The Last Battle of Kyiv: Askold and the Rest. What Do We Have to Learn From Its First Walk With Your Son?

In the more than seven months since, we have heard almost all of the previous missile attacks on Kyiv, but Monday’s strikes were the loudest and closest to us.

Editor’s Note: Nonna Stefanova is a journalist at Channel 5-TV in Kyiv. She is a lecturer and a TV director at the University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. The views that she expresses are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

Our playground is in Shevchenko Park in the center of the city, and is very well known to every Kyivan. Close to my parents’ home, it’s the park where I went for my first walk with my newborn son. We’ve visited almost daily in the years since, continuing to do so to this day.

In late February and March, when Russian tanks stood 25 kilometer away, the Taras Shevchenko park became Askold’s main playground.

During that battle, we wanted to give our kid as normal a life as possible, with a good night’s sleep, karate workouts, and daily walking and jogging in between the air-raid sirens and curfew.

Askold would take his “weapon” – a wooden sword – to the usually empty playground, much to the bemusement of the National Guard securing the park. He could choose any slide, see-saw, or merry-go-round that he wanted, but the abundance of choice was dampened by the lack of playmates, most of them having left Kyiv with their parents.

Apart from the National Guard and our family, on some days the only “human” in the park was the imposing yet welcoming monument of Taras Shevchenko (not then protected by a concrete enclosure – that would come later).

The statue is located some 75 meters from Askold’s playground, gazing approvingly at the striking red-columned entrance to Ukraine’s largest university, which also bears Shevchenko’s name.

Askold, the son of the writer, held his wooden sword in the park with his grandparents Roman and Halyna. The statue of poet Taras Shevchenko can be seen in the background.

The resistance of Ukrainians and other subjugated peoples against the Russian empire is one of the core themes in Shevchenko’s poems. In their missile attacks on Kyiv, did the Russians want to destroy his monument as a symbolic gesture? This was a hot topic Monday on Ukrainian social media, as people desperately tried to cope with the shock of missiles striking the capital’s city center.

Would I tell him that Russia is using old maps? Is it because it wants to destroy the monuments? Or, just because it can?

Why does Russia do it? Askold’s first question to ask his father, Vladimir, since the revolution of Dignity began in April 2022

This question from my son was also among the first he had asked early on the morning of February 24. The full-scale war was a huge shock but unfortunately not a big surprise for us.

The Revolution of Dignity, also known as Euromaidan, began when Askold was 7 months old. Russia annexed the territory of Crimea in the middle of a war in the east of Ukraine. We knew that war was coming to us in the year 2022, and we did everything possible to avoid it.

“Why does Russia do it?” Askold asked again, devastated, looking at pictures and videos of the crater where his favorite swing in the playground used to be.

I told him that the Russians want us to not exist. I knew I had to say these words to my son because we had taken him to see mass graves where he could not see anything. But I knew we had to do it.

He has to understand why Russia intends to destroy Ukraine because of its parks and Shevchenko’s poetry; he must also know why he goes to a bomb shelter. The weapons the National Guard in the park have are real and not wooden.

Until early October, this area of the country was occupied by Russian troops. Burnt-out cars litter the fields. The letter ‘Z’ – a symbol used by Russian forces – marks the walls.

The scars of war are here. Russia has used sexual violence as a weapon in its aggression against Ukraine, according to investigators from the United Nations. They have even relayed allegations of Russian soldiers carrying Viagra.

In two weeks of work in the Kherson region, the team from Kyiv has documented six allegations of sexual assault. They claim that the real number is much higher.

“They walked around those rooms,” she says. “One stayed there, and the other one, who raped me, came in here. He came in, walked around the room and here he was touching me.

She says he pinned her against the wardrobe and ripped her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but with no success,” she says. “The only thought I had was to stay alive.”

He warned her not to tell anyone, she recalls. She said she didn’t tell her husband right away. My husband heard my cousin’s comment. He said, ‘You should have told me the truth, but you kept silent.’”

She was widowed more than 30 years ago, after her husband died in a motorcycle accident, and now has a son in the military. She says that she quit after Russian troops took over her village.

Do women in Ukraine live in the horrors of occupation? The cases of Tverdomedove, a village abandoned by the Ukrainian army

The head of his unit was found by his commander. I was told that he punished him severely and broke his jaw, but the most severe punishment is still to come. Like shooting. The commander asked me, ‘Do you mind this?’ I said I wish they would be shot.

Although the prosecutor, Kleshchenko, and police officer Oleksandr Svidro are looking specifically for evidence of sexual crimes, everywhere they go they are confronted with the horrors of occupation.

The village was behind Russian lines, but never directly occupied. Those gathered round shout that they’ve been abandoned for months, with no help from either Russia or Ukraine.

A man in the crowd tells the investigators that he was held by Russian soldiers and subjected to mock execution. It’s difficult to hear, stories of torture like this are commonplace here but that’s not the focus of their work today.

Starting slowly at the end of the summer, and then in large measure at the beginning of October, Ukrainian forces have regained hundreds of square miles of territory that Russia held since the early days of its full-scale invasion.

A short drive down roads pockmarked by shelling, in Tverdomedove, a mother and daughter tell Kleshchenko that they have not heard of any sexual crimes in their one-road hamlet.

Months later, after the Ukrainian military liberated her village in a lightning counteroffensive, she returned. The roof was reduced to its rafters.

Viktor and the murder of a young man in Zapotrizhia, Yugoslaveshka-Kazorov

“I don’t know where to put it so that (the ceiling) won’t fall on my head,” she says. I wouldn’t suffer if it would fall and kill me. But I would love to see my son again.

Many of these allegations are difficult to prove, and many do not even have a suspect. The team is hoping to be able to file charges in the future, but at the moment they are only able to file reports.

“I still can’t believe that I left there,” says Viktor, while pulling a red suitcase from the black car he rode to Zaporizhia, about 25 miles from occupied territory. “The madness.”

His home is not far from Kherson. He and his wife Nadiya raised their three daughters there. The Russians broke into their house within hours of them leaving, Viktor says a neighbor told him.

At a Zaporizhzhia shelter, a volunteer who asks that he be called by his middle name, Artyom, helps care for Kherson evacuees as if they were his own family. We did not use Artyom’s full name to protect his relatives.

Artyom’s wife is home, but she’s worried about her job at the street markets – a tale of two Russians

His wife generally stays home as much as she can. She sells her vegetables and potatoes at the street market to make money.

But Artyom says it’s not fine. He counted his fingers to list his fears, fearing that the Russians would stop his wife. He worries that she’ll get sick. She’s four months’ pregnant. He is worried about the baby.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/11/07/1134465380/kherson-ukraine-russia-battle-looms

The street markets in Kyiv, Russia: The experience of living in a city with many Russians, many of whom are not Russian

Holovnya, who is living in Kyiv, calls some of them collaborators. Some people can’t leave, he says. Many are older. Others don’t have many resources. Their lives right now are “intense,” he says.

What little public interaction there is now in the city revolves mostly around the local street markets that popped up since the war began. Most of the stores in Kherson are either closed or have empty shelves, so local farmers and bakers have been selling and trading items at the street markets.

Natalyia Schevchenko fled Kherson this summer and says you can buy most things, starting with medicine and finishing with meat. “But it’s not good to watch.” On one car, they sell medicine on the hood and on the side they cut meat.”

Schevchenko, who is volunteering at an Odesa nonprofit called Side-by-Side to evacuate residents from Kherson and other occupied territories, remains in contact with those in the city. She says her grandma gives her updates.

Artyom and his wife talk whenever they can get a decent connection. They generally try to keep their conversations light; they worry that Russians are listening in.

The Russians are Still There: Euphoric Journeys Through the Small Towns and Settlements of Kherson, Ukraine, during the April 11, 2011 Crimea

The Russians could shell them on tougher days, that is what everyone we have spoken to knows. It is also unclear whether all Russian troops have left Kherson and the wider region. Behind this euphoria, there’s still that uncertainty.

For much of the journey through smaller towns and settlements, our team of CNN journalists was forced to drive through diversions and fields: bridges over canals were blown up, and roads were full of craters and littered with anti-tank mines.

Trenches and checkpoints were empty, quickly abandoned by Russians who on Friday announced they had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.

Billboards around the city that once read “Ukraine is Russian forever” have reportedly been spray-painted over with the message: “Ukraine was Russia’s until November 11.”

The city residents have little power, no water and no internet connection. The mood was positive as a CNN crew entered the city center on Saturday.

Once the scene of large protests against Russian plans to transform the region into a breakaway pro-Russian republic, the streets of Kherson are now filled with jubilant residents wrapped in Ukrainian flags, or with painted faces, singing and shouting.

The military presence is still limited, but huge cheers erupt from crowds on the street every time a truck full of soldiers drives past, with Ukrainian soldiers being offered soups, bread, flowers, hugs and kisses by ecstatic passers by.

As CNN’s crew stopped to regroup, we observed an old man and an old woman hugging a young soldier, with hands on the soldier’s shoulder, exchanging excited “thank yous.”

With the occupiers gone, everyone wants you to know what they have gone through and how thankful they are to the countries that have helped them.

Helping women in the armed forces: The front line uniforms Kolesnyk and Anatolian Drahanyuk at a women’s hostel

So, the couple turned to private company donations, charity funds and crowdfunding to purchase goods independently of the military. The new pregnant uniform that was made at the factory in eastern India is part of the customized gear that is under the brand of their own.

Two TV journalists who did not work in the war are dedicated to their orphanage, which helps women in the armed forces.

Servicewomen needed more than uniforms. Everything from smaller boots to lighter plates for bulletproof vests to hygiene products is in demand.

Helmets and boots are some of the items from companies as far away as Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey. But Kolesnyk and Drahanyuk say they are struggling with the procurement of winter items like sleeping bags and thermal clothing that will be important for comfort as winter sets in.

Kolesnyk says they have distributed equipment worth $1 million so far and helped at least 3,000 women. If they’re on the front-line shooting rockets they might as well do it “in minimum comfort,” he tells CNN.

Kolesnyk says that they are doing this to help the government. The hub is overflowing with boxes of kit that were paid for from the grant and funding crowdfunded.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/europe/ukraine-women-front-line-uniforms-intl/index.html

Helping Women in the Army through Psychological Support: A Case Study of a Polish Border Guard with a Dog at the Azovka Prison

“For a man, it’s hard to understand that you can’t go there, and your sister is there. So, I’m trying to do my best here to help not only my family, but the whole army,” he says.

A woman who gave her first name only as “Roksolana” walks into the store and gets a uniform and other gear before she heads off on her next assignment. An art school graduate, she joined the army in March and is now part of an intelligence unit.

“It’s so valuable to have these people who understand that we are tired of wearing clothes that are three sizes too big,” she says. “We had no helmets, we had old flak jackets, wore tracksuits and sneakers. We feel that we are human.

She giggled as she put her new boots in. Before they hug goodbye, Drahanyuk hands Roksolana a copy of “The Choice,” the best-selling memoir by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Edith Eger. The aim is that this can be a tool to help process trauma. Zemlyachki has also formed partnerships with military psychologists to whom women in combat can reach out.

Men are giving psychological support to women such as 25-year-old Alina Panina. Panina, a border guard with a dog, spent five months in captivity at the Olenivka prison in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region after being released from the besieged Azovstal steel plant.

She was released as part of the all-female prisoner exchange with Russia and went into mandatory rehabilitation under the care of a military hospital.

“I was not prepared [for captivity], and we discussed this a lot with other women prisoners that life hasn’t prepared us for such [an] ordeal,” Panina says at a pizza bar run by veterans in downtown Kyiv.

Her partner’s fate is uncertain. He is also a border guard who is still in captivity. “I know he is alive but don’t know in which prison he is,” Panina says sadly as she scrolls through pictures of him.

The first day of World War II: Vladimir Bespalaya and his wife Maria, a railroad worker who fled Mariupol, Ukraine

Russian forces invaded their country in February and Vladimir Bespalov and his wife Maria were worried that they wouldn’t get to start a family.

The first day of the war was February 24, said Vladimir Bespalov, a railroad worker who was 27 at the time. “We thought we were too late. We realized we were already in a state of war, and we thought we could no longer adopt.”

He said the situation forced the couple to try to do it sooner. “We were waiting to earn more money, have a better car, buy a house, and build something to give our children first. But when the war started, we thought why not adopt a child now and accomplish these things together as a family.”

That message got to the volunteer who was helping those fleeing Mariupol, a city that became an example of Putin’s campaign to take Ukrainian land.

Residents were forced underground for weeks while Russian troops pummeled the city with artillery. It is now a wasteland with virtually every building damaged or destroyed, and an unknown number of dead beneath the rubble.

His mother was hit by Russian weaponry after she left home to find food for her family, and later Bespalaya and Bespalov learned from the police.

“The men were drinking alcohol and the children of those neighbors bullied him. Bespalaya spoke to CNN in a hushed voice. She is careful not to bring up Ilya’s traumatizing experience in front of him unprompted, but he has told the woman he now calls “mama” everything about his three terrifying weeks in the basement, she says.

The process of becoming a legal guardian was a four month one which involved many doctor visits, police background checks, and a government search in order to ensure the boy had no other living relatives. Various donors, including the Shakhtar Donetsk Football Club, helped provide financial support that allowed the family to find a comfortable home.

Like any parents, the young couple are protective of their child, shielding him from the horrors of war, and trying to give him a sense of security and stability.

It’s important to immerse yourself in time with your child when you’re fighting. A normal childhood is what we try to recreate. Work takes time, but we spend every free moment together,” said Bespalov, who as a crucial railroad worker has not been called up for military service.

But there is nothing normal about war. After they posted their appeal on Instagram, the couple set up two spare rooms for the possible arrival of a child – one a nursery with a white crib and blue bedding, the other equipped with a bunk bed and lots of toys.

I stopped being afraid of adoption. I was confident that we would have a child, and I was confident that I could care for anyone and deal with their character,” she told CNN.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/14/europe/ukraine-orphaned-boy-new-family-intl-cmd/index.html

The first day in Kyiv, Bulgaria: the couple who lived there for a little boy know how to cope with the light and the power cuts

But that plan was also shattered by war. They were forced to leave their home in Slovyansk, a city on the frontline of the Donetsk region, for Kyiv.

In April, they finally received the call they had been hoping for, from a volunteer in Mariupol: there was a little boy with no parents, could the couple care for him?

The following morning, they started out on the two-day car journey to Dnipro, where Ilya was sheltering, to meet the boy who would become part of their family.

We have that love that makes you a family. We did not have this baby, but our love is real and we are sitting on a playground bench together.

But little Ilya is learning to cope. He looked up and said that he was not afraid of the dark anymore while he was playing with the couple in their living room. I know the light will turn back on.”

He stays with almost 1,000 students during the week. When there is an extended power cut, the school provides heat, food and water for the community.

He says that power cuts have lasted up to 24 hours. In this agricultural region, farming equipment and warehouses were destroyed. He estimates business activity is one-third of what it was.

Ukraine War Ukraine Town Borodianka: After World War II. An Understaffed Town with a Banksy-Microeconomic Power Cut

About 200 Ukrainians were killed when the Russians occupied Borodianka shortly after the invasion began on Feb. 24 until the end of March, Yerko says. The town’s prewar population of 14,000 dwindled to a little more than 1,000. It’s back up to about 9,000 despite the lack of resources.

“The people coming are mostly from the houses on the main street. The ones that were destroyed and burned down,” says Olha Kobzar, a Ukrainian volunteer who is in charge of the temporary housing.

During an interview, the lights go out, leaving her standing in a darkened hallway. She says she’ll wait a while to see if the power comes back. If it starts to get chilly, she’ll turn on the generator. It’s like that every day, she says.

In the center of town is a bust of Ukraine’s national poet, Taras Shevchenko. He championed Ukraine’s independence from Russia in the 19th century. He wrote, “It’s bad to be in chains and die a slave.”

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/10/1141536117/russia-war-ukraine-town-borodianka-banksy-power-cuts

Bakhmut’s shelling comes to a village in the West of Kostiantynivka, the home of Tarasov

A British artist known for his street spray-paintings painted several badly scarred walls last month, and later confirmed it was his work on social media.

One image shows a young boy tossing a man to the floor. Both are in martial arts attire. The man is believed to be the leader of the Russian Federation.

People are happy that we’re being noticed. There are paintings on buildings that were destroyed. We are planning to remove the paintings and put them somewhere else.

As the Russian army intensifies its campaign to take Bakhmut, the shelling comes ever nearer to Kostiantynivka, 25 kilometres (about 15 miles) to the west. The town has been hit every day since the beginning of the month, according to the hospital director.

Tarasov, 48, was sheltering from the shelling in his basement where he now has to live. But last week he dared to venture out – to buy vegetables to make the national dish, borscht.

“I was afraid of death,” says Tarasov of Bakhmut, Ukraine, a resident of the old industrial heartland

His face pales as he relays the graphic images still fresh in his mind. “I was wearing a leather jacket and if it wasn’t for that, I would have blown apart. My guts would have been all over the place. I remember seeing a big puddle.

Even though the blast tore through Tarasov’s body, he did not know that he would not make it. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he says. I prayed to live.

When Tarasov got to the doctor, he asked for his limb to be saved. “The first thing I asked was if I could have my arm sewn back on. I saw that it was hanging in the sleeve, but it was torn off. My stomach was burning. I figured it was the colon that was coming out. There was blood everywhere.”

Power failures and water shortages have been caused by Russian attacks on the energy grid. They had to use generators for eight hours last week to keep the lights on.

“She’s a resident of Bakhmut. She came under artillery fire and suffered a shrapnel wound to her abdomen with damage to several organs. We see people with these wounds every day. Every day.”

At the hospital, a surgeon is stationed, and he says it had been quite loud recently. His colleague, Lucia Marron, concurs. She says there is more movement around, with more troops, more people. We’re used to it. You understand what is dangerous and what is not at this point.

The local authorities have implored civilians to leave the region for months. But for Tarasov, as for so many in Ukraine’s old industrial heartland, fleeing his home for a safer area had seemed impossible.

Tarasov says he would rather live outside of the country if he had more money. I have no money and everything I had saved up was invested there. I had no money and nowhere to go.”

A story of a widow and a baby: how a soldier and her family battled in Ukraine saw a light through the darkness

Decisive nights with the promise of a miracle during the month of fairy tales, as we peer into the darkness only to be reassured of ahappily ever after.

“We used to joke that our life was like a dark fairy tale inclined towards a happy ending. In December, Ievheniia will be nursing her two-month-old son in Poland and she will be grieving for the child’s father.

On November 18, Ievheniia’s husband Denys was killed in action while defending Ukraine against Russian aggression. The 47-year-old died at the site of some of the war’s heaviest fighting, near the city of Bakhmut in the east of the country. The Ukrainian forces have held the line there for a long time, with soldiers waist-deep in mud and bomb craters.

The wedding ceremony, funeral and other key moments of the Ukrainian fairy tale take place via video link. This is what love looks like in a time of war, shifted to the digital space and disrupted mid-plot.

The festive season is well underway in the streets of Warsaw. Christmas is around the corner. Ievheniia said that people don’t want to be reminded that someone is suffering. “And yet, they must be aware that this fight is unfolding right next to them.”

Ievheniia finally arrived at an enlistment office after driving across the country under Russian bombardment. She was interviewed on a Friday and told to return the following Monday to sign a contract with the Armed Forces.

On the weekend, she decided to take a pregnancy test, just in case. “With war and evacuation, the ground was slipping under one’s feet,” she said with a laugh. “On top of that, it turned out that I was pregnant.”

The woman who plans to defend her homeland instead joined the flow of refugees looking for safety in Poland because she was pregnant, thanks to the pregnancy test.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

A fairy tale about the death of a man in Ukraine, as told by Ievheniia in a video call from the trenches

Separated by war, Ievheniia and Denys sought to validate their partnership in the eyes of the state. The everyday ingenuity of the country at war was at work; now, Ukrainian servicemen are allowed to marry via a video call. Instead of boring civil servants, we were married by a handsome man in uniform. I had nothing to complain about,” Ievheniia said.

Denys kept the magic alive in the Internet, with flower deliveries and professional photoshoots for Ievheniia from the trenches.

Denys raised the alarm when Ievheniia did not pick up the phone the morning after she moved to Warsaw. A delay could have resulted in death. A Caesarean section followed. The dad was able to meet his son because the baby was two months early.

Ukrainian men are not currently allowed to leave the country under martial law. Denys crossed the border and spent five days with his family, as is appropriate for a fairy tale.

It was an amazing time, filled with ordinary things. Then he left. It was his birthday on November 17 and we sent him greetings,” Ievheniia remembered. “The next day he was killed.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/opinions/ukraine-christmas-fairy-tales-death-dovzhyk/index.html

Ievheniia: What is the fate of folktales about Ukraine, how we will live and what will we do next?

The Italian journalist and author of Folktales called them “consolatory fables” because they end badly. If it does, it means the time to be consoled has not yet come. Instead, it is time to act.

We need to not believe in the logic of a fairy tale. The wily kid will not defeat the monster with the aid of magic. Like ten months ago, Ukrainians need military aid sufficient to bring a decisive victory over Russia, not just prolong the fight with enormous sacrifices. Our collective effort is what determines Ukrainian victory.

I was a teenager at the time and reading a lot of fantasy books, wondering how I would fight against evil. Would I be able to turn away and proceed with my daily life?” I was told by Ievheniia. “Today, all of us have a chance to find out.”

On the first day of Ukraine’s “forgotten war”: Elena and Rodion Griniks in Opytne

The war in Ukraine did not start this year — it has been going on since 2014, in the eastern Donbas region. The conflict had become known as Europe’s “forgotten war,” until Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February.

Currently, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Avdiivka doesn’t exist anymore. Soon after the beginning of the invasion, the town turned into an active battlefield, day after day methodically razed to the ground by Russian artillery. Nearly the city’s entire population, about 25,000 people, has been forced to flee for their lives.

The Griniks stayed in Avdiivka during the first phase of the war and brought their two children into the world. In the year of 2014, we were without power for three months because of fighting. Our daughter, Miroslava, was born nine months later. Nine months later, we got our son, Kirill, after we did not have light for a month. Now we pray there is no electricity outage again.”

Nevertheless, it was cozy here, and our team was always greeted with the smells of delicious food Elena had cooked to welcome us and the beautiful flowers she cultivated in whatever was left of her patio. Elena and Aleksander were staying in Avdivka because they were a good example of rural people who work in their vegetable garden every day. They cleaned up debris and pieces of shrapnel and buried shell holes, all while continuing to cultivate the land.

Even though most of the inhabitants fled, Elena and Rodion stayed behind even though their house and car repair shop were damaged by shelling. They felt obligated not to abandon their roughly 30 remaining neighbors, most of whom were more vulnerable than themselves — elderly people with nowhere to go. Instead of fleeing, the couple shared food and medicine with their neighbors, becoming activists and community leaders. Their persistent efforts to keep the village alive would become a form of peaceful resistance to violence for this family between 2014 and 2022. They said they faced danger and harassment from the Ukrainian troops, who saw their presence on the front line as suspicious.

Rodion and Elena remained in Opytne until this summer — even as the fighting in the area intensified — until Elena was hit by shrapnel in the couple’s backyard. Only by a miracle, the couple got out of danger and were able to take her to the hospital, where she was saved from death.

Elena Dyachkova and Aleksander Dokalenko and their German shepherd, Lord, used to live in one of Avdiivka’s neighborhoods close to the front line. They had taken several direct hits but they were unwilling to abandon their house. They had maintained it as best they could — with a plastic covering instead of a roof, pieces of chipboard where they used to have a ceiling, and closed doors to rooms that didn’t exist anymore.

Lord was a sweetheart and Aleksander told us the dog had even saved his life once. As Aleksander slept, shelling came perilously close to their home. At some point, Lord woke up and followed the dog while he tried to pull his younger brother out of bed. The wall collapsed after a shell hit it.

When we met him in a shelter for the homeless, he was very depressed. They couldn’t decide on what to do next and how to rebuild their lives after they were displaced.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/12/16/1136962015/ukraine-war-photos-ukrainians-donbas

The noise of the explosions: Is it possible to walk faster than five minutes without crossing a small hill in a wooded area?

“I lived only 500 meters [0.3 miles] from work but it took me forever to get there every morning,” he recalls. “You begin walking, then you hear a whistle in the air, and run for cover into the nearest building.” You stand there and wait to hear an explosion, this means it has landed elsewhere. Only until the next whistle can you continue walking.