GROZNY OPTIONUkrainians Fear Putin Has Chosen 'Grozny Option'
“Grozny” is on the lips of many Ukrainians in the port city, a reference to the near destruction of the Chechen capital in late 1999 to early 2000, when Putin was prime minister and in the process of succeeding Boris Yeltsin as president.
Larysa left Kharkiv three days ago with her 9-year-old daughter, and trauma is etched across her face. Her jitteriness suggests she is suffering shellshock, and she is already missing her husband who decided to stay and fight.
Her name means citadel but her high-rise apartment in Ukraine’s second largest city — the scene of some of the most brutal fighting since Russia’s invasion — did not feel like a fortress.
Shelling nearby and the impact of rockets and missiles rocked the building and shattered windows.
“The Russians don’t care what they hit. We sheltered in the basement,” the 34-year-old teacher says, as she waited Thursday to cross into Slovakia, from where she will join a grandmother living in Lithuania.
Her story is echoed by many others who have escaped the worst of the fighting, either to reach the relative safety of western Ukraine, which is still bracing for war to arrive, or overseas for an exile of unknowable duration.
Those under shelling now — in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol, the seaport in the south of the country on the Sea of Azov that the Russians have surrounded — say the tempo and intensity of the bombardments have increased in the past day or so, causing massive damage to residential districts.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned Thursday “the worst is yet to come,” a judgment he made after a long phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Macron’s grim prediction sends a chill of fear down the spine of Ihor, who exchanged text messages with VOA from his home in encircled Mariupol.
“The shelling never stops,” he said. “We are running low on food, and it is very dangerous to go out to try to find supplies.”
Contact with people in Mariupol is difficult and intermittent, with the internet and phone service going on and off. “Grozny” is on the lips of many Ukrainians in the port city, a reference to the near destruction of the Chechen capital in late 1999 to early 2000, when Putin was prime minister and in the process of succeeding Boris Yeltsin as president.
They say that vicious and intensifying shelling shows that despite what Putin reportedly told Macron — the invasion is going “according to the plan” — Russian efforts to subdue Ukraine are not working out.
