With security rooms against Putin’s winter terror
Selenski plans réduit strategy
With 4,000 emergency rooms, the Ukrainian government wants to help millions of people who are freezing through the winter. But the strategy carries a great risk.
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Internet, tea and warmth are available in this “point of invincibility” in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.
Samuel Schumacherforeign reporter
More than ten million Ukrainians are still without electricity. Even the doctors in the emergency departments operate in flashlights. And aid organizations estimate that the winter could force up to 300,000 people to flee the war-torn country.
But Ukraine is not about to give up. On the contrary: Kyiv is reacting with a new defense strategy that is reminiscent of the Swiss réduit strategy in World War II. Similar to the Swiss government, which at the beginning of the 1940s would have provided for the population to retreat to the Alpine bunkers in the worst possible case, the government of Volodymyr Zelensky (44) is now relying on supposedly invincible safety areas for people in need.
Selenski takes on Klitschko because of “points of invincibility”.
Unlike in the alpine country of Switzerland, however, the flat Ukraine does not drum up its population in mountain bunkers, but in so-called “points of invincibility”. These are rooms in administration buildings, schools, train stations or sometimes just erected winter tents that are heated against all odds and equipped with electricity thanks to emergency power generators.
Those who can no longer stand it in their ice-cold room or are almost in despair in their broken house should be given the opportunity to warm up in these “invincible” rooms, catch up on a few hours of sleep and charge their electronic devices. Many of the approximately 4,000 “points of invincibility” are also to be set up with baby stations.
President Zelensky made the new civilian defense strategy public a few days ago. The British survivalist and former elite soldier Bear Grylls (48) advised him on this. Grylls, who became world famous with his TV show “Exposed to the Wild”, visited some “Points of Indomitability” in Kyiv. Because of the mini-reduits, Selenski even publicly quarreled with Kiev’s mayor Vitali Klitschko (51), who – unlike many of his counterparts in other cities – “did not take care of the rooms in his district in an exemplary manner”.
Swiss woman helps with Ukrainian Réduit efforts
Eva Samoylenko-Niederer (40), who was born in Wädenswil, ran a children’s home in the Donbass until the outbreak of war and is now helping needy Ukrainians with her association “Sails of Hope”.
The idea for the “points of invincibility” has been around for a long time, Samoylenko-Niederer says in an interview with Blick. “So far, however, it has been refrained from because such places are of course easy targets for Russian missiles.” However, the cold winter threw the original safety considerations overboard. “People have to ask themselves: Do I want to freeze to death – or do I reach a point of invincibility and risk a terrorist attack?” Many war-torn Ukrainians would have no other choice this winter.