For the past four days, Yuriy Ackermann's scared friends have been sheltering in a dark underground car park in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, with their 13-year-old daughter.
Yuriy Ackermann and his wife, Alice who sent this photo to their friends who are hiding in the underground car park. Photo: Supplied
Like millions of others they tried to flee to safety, only to end up back where they began because of traffic jams and fuel shortages.
As explosions echoed above, they found refuge below.
"Whenever the siren stopped they would go to their home, have a nap, have some hot food - tea, scrambled eggs," Ackermann said.
"They were telling me how excited they were to go back home and have some scrambled eggs. It's just surreal."
The underground car park in Kyiv where their friends are hiding. Photo: Supplied
Yuriy Ackermann hails from Chernivsti further to Ukraine's west, near the border with Romania and Moldova.
He moved to Tauranga at the age of 14, but recently spent two years in Ukraine with his wife because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ackermann thought war with Russia was impossible, so its grim reality has hit hard.
"I cried because I just couldn't handle this madness, this horror," he said.
"For my mother who was born in the Soviet Union when this was all one country, what happens now - and for me as well - it is just senseless. That's what in Russian language you would call a brother murder."
Kyiv has not come under sustained attack yet, but satellite images show a column of Russian military vehicles nearly five kilometres-long snaking towards the city.
A Maxar satellite image taken and released on 27 February, 2022, shows a column of Russian military vehicles as they move towards Kyiv, on the P-02-02 road (Shevchenka Road) on the outskirts of Ivankiv. Photo: AFP photo / Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies
Ackermann's family is coordinating volunteers distributing humanitarian aid packages, blankets, medicine and blood donations from neighbouring Poland.
Refugees have also found safe haven at their hotel and restaurant.
He condemned Russian president Vladimir Putin for sending teenage conscripts into Ukraine like "lambs to the slaughter" and lamented the impossible choice his compatriots face defending their land.
"They will look at those dead kids that they killed and they will be conflicted because they had to do that to protect themselves, their family and their land," he said.
The New Zealand government has condemned Russia's attack and will spend an initial $2 million on humanitarian aid for Ukrainians.
The government has also introduced travel and targeted export bans and suspended top-level diplomatic relations with Moscow, but has not imposed any sanctions on Russia or the oligarchs who live or invest in Aotearoa.
New Zealand has traditionally relied on the enforcement of United Nations sanctions.
Yuriy Ackermann said politicians should introduce autonomous sanctions legislation, investigate the financial ties of Russian elites and send more aid to Ukraine.
"New Zealand needs to have a clear, vocal stance against this," he said.
"Right now, innocent people die and we are absent."
