Russia invades Ukraine, protesters look to cross Cook straight and phase 3 of our Omicron response is here in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
New Zealanders in Ukrainians have suffered a fitful night's sleep and today are still struggling to comprehend the Russian invasion which one former Kyiv citizen says mirrors Adolf Hitler's start to World War II.
As the world condemns Russian President Vladimir Putin's "brutal act of war" and Ukraine pleads for outside help, anti-war protests are being planned across New Zealand today and across the weekend, calling for solidarity, peace, and condemnation of Russia's invasion.
The Ukrainian community will be protesting in front of the Russian embassy today at 1pm. They would appreciate any support. Please spread the word.
Kiwi photo-journalist Tom Mutch, who has been in Ukraine for over a month, said the past 18 hours have been "the craziest day in my life, or that of anyone else here".
He had heard unconfirmed reports that Russia was going to make an assault on Ukraine about 4am local time yesterday.
Later he ventured up a hill which gave a vista across the city where he could see plumes of smoke rising from where missiles had landed, including one which had landed "basically smack bang in the centre of the city".
A large-scale battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces for an airbase on the northern outskirts of Kyiv had been ongoing, which Mutch says will be used to bring in more soldiers and supplies as the invasion ramps up.
Fears the Russians will besiege the capital are rising and many locals have taken to the roads to try to escape before the exit routes are cut off.
An explosion in Kyiv yesterday sent from the Ukrainian President's office to CNN. Photo / Supplied
Mutch says he's taking things "not a day at a time, but an hour at a time, 10 minutes at a time".
"I would like to stay and report it out," he says.
"I've been here for a while and it's where the centre of the world's attention is.
"If we start getting serious, serious rocket strikes or air strikes in the centre of Kyiv and it turns into ugly guerrilla warfare, I probably will try and high-tail it, but who knows if that will even be an option at that stage."
Yana Khorozova grew up in Pripyat, founded in 1970 as a type of closed town in the Soviet Union to serve the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant where both her parents worked.
But when the worst nuclear disaster in history happened there in 1986, they fled to Kyiv where her parents still live.
Now based in New Zealand, she got a call from them at 5pm NZ time after they'd woken up to explosions and "rockets flying past".
Yana Khorozova (left), Liza Khorozova and Anatoly Khorozov at a Ukrainian community gathering in 2020. Photo / Supplied
Khorozova has been extremely shaken by events and feels "helpless" watching things unfold from the other side of the world.
"I still think I will wake up tomorrow morning and it will have just been a bad dream," she says.
Family and friends are holding tight but have evacuation bags packed and by the door if they hear sirens to head for bomb shelters.
"It's surreal that it's happening," says Khorozova's 21-year-old daughter Liza, who was born in Kyiv and emigrated to New Zealand before her second birthday.
"We all thought it was empty-threats and bluffs from Mr Putin as a way to scare the Ukrainian citizens. But now it's so real, lives are being lost."
Kyiv-born Michael Lidski, who left the crumbling Soviet Union in 1990, spent a sleepless night in Christchurch messaging friends and family in his homeland.
"They are preparing for the worst," says the 60-year-old sales consultant who has lived in Christchurch since 2004.
"They are preparing for evacuation and stocking up on canned food, drugs if the pharmacies cannot open, getting paperwork in order, and being ready if they have to pack and run. Hopefully that won't happen, we just don't know yet."
His contacts all heard explosions which they believed were being targeted on military installations and airports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's moves closely resemble Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany seizing part of Czechoslovakia ahead of WW2 "under a similar pretext and none of the Western powers did much about it", says Lidski, who is helping organise a peaceful protest at Christchurch's Cathedral Square from midday tomorrow.
"Any person with that sort of psychology takes that [non-intervention] as a weakness and a vulnerability to be exploited and in that case, Putin is no different from Hitler, he is doing exactly the same thing and that is what gets me worried," he says.
"It's a very tough situation because you don't want to start a third world war unless you absolutely have to and the big question for me sitting here is, where do you draw the line? How far would you let him go until you start responding? Would it be Ukraine? Would it Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland?
"[Putin] has openly declared he wants to restore the Russian empire to its former glory, which sounds ridiculous in our time – we are not in the Middle Ages. You don't expect France to conquer Belgium just because people there speak French. But that is the major problem."
Anti-war protests have broken out across Russia including hundreds gather in downtown Moscow.
We are in downtown Moscow where hundreds are protesting against the Ukraine invasion. Arrests. A large police presence. It takes a special kind of bravery to protest in Putin’s Russia - especially on the day he sends his country to war. pic.twitter.com/zDJEEKU03m
And Ukrainians from across New Zealand will be holding peaceful protests in the major centres today and over the weekend.
At 1pm today, the Wellington Ukrainian Community will be protesting outside the Russian Embassy in Wellington. There are other protests planned for midday tomorrow at Christchurch's Cathedral Square, Dunedin's Lower Octagon, and Aotea Square by the Auckland Town Hall at midday on Sunday.
Yurko Gladun, chairman of the Northern region Ukrainian Association of New Zealand, said like many Ukrainians, he cannot believe it is truly happening.
"You cannot imagine and you cannot believe that in the 21st century this is possible," he said.
"This is over 70 years after the bloody World War [II]."
Gladun said he has found himself asking why this is happening to his country.
"Ukraine was a territory that suffered the most during the World War [II], the most and in the First World War ... all the killing happened and now again and you just ask why," Gladun said.
Gladun said Ukrainians who live in New Zealand predominantly come from the eastern parts of Ukraine, including Kyiv and Kharkiv, which have been hit.
"There are lots of guys here and it's like pulling a truck right over somebody."
While the casualties are not yet known, Gladun believes it will be a "humanitarian catastrophe".
"I know after eight years of war, Ukrainians know who their enemies are, they will fight, we will fight eye and tooth and that means there will be heaps of casualties, thousands," he said.
