‘Like a ghost town’: Kyiv resident on fear of an act as simple as walking the dog

In Ukraine, it has even become dangerous to walk the dog.

“I don’t feel safe anywhere,” Sveta (Svetlana) Soroka, 36,  told The Times of Israel from Kyiv on Tuesday, as witness reports came in of serious injuries to a Jewish woman from Mariupol who was out walking her dog when a Russian missile struck. Her dog was killed and she was taken to the hospital, having lost part of her leg.

“Our dog is so frightened that he keeps whining,” said Soroka, a professional photographer who left her apartment in Kyiv when the war broke out to move in with her mother, sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews across town.

“We live on the fifth floor and have to take him out three times a day.  We are allowed to be outside for 20 minutes. You go downstairs with the dog and it’s like a ghost town. There’s nobody on the streets and you keep close to the entrance because you worry that you’ll be mistaken for a Russian and shot.”

Soroka’s clients include the Netherlands-based Christians for Israel, which encourages Jewish emigration to the Jewish state and provides food for needy Jews throughout Ukraine.

The organization has tried to persuade her to leave Kyiv and try to get to Israel, but she is torn. “My family wasn’t prepared to go to one of C4I’s shelters (for Jews intending to emigrate) because it’s so dangerous on the roads, ” she said.

“My 90-year-old grandma, who lives a floor below us, can’t walk properly and won’t agree to go anywhere, and now our men can’t leave the country. All my family qualifies to make Aliyah and go to Israel. But you don’t leave anyone behind. So we are stuck. Waiting.”

All Ukrainian men aged 18-60 are expected to stay in the country to serve as a potential fighting force.

Soroka said that the basement was so crowded with residents from the building and a neighboring one that the family goes down only when there is an emergency because her sister suffers from respiratory problems.

The apartment windows shook earlier on Tuesday when the Russians attacked a TV tower in the city, killing five people and injuring others, she said.

Asked how the family is spending its time, Soroka said they were talking a lot to friends and going out to shop when necessary, which meant endless queueing as shooting went on in the background, and being questioned at roadblocks.

“Wherever you go, you’re asked for documents.”

On Monday, her mother shopped for groceries to take to a local hospital. “We spoke to the nurses, who haven’t slept for four days,” she said.

“It’s hard to eat and drink,” she added. “I understand that I have to be strong. I’m bottling everything up inside. It’s better psychologically. It’s bad to watch the news but you have to, all the time.”

Soroka said the thought of the advancing convoy of Russian tanks was terrifying. “We understand that they want to surround us. Our men are trying to hold them back all of the time.

“We really need a no-fly zone. We need more weapons. What will we do when this line of tanks arrives in the city?”

In the meantime, “Russian fake news is telling us that they’re coming to save us, that we should come to them with flowers and thank them, and that they will only attack military installations,” she said. “And then today, they bombed a maternity hospital.

“I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but now I’m so angry.”