KYIV — Bartosz Cichocki sat in a second-floor room lined with large windows, wearing a soccer jersey and sipping a glass of single malt scotch, full of bravado, and shrugging off the missile explosions that reverberated through the Ukrainian capital.
As Poland’s ambassador to Kyiv, he said he felt secure inside the hulking Soviet modernist building that houses his embassy — so much so that he hasn’t slept in its bomb shelter a single night since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began bombarding Kyiv with air strikes one week ago.
“Why?” Cichocki asked. “People sleep in beds.”
But many terrified Ukrainians have not been sleeping in their beds since Russian President Vladimir Putin began targeting them with brutal weaponry that has torn their cities and lives apart. They have been huddled underground in basements and metro stations, fearful of the shells exploding seemingly everywhere on the surface. More than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country, according to the United Nations. And roughly 600,000 of them have gone to Poland, Cichocki said, adding that there is no limit to the number of Ukrainian refugees his country is willing to accept.
“I don’t imagine Poland would close the door,” he said.
