Ukrainian Vladyslav Tynok remains in Kyiv and he has no plans to leave. 

”There is no place in Ukraine where the Russian ballistic missiles can’t reach so there is no safe place” he tells Swedish Tidningen Global Friday evening. 

By Bella Frank

UKRAINE | It is 8 pm on Friday night. Vladyslav Tynok is somewhere in Kyiv with the lights turned off. The darkness a safety precaution as he and others know that Russian troops are drawing closer. During the day there have been reports about battles in the northern outskirts of the capital and even though they don’t seem to have reached the city centre there can be Russian troops in civilian clothes about. So people sit in the dark. When the sirens sound he goes below to the basement. It is not a proper shelter but is below ground.

”Some people don’t have access to a basement so lots of people have gone to the metro stations and stay there all night. Some have even been there for days. It is hard to imagine that people have to live in metro stations in 2022. It is like a science fiction novel” Vladyslav Tynok says. He is a Ukrainian working for a company involved with a Swedish Ukrainian technological project and can therefore speak Swedish. He is also very grateful for the help that Sweden has given Ukraine in different forms of projects over the years. 

”Our real partners that we can always rely on are the Swedes” he says, but adds that he wishes for more sanctions from the EU, including excluding Russia from the global interbank payments system SWIFT.

Shortage of drinking water

He explains there is already a shortage of drinking water, that there are queues to all types of shops, not to mention petrol stations. Many petrol stations are out of fuel or have limited the number of liters a person can buy. And that is after queuing for hours. The line of cars going out of Kyiv are still massive. 

Vladyslav Tynok tells Tidningen Global that the sirens are somewhat quieter in the evening and early night, only to start again around four in the morning. After that the sirens go off every three hours or so. He wants to make sure the outside world understands that the Russian propaganda, that when the Russian president Vladimir Putin speaks of a ”special operation” is just that, propaganda. He worries that people may believe the disinformation spread by Russian state-run media.

”It is important Swedes read the truth. This is a total invasion and goes on across all of Ukraine, and right now there are intensive battles in the Kyiv region”. He says that Putin wants to install a puppet government: ”What Putin wants to achieve is a new government in Ukraine so we give up all ambitions of joining NATO, that we stop turning to the West.”

 And Vladyslav Tynok warns, as many experts and commentators have this past week, that Ukraine is not necessarily the only target that Putin has set his eyes on.

”This is not simply a war between Ukraine and Russia, it is a battle between good and evil. He is out of his mind and there is no guarantee that other countries are not in danger after Ukraine.”

”He wants to recreate the Russian Empire”

In Vladimir Putin’s speech on Monday, the one which preceded his recognition of the Ukrainian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, he spoke among other things about the collection of laws on which the dissolution of the Soviet Union was based were illegitimate. Something other former Soviet republics considers yet another threat from the Russian leader against their national integrity. 

”Putin is trying to recreate the Russian Empire, he is crazy. One of the more dangerous situations that is evolving right now is the fact that Russian troops have taken Chernobyl and that is a catastrophe that will also affect other countries” he says but relishes in the news about Russian anti-war protests:

”W are all pleasantly surprised, it was great to hear about the protests”.

To the question whether he have plans on leaving Kyiv he replies ”no”.

”I am planning on staying, the Russian missiles can reach all places in Ukraine” Vladyslav Tynok says and adds that there is no secure place in the country, just before he gets a message about explosions nearby and has to run to the basement. 

An hour later he writes a message about explosions being heard clearly from the outskirts of Kyiv. ”I would say that the Russians may try to take the government premises tonight” he finishes.