Shrapnel from a kamikaze drone pierced the tent in which the Ukrainian border guards who served on the border with Belarus slept. From here to Kyiv is only three hours drive.

Victor Derevyanko woke up from burning pain. His body was on fire. Blood dripped from his arm as he tried to wipe his face.. Pieces of metal went through his arm and stomach, hitting the muscle next to his heart..

" Only after the third explosion did I manage to fall out of bed and try to find a place to hide, because the explosions did not stop,” Derevianko told the Washington Post, recalling the beginning of the Russian invasion..

It was 4:15 am February 24. A few hours earlier, Derevianko and other border guards were still joking about President Joe Biden's warnings that Russia was about to unleash a large-scale war.. And so they became the first targets of Russian aggression. In a matter of minutes, Russian missiles began to fly out of artillery mounts.. They destroyed Ukrainian air bases, radar batteries, ammunition depots, airfields and bases, filling the morning with the sounds of war..

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Somewhere around this time, Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky woke up from the sound of a telephone.. The head of the border service told him that his units had engaged the Russians in three northern regions.. This was not the limited invasion that officials in Kyiv were waiting for.. Monastyrsky hung up and immediately phoned President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Washington Post writes that on the first day of the Russian invasion of the government quarter in Kyiv, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, was looking at his phone. They called him from the Kremlin. The former entertainment lawyer, now one of the Ukrainian president's inner circle, recalled that at first he could not dare to pick up the phone.. The phone rang again. In the end, Ermak answered. He heard the gloomy voice of Dmitry Kozak, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. Cossack said it's time for Ukraine to surrender. But Yermak scolded him and hung up.