People in Kyiv describe bombardment on night 2 of invasion as Russia closes in on the capital

A building hit by a missile in Kyiv, Ukraine, seen on February 25, 2022.

Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

• Russian forces shelled Kyiv for the second straight night late Thursday and early Friday.
• Five residents described the blasts and scenes inside the city's air raid shelters to Insider.
• Russian forces spent Friday closing in on Kyiv and fighting to occupy a major airport. 

Kyiv was rocked by shelling for the second straight day on Friday morning, with Russian forces entering the outskirts of the capital by the afternoon.

Speaking from Kyiv by phone on Friday, five residents told Insider of multiple explosions overnight, interspersed with air raid sirens directing people to find safety in bunkers. 

Alisa Obraztsova, 25, said she was rocked away by explosions at 4:20 a.m.

"I slept in the guest room in my apartment because I could hear the sirens from that room better," she said. 

Following several more explosions, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later called "insidious," Obraztsova and her mother left their apartment for a shelter at 7 a.m.

"The shelter was quite busy," she said. "Some people stayed home, some people came. There wasn't much panic. There were older people, younger people."

Oleksii, a Kyiv resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Insider he was also startled awake by bombs.

"I woke up at around 4 a.m. because there was a massive explosion," he said. "I looked out the window, everything was a bright orange, everything was getting brighter."

The sun rises over Ukraine's capital Kyiv on February 25, 2022.

Evgen Kotenko/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

"At first, because I'd just woken up, I thought it looked like an atomic bomb," Oleksii said. "I didn't know what to do. After that, we received the news that a Russian plane had been hit. It fell in, almost, to my neighbor's house."

Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba called the strikes "horrific" on Friday, saying the "last time our capital experienced anything like this was in 1941 when it was attacked by Nazi Germany."

Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian Member of Parliament and leader of the Holos political party, told Insider she took her family to an air raid shelter in the center of Kyiv in the early hours of Friday. She said she prepared for the long night with a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) midnight run on her treadmill.

"There were three rounds of rockets and three sirens during the night," she said. "We had to wake up and go to the bomb shelter."

Another Kyiv resident, Oleg Cardo, told Insider that he took his family to a makeshift air raid shelter at a school on Thursday evening.

"We were there, maybe only an hour tops, because we decided against it," he said. "I have a three-year-old and it was pretty packed."

"We decided to go there if we heard a siren, otherwise we decided not to risk it because there were visibly a lot of people who had a cold or maybe COVID."

He sent Insider a video of the shelter he visited.

—Joshua Zitser (@mrjoshz) February 25, 2022

 

Back at his apartment, he said his family were on high alert.

"We heard explosions in the distance. Nobody slept. We all opened the windows to hear something," he said.

"I've never experienced anything like this. I'm old enough to remember Chernobyl," he said, referencing the 1986 explosion that caused the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Photos and videos published Thursday showed people in Kyiv hiding from airstrikes in subway stations. It was not immediately clear where Rudik and Obraztsova sheltered.

People take shelter in a subway station in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 24, 2022.

Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

An American living in Kyiv called RJ — they asked to be identified under an alias — told Insider that they heard "massive, massive explosions" as they drove out of Kyiv shortly before sunrise on Friday.

"There was roughly — and it seemed to me an awfully long time — a 10-minute aerial bombardment. That's a long time for aerial bombardment," they said.

"To my ear, it sounded like it was in two different places — it was in the north, and to the west of where I was."

The shelling of Kyiv had subsided by Friday lunchtime, around which time Ukraine's defense ministry said that Russian troops had made it to Kyiv's outskirts.

Zelensky on Thursday offered weapons to any Ukrainian who wanted to stay and fight, and called on the West to come to Ukraine's defense. The country's national guard on Friday published a graphic teaching people how to make Molotov cocktails, and the ministry of defense asked people who owned drones for help.

Kuleba, the foreign minister, on Friday accused Russia of committing war crimes during fighting, tweeting that Russian forces attacked a kindergarten and an orphanage on Friday.

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