A strategic bird's-eye look at Kyiv as Ukraine defends its capital from Russia.
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This is a birdseye look at Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine as its residents prepare for terrifying urban combat with an invading Russian army that is coming to take their freedom.
Home to nearly 3 million people, Kyiv is situated on the west bank of the Dnipro (nee-prow) river. To the north, the Dnipro is dammed by the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Station, the site of a fierce battle at the start of the invasion when it was captured by Russian troops, then retaken by Ukraine. It is the main source of the city’s electricity and holds back the water in the Kyiv reservoir. If the dam were to fail, flooding could destroy the city’s low-lying riverside neighborhoods and plunge the rest of the capital into darkness.
The bridges crossing the Dnipro serve as a pinch point for Russian ground forces invading from the east. The advances of their armored vehicles have been repeatedly stymied throughout the country when farmland turns into more densely populated suburbs, funneling Russian vehicles into single-file lines that can be ambushed by highly effective shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons, and then pounded by Ukrainian artillery firing from several kilometers away.
So the handful of bridges crossing the Dnipro will be a major focal point in the days ahead.
The east flank of central Kyiv has another defensive advantage as well - its position on a hill that’s up to 100 meters above the river bank.
Kyiv is also facing Russians invading from Belarus in the northwest. Heavy fighting has reached Irpin, which lies across the river of the same name. Bridges crossing the narrow Irpin into Kyiv are more spread out than those crossing the Dnipro and lead to several roads that pass through an unpopulated, wooded area spanning a few kilometers before reaching the edge of the city.
Just to the north of Irpin is Antonov International Airport. In one of the opening moves of the war, it was briefly captured by Russian paramilitary troops flown in by helicopter. But the airport was quickly retaken by the Ukrainians.
Control of airfields is vital. There are four others in the immediate region: the Vasylkiv Air force base to the south, which was reported destroyed in a Russian missile attack on March 15, the Boryspil airport - attacked on the first day of the war - the Sviatoshyn industrial airfield, and Sikorsky International airport located 7 kilometers south of the city center.
For the current columns of Russian ground forces to reach the city center, they will have to fight their way through several kilometers of a highly built-up and developed European capital. Combat would take place over hundreds of blocks among both wide boulevards and narrow streets lined by 4-10 story buildings. We have not seen anything like this since World War II.
Based on how the war has gone so far, it is hard to imagine how Russia will effectively occupy and maintain control of a city this size in the face of what has been a fierce and persistent resistance.
But if the occupation is Putin’s goal, Russia will definitely need to control the Kyiv rail hub so resupplies can arrive by train. And - for symbolic purposes - it will need to control independence square and the government buildings around it.
However, if the goal is to encircle and lay siege to the city to starve and break its people, as the Russians are doing to other Ukrainian cities, the occupier's lines will likely have to hold up against many desperate attempts to break them from both inside and outside.
Whatever happens in Kyiv, the entire world is watching.