Grannies armed with Molotov cocktails: Kyiv residents get ready for Russian troops

Galyna Kucherenko is bemoaning the shortages of essential products that have inevitably come with the war in Ukraine. She and her family are all right for food, and the building they live in has a basement shelter for the nightly bombing, but the problem is the fuel.

Are she and her family trying to get out of Kyiv like so many others? I ask. “No” comes the indignant reply. “We need them for making Molotov cocktails to welcome the Russians! We have most of the other ingredients, like alcohol. But it is fuel, petrol that we are short of.”

Ms Kucherenko, 72, a mother of four and a grandmother of three, has firm views about those she considers responsible for the shortages.

“It is all the people who filled the tanks of their cars and filled up cans and left. I can understand getting children out, but grown men and women should be here, defending this city. That is their duty,” she wants to point out.

With invading Russian forces close to surrounding the capital, and trying to seize territory across the country, the Ukrainian government has repeatedly urged citizens to help defend the homeland.

Citizen volunteers have been training at weekends for months. Laws were changed, allowing them to keep high-calibre weapons at home.

The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has remained in Kyiv, spurning Joe Biden’s offer to fly him and his family to safety, has announced a programme for residents to be armed, and 18,000 sub-machine guns and assault rifles have been pledged for distribution.

The government has also urged people to make and use Molotovs against the Russians. The Ministry of Defence put out a tweet: “Make Molotov cocktails and take down the occupier.”

Ms Kucherenko is among those who have responded with alacrity to the request, as have her relations, friends and neighbours.

A group of them sit together on Saturday afternoon at the home of her son Oleksiy, in a residential street in a quiet part of the city, to plan their operation.

They are armed with instructions from television and radio channels, as well as information gleaned from internet searches, on how to make the petrol bomb, and they have to hand some of the component parts.

There are various versions of the Molotov cocktail, which was first used by Finnish forces against the Russians in the Winter war of 1939, and was named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact).

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Ms Kucherenko and her friends have gone for the option of baking soda, Styrofoam, strips of old tyre, soap, cooking oil, what petrol they can find, vodka, large beer bottles, and wicks made out of torn-up tea towels.

Oleksiy, a 47-year-old accounts clerk, says: “I wasn’t sure at first about my mother getting involved in this at her age.” He keeps his voice low to try to ensure that she doesn’t hear. “But she was not going to leave Kyiv – she said that it was her duty to stay and help in any way she could – and she has been very active in plans for these Molotovs.”

Iryna, a neighbour, also wants to point out that Ms Kucherenko has been a driving force of “Operation Molotov”.

“I am very impressed at what she is doing at her age. It should be left to young people like me,” she says, adding with a peal of laughter: “I am only 66.”

Iryna does not want her family name published, and none of the group want to be photographed, “Just in case...” says Oleksiy. He has been training as a citizen volunteer, using a paint gun, but is due to pick up a real gun issued by the government later on. He leaves in time to be indoors before a curfew starts at 5pm, wondering what kind of a gun he is going to get.

Others, however, have long been planning for this time. At a checkpoint near central Kyiv, Nicolai Kostyuk is dressed for war – at great expense. He is kitted out in what British soldiers refer to, sometimes mockingly, as “Gucci” – that is, fashionable combat gear.

Mr Kostyuk is dressed in black from head to toe – from his helmet and his sunglasses to his body armour and his boots. He would be completely black if he rolled down his balaclava. He is armed with an American-made WAC-47 automatic rifle, a derivative of the M16, configured to use Soviet-era 7.62x39mm cartridges, which he bought with his savings.

The black kit, says Mr Kostuyk, an IT programmer, is for night fighting. “As you know, they have attacked with rockets and artillery at night. They have also tried to get into the city at night,” he explains. “So this will be good when they try to come again.”

Mr Kostuyk has also taken part in citizens’ militia training. He has never, however, fired a shot in anger, and one may wonder and worry about how he would fare if there was real street-fighting. He, however, has no doubt: “I am fully prepared for anything.”

There are others in the streets, however, who have seen plenty of action, and are fully aware of what they might face. I met one of them first in Donetsk in 2014, and then in Avdiivka, in the Donbas, three weeks ago.

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The soldier, a member of one of the volunteer battalions, was due to return to his base, but is now part of the defence force for the capital. He had held in our meeting in Avdiivka that Vladimir Putin would not ultimately take military action.

“I was wrong, but so many people were wrong. But we have been fighting for seven years, and that has shown in the way we have been fighting,” he says.

“But no one in our unit is boasting we have had victory. We are realistic people, and we know there are tough times ahead, but I think we have done OK, don’t you?”

One of the reasons for the 36-hour curfew, the government said, was to flush out and deal with Russian fifth-columnists and saboteurs.

There are an awful lot of civilians in the streets with guns while this is going on, I point out, and some of the shootings we have had in recent days did not seem to be the “gunfights with Russian agents” they were claimed to be.

“There may have been some shooting at ghosts, that was probably the case,” says the soldier, “but the real thing will come pretty soon I think.”