The battle for Kyiv: ‘People are grieving. This is already a tragedy’

The missile left a crater two metres deep, twisted shards of metal beside a playground slide, and shattered glass below the windows of a nearby kindergarten. Dozens of homes were scorched or shredded, their inhabitants turned into some of Kyiv's first war refugees.

In one apartment block 10 floors of kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms sat open to the skies, their balconies, doors and windows broken off or shattered into pieces by the weapon that brought the Russian invasion to this corner of the city.

The missile hit soon after 4am on Friday, before Russian troops reached the city outskirts, or Ukrainian troops set up defensive positions in its historic centre.

"People are grieving. This is already a tragedy," said Gorban Abasov, a 70-year-old singer. Most of the people who lived there were pensioners like him, he said, none had army links and nearby buildings were civilian as well.

There was no reason for such a lethal weapon to land here, but none of those gathered to inspect the damage seemed surprised that civilians were already in the line of fire, even before the battle for Kyiv had really begun. After all, there was no reason for Russian troops to be in their country, beyond the terrifying whim of an ageing autocrat.

As Abasov stared at the ruins of his home, Ukrainian soldiers were already taking up position in Kyiv's historic centre and its strategic bridges across the Dnieper and fighting advance Russian forces on its outskirts.

While it is not yet clear what future Vladimir Putin envisages for Ukraine if his invasion succeeds, it is clear he wants to hold the capital and dismantle the government of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, which he attacked on Friday as a "gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis".