Ambassadors from Western international locations, together with their diplomatic groups — led by the USA — pulled out of Ukraine weeks in the past. However not Cichocki. A few of his workforce of greater than 80 Polish diplomats have moved to the western metropolis of Lviv, the place they preserve a working consulate, or again to Warsaw. However many stay by his facet within the capital.
Nonetheless, throughout his interview with BuzzFeed Information on Thursday, there have been indicators that Cichocki is worried in regards to the Russian risk. Outdoors his workplace door sat a helmet and bulletproof vest adorned with a red-and-white Polish flag patch. And he wore what he referred to as a “go bag” with “necessary paperwork” on his hip. His blood kind was scrawled in everlasting marker on his left arm.
“I don’t wish to find yourself within the fallacious coffin,” he quipped.
As he spoke, a volley of rockets pummeled the outskirts of Kyiv. “Let’s open the window so we are able to hear,” Cichocki mentioned.
He pulled out his telephone to test an app that’s alleged to notify residents when Russian missiles are incoming.
“I like this app, but it surely’s at all times two minutes late, which is a very long time when Iskanders come,” he mentioned in reference to Russia’s short-range hypersonic ballistic missiles which were used towards Ukraine.
Cichocki mentioned he had not been requested, not to mention ordered, by his bosses in Warsaw to depart Kyiv. “There are issues you possibly can’t do from a distance,” he mentioned, including that he was nonetheless partaking “24/7” with members of Ukraine’s authorities and different Western diplomats.
“Leaving now’s one thing that might lower [Ukrainians’] spirits,” he mentioned.
