasts to mark the death of leaders, and was also played during the 1991 coup that contributed to the end of the Soviet Union.

The station’s editor in chief, Tikhon Dzyadko, left Russia on Wednesday, saying it was due to concerns for his safety.

“The main problem is that we were covering Ukraine objectively, as professional journalists and covering from different sides. We had journalists going live and covering the situation,” Ekaterina Kotrik, TV Rain presenter and former head of news, told the BBC.

She had to leave Russia due to the new law which could lead to prison terms of up to 15 years for people who intentionally spread what the Kremlin terms “fake” information about Russia’s armed forces.

“Fifteen years in jail for just doing your job,” Ms Kotrik said. “It’s the end of democracy in Russia. Any freedom is lost.”

Radio station Echo of Moscow was taken off air on Tuesday. On Thursday it was shut entirely by its board of directors and on Friday it was reported by Russia’s Interfax agency that the lease at its office had been terminated and its website disabled.

Ekaterina Schulman is a political scientist who was presenting a programme on the station when it was taken off air.

“People like me might find ourselves with nowhere to work. Very soon there won’t be media outlets, or lecture halls or other platforms where we can talk to the public,” she told the BBC.

Russia’s state-controlled TV has depicted the war in a very different way to broadcasts seen around the rest of the world.

“Every deviation from the official narrative about this war is now punishable with jail,” Mikhail Fishman, an independent journalist and commentator who recently left Russia, told the BBC.

“Everyone I know in Russian independent journalism has already left Russia or is trying desperately to do so now.”

The newspaper Novaya Gazeta said in a tweet on Friday (in Russian) that it was removing material on the conflict, because of the threat of prosecution to journalists and other citizens disseminating information which differed from Russian defence ministry press releases.

The newspaper is run by Dmitry Muratov. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, along with Maria Ressa of the Philippines, for efforts to safeguard freedom of expression.

The crackdown on independent journalists comes as Russia’s economy has been hit by sanctions. Its currency, the rouble, has plunged in value, hitting the savings of citizens.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after it reportedly bombarded a large nuclear power station, causing a fire in a nearby building.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted the war in Ukraine is “going to plan”.

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