The day war came to Europe

Berlin It’s two powerful explosions that wake Liko Toloraia around five o’clock in the morning. The 40-year-old reports this to the Tagesspiegel on the phone. She lives in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. And at first she thought she was dreaming.

A few minutes later, her 84-year-old grandmother, who lives a few kilometers away, calls her. She only said five words: “Liko, the war is here.”

In Moscow, most people have not even gotten up when Vladimir Putin gives a speech on Russian television. The Russian President says he made the decision “for a military operation” in Ukraine. One of the goals is “the demilitarization and denazification” of the country.

Putin directs a threat to the rest of the world that apparently does not even rule out the use of nuclear weapons: Anyone who tries to “intervene in current events” must expect consequences “that you have never seen in your history”.