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‘I am glad it is sitting here demolished’: Kyiv rolls out damaged Russian tanks.


KYIV, Ukraine – Russian tanks rolled into downtown Kyiv on Saturday. But that is not the military posture that Russian President Putin may have envisioned when he sent troops to invade Ukraine in February.

Instead, the tanks arrived on the backs of Ukrainian flatbed trucks, collected from the battlefields of the east and south, and put on display to show defiance.

Even as the daily sirens sounded, cranes lifted the battered tanks and set them up on the elegant road leading to Maidan Square in central Kyiv. Crowds gather throughout the day, taking pictures. Children climb on the rusty piles of rocket launchers and armored vehicles. Police officers and soldiers mingled with families strolling along the square – all in a respite from a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and rendered once-developed cities a waste of time. fee.

“I’m glad it’s sitting here destroyed like this instead of being out there killing people,” Eugene Sheptunov, 32, told the Russian tank, which the Ukrainians dubbed “The Witcher.”

Mr. Sheptunov, an information technology worker, was at the show with his wife, Olha and daughter, Aleksandra, 10. They left Kyiv early in the war because of the fighting there, but by the end of May had joined Join the growing ranks of those returning to the city.

He said he now volunteers to help get anything that soldiers on the front lines might need, including food and clothing. “Everybody is doing their part.”

Maidan Square has served for more than a century as the central square of the old city. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, it was called the “Great October Socialist Revolution Square”.

In 1991, it was renamed Maidan Nezalezhnosti – Independence Square.

And in 2013, it was the center of nationwide protests that eventually helped topple the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Now, as the country prepares to celebrate Independence Day on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials are warning that Russia could use the occasion to demonstrate its military might. Mr. Sheptunov said he had heard the rumour.

“Of course I was a little nervous,” he said. “But my family will be here. And I will go to the dentist that day.”

He took a few more pictures of rusty firecracker shells, then took his daughter to eat ice cream.



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