Anton is a small but determined-looking man; He dresses in dark, with a wool hat, neoprene mittens and a headlamp to be able to enter the flats and basements where -already without electricity- the civilians of the village of Irpin, which is 20 kilometers northwest of Kiev, take shelter. . He looks for them in his car every day and rescues them by transporting them to a safe place. We are in the eighteenth day of the Russian offensive on the Ukraine. Putin’s Army advances relentlessly on Kiev and has already reached the Bucha River. The village of the same name is invaded. The neighboring town, Irpin, is an inferno where fighting takes place from house to house. Lines have long since ceased to make sense. The bridge that separates the small town from Kiev was blown up days ago, without many of the villagers being able to take refuge in the capital. And it is the Irpín volunteers, authentic guardian angels of its last inhabitants, who evacuate the stragglers each day to the bridge, beyond which the Red Cross ambulances wait.
The Irpin volunteers, of whom Antón is the most visible head, drive a handful of dilapidated vehicles, shot at and covered in shrapnel scars. The only thing that separates them from death is the squalid white handmade flags that they carry on the flanks of the cars and the emergency lights with which they try to warn the contenders of their presence. This is the theory. The reality is that they circulate at full speed between shots and bombings, while calling by phone and shouting to the last neighbors who are missing to evacuate. The town is already a jumble of broken glass and twisted iron.
Anton waits at his post. Next to the Irpin gas station. He rings the phone. The volunteer flies down the road. “Watch out,” he yells before he swerves. An unexploded shell is stuck in the asphalt. We enter a square, where several civilians take refuge behind some arcades:
– Attention – warns one – there is a sniper beyond that corner. They have killed a neighbor of the red block. Later they expressively explain to us how the artillery fire has blown up half the neighborhood during the night.
But the volunteer hardly listens, because he has already left in a hurry to look for his ‘client’, a blonde girl who drags a small suitcase. It is difficult for him to get her into the car because the young woman clings to her mother. They say goodbye between wails and soon we shoot back to Kiev. The young woman, who is 25 years old and is called Helena, does not stop crying and saying in English: “I have not been able, I have not been able to convince my mother to leave here.”
To let us accompany him, Antón only has one rule: civilians come first. A group shows up and kicks us out. “This is ground zero. Bucha Bridge is ahead. There are dead bodies of Russian soldiers everywhere. But be careful, that area belongs to the Red Army. To get back to a safe area, wait here or find another volunteer, they come by from time to time.”
In his hallucinated work as an angel without wings, Antón is not alone: he is accompanied by his Black Skoda -one of whose headlights has been destroyed by a shot- and a group of companions whose value exceeds anything imaginable.
“We run into the Russians every day. Sometimes they shoot at us and other times we start chatting,” says Antón.
– And what do you tell them?
– That if they want I’ll take them to Kiev. And they always say better not (laughs).
In a dilapidated workshop, next to the Central Park, taken over by the Russians, Antón and his companions try to repair damaged or destroyed cars to continue their work until they are killed or they have taken everyone out. Leonid, a stocky man with a Greek chin, tries to put a new tire on a van.
Between explosion and explosion, there is still time for a cigarette and a chat. Dimitri has his wife in Spain, in the town of Oliva. “I live with my mother on Kirka street, which is taken over by the enemy. This area next to the university is the most dangerous. Yesterday a sniper killed two young boys and an elderly couple. All shot in the forehead.” The speaker is Alexander, a man in his thirties dressed in a brown sweatshirt that stinks of burning alcohol. “Look,” he concludes, “the whole floor is full of tank tracks.”
“High”. A soldier has come running and points his assault rifle at us all.
“Volunteers!” we yelled. We then see that she has a blue bracelet. It’s one of the good ones. And he hasn’t killed us, which is the most important thing.
We spent several hours in the convoy of Anton and his team. Time after time, between continuous explosions and shots, they go upstairs, enter basements, convince the most reticent and take out the handicapped. Then, at full speed to the bridge, the anchor of hope, the boys from the Red Cross. And back to hell. To the most devilish cycle that exists: remove civilians, fix the vehicles and start again.
“Damn Russians, damn Russia and damn Putin,” shouts a tall man who comes running with his cat in a backpack. His name is Vitali and when he gets into the van he remembers: «A week ago he was on vacation in Egypt. And you see, I had to leave my family in Bulgaria. And now they have destroyed my house. He comes with his rifle and swears that he is going to enlist in the Azov battalion “because they kill the most Russians.”
facing the enemy
Suddenly the world around us blurs, because a T-72 tank has arrived from the central park, which is a few hundred meters away; a Russian armored car that we met head-on, with no time to react. Only Antón maintains his composure and continues shouting for some elderly people who live in a nearby bungalow; the rest of us were frozen in sheer terror. The tank hesitates, spirals, and to everyone’s relief, disappears down an adjoining street.
– Hurry up, there are two old people in this house, Anton yells.
But when the volunteers move forward with an elderly woman in a wheelchair, the bullets get heavier. A Russian soldier has appeared about a hundred meters away and has started shooting like crazy. Then everything becomes a bit blurry. Without letting go of the evacuees, I don’t know how, we took refuge in an adjoining garden. But the only way out is the one that leads to the street where the Russians are waiting for us Kalashnikov in hand. There is no other. Until Alexander, in an act of unprecedented heroism, takes a white flag and stands, hands up, in front of the enemy soldiers. “We are evacuating the elderly, do not throw away.” And they don’t shoot. And after him we all left. And, being able to do it with a simple gesture of his finger, those soldiers decide not to kill us, for those things of fate, which sometimes is played heads or tails.
Already at the Red Cross post I tell Antón:
Is it like this every day?
– From February 24; The men of this town are heroes.
Impressed by his courage, I ask him about his age, about his life, about his family. I don’t know, I don’t remember anymore. Then she laughs with a laugh that sounds like tears: «We are alive, right? Well, we’re marching, there are still people to get out of Irpin…».
#guardian #angels #Irpin