Firefighters hose down burning debris in front of a damaged building following a rocket attack on the city of Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Allied Press' Central Otago bureau chief Jared Morgan called Ukraine home for nearly a decade. He talked to friends and former colleagues yesterday about their early alarm call as Russia invaded their country.
OPINION:
It was coming.
That is the belief of Ukrainians after weeks of warnings.
They say it has been coming for eight years.
At 4pm (NZ time) on Thursday it started.
Ukrainian forces battled Russian invaders on three sides after Moscow mounted an assault by land, sea and air.
It was 5am. Explosions, air raid sirens and fear dragged Ukrainians from their beds.
On the ground in the capital, Kyiv, there was less panic and more an attitude of "we told you so".
It was that way for weeks.
Now, they are fearful.
Russia seized Crimea and the Eastern Ukrainian region known as Donbas in 2014, displacing an estimated 800,000 people.
One of them, Stanislav Ostrovsky, a mechanical engineer, already displaced from Donetsk after the invasion of Eastern Ukraine, put it bluntly.
"I told you so.
"Now we just keep the gunpowder dry."
Others were looking for a safe haven.
Television producer Alla Stashchenko, working from Mexico, pleaded for people to evacuate families and her mother from Kyiv.
The sense of panic was palpable.
Elena Kosmenko, the manager of a travel company, said Ukrainians were stuck.
"Planes don't fly anymore — these bastards are trying to bomb our airports."
Oleksiy Petrenko said there was a clear threat from the Chernobyl exclusion zone being taken.
"They threaten to shell this nuclear power plant. Terrorism, as it is."
Journalist Alexander Kliemenov said the air raid sirens were the majority of people's alarms on Thursday morning not just in Kyiv but across the country.
"Blasts in the distance, military installations fired upon, troops crossing the border."
Like London in the Blitz, the main cities' metro systems have become a shelter, but with each dawn, the attacks intensify.
A senior doctor who had worked closely with the athletes warned they were 'at risk'.