The Ambassador of Poland told how he lived in Kyiv in the first weeks of the war
Date: 2023-09-10 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: POLICY
Polish diplomats in Kyiv began preparing for a possible war back in October 2021, and in the first days in the deserted capital they themselves took their colleagues’ belongings from their apartments and were once mistaken for thieves.
Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Bartosz Cichocki spoke about this in an interview with BBC Ukraine. He was almost the only diplomat who remained in Kyiv at the time of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. He spent the entire February and March 2022 in the Ukrainian capital.
According to him, until the 20th of February he was not sure that there would be a war, but the embassy began to prepare for the worst since the fall - taking them to Warsaw or destroying documents, planning the evacuation of employees, stocking food, fuel, generators. And a week and a half before February 24, the ambassador, after instructions from Warsaw, began evacuating the families of diplomats.
Cichocki called the visit to Kyiv of the presidents of Poland and Lithuania Andrzej Duda and Gitanas Nausėda “unforgettable” on the eve of a full-scale invasion.
“I had the feeling that everyone understood that these were the last hours, the last moments of the world... But I didn’t have the feeling at all that I wanted to leave. Although I said goodbye to my president without understanding when we would meet him in next time, and whether we will meet at all,” the diplomat shared his impressions.
Tsikhotsky said that on the first day of the war there were 20 people left at the embassy. Work as such then “lost its meaning” because Ukrainian officials were either very busy or in evacuation. A few days after the evacuation, three people remained in the embassy.
The Ambassador noted that this was a very unusual time. “On the one hand, what could we do here? We waited, informed Warsaw about what we saw. But in fact, Warsaw then had more tools than we did to find out what was happening here. We could not say where - in Irpen, in Bucha or in Borodyanka - the Russians are located. Communication with the Ukrainian authorities was also problematic - I did not want to distract them with requests, since they worked 24 hours a day," Tsikhotsky said.
He added that in those days they were afraid, but tried to act rationally. Most of all, diplomats feared that in empty Kyiv, criminals or saboteurs might come to them.
“But colleagues from various Ukrainian special services, from the SBU, the National Guard began to come to us. They assured us that they were looking after us, it was very important for them that we stayed here, and they really appreciated it, that we were safe. And what if what will they warn us about? It was very uplifting,” Tsikhotsky shared the details.
Later, the ambassador decided to start bringing things from the apartments of Polish diplomats, who left Ukraine almost empty-handed, to the embassy premises. According to Tsikhotsky, diplomats found “several men with a rusty truck” and went with them to collect things.
“Funny situations also happened, because we didn’t think to warn the owners of the apartments we rented about our visits. And in one of the apartments we heard persistent knocking on the door. We opened it and there was a defense patrol with machine guns. The neighbor called because she heard the sound She knew that the Poles lived there, and then they left..." the diplomat said.
He noted that he then liked both the actions of his neighbor and the quick reaction of the defense team.
“Then I thought that we were safe. It may not have been the most pleasant adventure, but overall it gave reason for optimism, because it showed that citizens were organizing themselves and supporting each other,” Tsikhotsky said about the findings.
