“Get out while you’re still alive!”

Berlin For a moment it is unclear whether the situation will escalate. There are Russian soldiers, their hands on the machine guns. Opposite them the angry citizens of Berdyansk. “Go home!” one yells at the soldiers. “Nobody was afraid of the soldiers,” Aleksander Bondarenko, one of the demonstrators, told the Tagesspiegel two days later. On the contrary, some people had started unarmed and jumped at the Russian soldiers. “We had to hold them back so they wouldn’t risk their lives.”

It’s Sunday, the fourth day after Russia invaded Ukraine. Berdyansk, a Black Sea port of around 115,000 people, has fallen to Russian forces, the Ukrainian government has confirmed. Fierce fighting is raging in the next larger cities of Mariupol and Zaporizhia. On Monday, many people protested in front of the Berdyansk town hall. Opposite them: soldiers of the Russian military police with machine guns and war vehicles. At a loss.