question of fighting in the trenches, it is woven through all aspects of life here, through people, what language they use, how they spend their time, culturally, buildings that they frequent, this morning, we were at saint michael s cathedral that you can see behind us, it was completely destroyed by the soviets in the 1930s and rebuilt at the turn of the century. and when we went to mass there this morning, the priest was talking about in his words, the terrorists, in other words, the terrorists, in other words, the terrorists, in other words, the russians in eastern ukraine so they have lived with this war in its many dimensions for a very long time but they are mindful that when you have more than 100,000 russian troops massing on different points on your border, when you have heavy weaponry, you do have to worry because the president made it clear if the war does ratchet up another
far beyond ukraine s borders. caroline hawley, bbc news. our chief intrnational correspondent lyse doucet is following developments in kyiv. we heard from the president a few days ago telling the world to calm down, back in his mind, and i had had this repeatedly from other ukrainian since he spoke, that the situation now is not different from what it was a year ago. you have to understand ukraine s crisis with russia is not simply a question of fighting in the trenches, it is woven through all aspects of life here, through the language they use, how they spend their time culturally, buildings that they frequent. this morning we were at saint michael s cathedral that you can see right behind us. it was completely destroyed by the soviets
leadership of ukraine, saying going to send more weapons, even and defence systems. the loudest message ukrainian is a hearing these continuing russian attacks on a city where it has to be said in the last few days the energy that seem to be dreaming of its people. behind me, the goldenjames saint michael s cathedral no longer shine. the foreign ministry deciding it has gone dark. people going into bomb shelters all the metro to seek cover. some are playing with suitcases, dragging them down the streets but also signing up to fight. have a look at the latest developments with this report from our correspondent, nick beake.
right across the river and over the past saint michael s cathedral to my right. so that sounded quite large scale, and then we have reports this morning from some colleagues to the east, they heard a loud explosion there, and a government official has told the bbc that troops have been crossing into odessa, to the south, very close to the russian border, as well as in the city of kharkiv to the north east, which is 25 miles from the russian border, as well as troop movement in the south west of russia. so the reports and signs this morning are that this is a large scale escalation of this crisis where we first saw russian troops building up last april. the focal point for the last couple of days certainly has been increased infighting in rebel held territories in the donbass region to the east, 400
starting to get a picture. the focus has been on the east of the country, the occupied territories by russian backed militants. president putin gave them official recognition and ordered in troops. we were not clear whether the troops had gone in but all those signs, as well as the noises we are hearing. we had air raid siren go off this morning which is something we have not heard before. this part of kyiv, with saint michael s cathedral, the foreign ministry building, it is usually busy with traffic constantly weaving through. this morning instead, there has been police vehicles are urging people to get off the pavement and the president himself, who wants officials to declare martial law, yesterday a state of emergency was brought in, meaning people s papers will be checked, vehicle checks, patrols, checkpoints, all things we have not seen, certainly in the capital and