Kyiv prepares for a gruelling siege

A BITTER FROST descended on Kyiv on the first morning of March, and the mood grew chillier, too. For five days the Ukrainian capital has held off Russia’s massively superior armed forces. But the enemy remains near the gates, and a vast column of armoured vehicles, stretched out over 40 miles (65km) and closing in from the north-west, suggests things are about to get much worse–though its progress is being hampered by logistical problems and perhaps by Ukrainian action. In the evening a missile hit a television tower in the north-west of the city, reportedly killing a family of five and taking some services temporarily off the air. The missile may also have damaged part of the nearby memorial to the victims of the Babi Yar massacre by the Nazis. The talk in town is that residents must prepare for a siege–perhaps for a nightmare on the scale of Aleppo in 2012-16 or even Leningrad, which held out for nearly 900 days against the Nazis in 1941-44, at a horrific cost in lives.

On the morning of March 1st President Volodymyr Zelensky announced he was putting an experienced soldier in charge of governing the capital. General Nikolai Zhernov, a veteran of the Donbas war in 2014, would secure supply lines, hospitals and basic services in the event that things get much worse, he said. Ukraine’s security services also issued new warnings to citizens of Kyiv, urging them to install apps to report on advancing forces. The state cyber agency said it was blocking Russian mobile numbers. It asked citizens to report any phone lost to the invaders to the phone companies for blocking.