Most of the citizens of Irpin, a once well-to-do commuter suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, have fled the Russian army’s bombardment. The streets are dotted with rubble where Grad missiles have burst open high-rise apartment blocks and modest wood and brick bungalows.
Sometimes the empty streets are so silent that a woodpecker’s tapping in a tall tree sounds more insistent than the distant guns.
But sometimes there is the roar of racks of Grad missiles and volleys of mortar shells being launched nearby.
It’s more than Mykola Pustovit, 69, can take. He bursts into tears as he and his wife start the long walk to find relative safety in Kyiv. They had hoped the frontline would move away from Irpin, “but now, after such bombing, it’s unbearable”.
In fact, the frontline has not shifted for days. By the reckoning of Ukrainian soldiers manning checkpoints in the town, maybe 20-30 percent of the district is in Russian hands. The next suburb, Bucha, a few hundred metres further north, is already in the hands of the invading Russian army and violence is never far away.
As AFP reporters crossed a makeshift wooden bridge into Irpin early on Sunday, Ukrainian forces were shipping the corpses of three of their comrades back out.
Later in the day, a car carrying American journalists came under fire near a Ukrainian checkpoint, killing film-maker Brent Renaud and wounding photographer Juan Arredondo.
Source: News365
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