Fears grow in Kyiv as a massive Russian convoy approaches.

Fears grow in Kyiv as a massive Russian convoy approaches.

The weather in Ukraine's capital is bitterly chilly.

The first day of March brought a cold blast of wind and snow, and the sixth day of Russia's invasion brings a gnawing sense of gloom. The speed with which Russia is moving towards Kyiv may be seen in satellite photographs. Slowly crawls forward a sinuous armored convoy, 65 kilometers (40 miles) long and bristling with tanks and personnel. It's only 27 kilometers away.

It gives the phrase "the world is watching" a whole new and terrible meaning. These satellite photos, which are in shades of black and grey, are visible to everyone and have a message that is all too black and white. Only Ukrainian forces, soldiers, and citizens, however, have the ability to halt its plodding approach.

Western militaries continue to send in weapons and ammunition, and incessant salvos of strong words. On the ground, Ukraine is on its own.

"We'll burn the convoy," a Ukrainian journalist vows when I meet him in a basement shelter. It's this raw resolve, and burning patriotism, which has fired Ukraine's unexpectedly strong resistance to the mighty Russian army's advance.

He's crouched over his computer and smartphone. Everyone has connected to the world above in this new subterranean world below in basements, bomb shelters, and bunkers. The air raid sirens now seem to be wailing on a loop.

At the edge of a hard floor on a thin mat, bespectacled 13-year-old Rustam seems glued to his device, an extension of his lanky teenage frame. Today he's watching TikTok videos of Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson; yesterday he was inspecting videos of Chechen fighters with a fearsome reputation on front lines. "Are they coming here too?" he asks me, barely lifting his eyes from his phone. It takes the obsessive "room scrolling" of our time to a whole new level; this isn't just bad news when you see a Russian convoy heading your way.

His mother, Liana, confesses, "We didn't sleep last night." "I was on the phone with relatives and friends in various cities," she explained. A friend who fled to Poland, crying, tells me that her home was destroyed by a Russian missile. Liana's father is still in their home further north, near the Russian border, near Chernobyl, which is now under Russian occupation. On a bad phone signal, he managed to call her and inform her that a missile had slammed into their vegetable garden, which was 100 meters (328 feet) from his room. She laments, "I told him so many times that he should have let me get him a smartphone so he could send us images."

A large cat carrier sits next to her, empty. Tyson, a colossal Maine Coon cat named after Britain's boxing champion, hasn't lived up to his moniker. He spends much of his time above ground, hiding under a bed. He does, however, occasionally come down to snuggle with Rustam, which makes us both feel better.
Stephen Rimmer, an Australian businessman, keeps a calm vigil on the mattress across the floor - all neighbors now. "I'd like to get out as soon as possible," he says, his anxiousness palpable. He attempted to board a train intended for Turkish citizens while carrying his Turkish passport. However, there was chaos at the station.

All this wasn't on his itinerary. He was meant to fly out last Thursday - the day Russia moved in. "I just didn't think he would do it," he confesses. Not many people here, or anywhere, thought Russia's President Vladimir Putin would go this far.

Six days on, disbelief has morphed into defiance, and dread.

The news from Kherson, the regional capital to the south, which has been encircled by Russian soldiers, tells of a looming siege, a medieval tactic used to terrible success in Syria to starve populations into submission; it's a war crime. The deployment of suspected cluster munitions on a residential neighborhood of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, to the west, is also concerning.

The attacks are also getting closer in Kyiv. An explosion jolted buildings in the city center for the first time as night fell on the last day of February. Surface-to-air missiles fired by Ukrainian forces lit up the sky on several occasions.

March's arctic blast has amplified the agony of standing in long lines at stores with rapidly emptying shelves, as well as the misery of living in unheated basements as the world outside grows colder and darker.