On an industrial estate,hundreds of AK-47 rifles and other automatic weapons were being handed out to civilians off the back of two huge orange trucks. In normal times these are vehicles used to take out the rubbish. Now they were being used to supply armoury to a makeshift people’s militia.

By lunchtime,Ukraine’s National Guard had handed out over 18,000 submachine guns and ammunition. “Come and protect your nation Ukraine,glory to Ukraine,” shouted a young militiaman handing out the weapons.

Ukrainian couple Yaryna Arieva and Svyatoslav Fursin never planned for their first family photo to be holding a rifle to defend their country,but they too took up arms. They were to get married in May but rushed to tie the knot this week.

“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring,but I want to be by your side. Always,” Arieva wrote on social media alongside several photos of the ceremony.

The images showed the pair donning traditional clothing and holding candles inside a decorated Ukrainian church.

Arieva’s father,Ukrainian MP and journalist Volodymyr Ariev,said the ceremony had brought tears to his eyes.

“[...]they decided to marry today and celebrate together with the victory over the enemy,” Ariev wrote on Facebook.

The day after the ceremony,Arieva and Fursin signed up to join the defence force efforts. Her next image shows Arieva dressed in warm winter clothes resting her head on Fursin’s shoulder. They are both holding a rifle in front of what appears to be an aerial raid shelter.

“The first family photo after the wedding. The second day of the war,” Arieva wrote. “Truth will prevail. Everything will be Ukraine.”

Online,Ukraine officials posted instructions on how to manufacture Molotov cocktails and deploy them against heavily armoured tanks. A video showed the homemade bombs being made - petrol siphoned into empty beer bottles and a cloth rag stuff into the top - before being stacked at a roadside ready for the fight. “Kyiv Oblast is getting ready to meet the ‘guests’,” explains a Ukraine soldier.

As Russian troops converged on Kyiv,the Ukraine Defence Ministry announced:“We urge citizens to inform us of troop movements,to make Molotov cocktails,and neutralise the enemy,”

Russia had commenced its bombardment in the night. The apartment block in the south of the city had no strategic significance but is close to Kyiv’s main airport,presumably the intended target.

The building had been struck by at least one and possibly two rockets. Most of the building had been evacuated and hundreds of residents were safely underground,but officials still reported a number of wounded people needing treatment. A missile had created a huge crater three metres wide in the pavement while the side of the building had been blown out.

“How can we live through this in our time?” said Oxana Gulenko,as she swept broken glass from her room. “Putin should burn in hell along with his whole family.”

Viktoria,35,a mother of two young children now forced to live amid the carnage,said:“We don’t know how long we have to stay here. It’s good we have chairs at least. We’re shocked... How can you wage a war against peaceful people?”

Natali Sevriukova,47,a psychologist working with trauma victims,despaired as she surveyed the wreckage,tears in her eyes. “It was an awful scene,” she said. “Parts of the building were all over the place. It was very painful to see,it’s hard to even imagine the pain the people in those buildings are going through. Small children were in there too.” She had heard a loud explosion and a “lot of sparkling”.

The building was on fire and the Russian assault on Kyiv had begun. “It looked like it was maybe an artillery strike,there was light and then a huge explosion,” she said. Sevriukova made a plea to the West for help:“The aggression of the Russian Federation doesn’t have any limits. We have no idea what mental state Putin will have tomorrow so it’s a war not only in Ukraine but probably a threat to Europe as well. Everyone has to mobilise themselves and ask Western society to unite and make Putin stop.”

It is a prayer for intervention that will not be heard. Russian soldiers,said Ukraine officials,were “increasingly choosing to target civilian infrastructure and residential buildings”.

The onslaught is intended to spread chaos,inevitably prompting Kyiv citizens to flee by road and in the process hamper any attempt by the Ukraine army to reinforce its capital.

By Thursday night local time,troops had reached as far as the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station,a radioactive no-go zone since 1986 that Russian military strategists had identified as a jumping off point for Kyiv. The Ukrainian army said Russian soldiers were attempting to bypass the northern city of Chernigiv - where it was claimed they were “rebuffed” - to move the fight to Kyiv.

Also on Thursday,Russian airborne troops had seized Hostomel military and cargo airbase. Ukraine claimed to have wrestled it back by the evening only for Russia to again claim control by yesterday lunchtime.

Russia’s plan,according to US intelligence,is to seize control of a Kyiv airfield and airlift in thousands of soldiers. They would then be dispatched to hunt down Ukraine’s president,Volodymyr Zelensky,force him out of office and replace his government with a puppet regime obedient to Moscow.

In the forests outside Kyiv it was claimed that battle-hardened Chechen fighters,loyal to Putin,were gathering,waiting for the order to enter the capital. They had been given “playing cards” with the photographs of key members of Zelensky’s team to track down.

In the early hours of Friday morning,Russian troops had approached Kyiv in a pincer movement from the north and the north-east,entering the country from Belarus,the dictatorship run by Putin’s closest ally.

Russian troops also advanced on Kyiv from the eastern city of Konotop,already under Kremlin control,ground forces pushing down the west bank of the Dnieper river that runs through the middle of Ukraine,splitting it in two down to the Black Sea.

On the outskirts of Kyiv,the invading Russian soldiers left behind coded messages using spray paints on the pavements and roads for comrades following in convoys of tanks and troop carriers 50 vehicles long. Locals were being urged to cover up the messages if they discovered them or to spray other messages and symbols nearby in order to confuse the enemy.

At 6am on Friday morning GMT with the Russian army advancing,Ukraine troops blew up a bridge at Ivankiv,40 miles to the north of Kyiv to slow the enemy down. In Vorzel,a town 25 miles north-west of Kyiv,there were claims that Russian troops had shelled an orphanage. Details were scant and casualties unclear but Ukraine called it a war crime.

The first sign of fighting in Kyiv came out of the darkness:explosions and gunfire crackling through the northern suburb of Obolon,sending residents running for their lives.

In the night,a Russian fighter jet had been downed over a residential area of Kyiv,according to Ukraine officials,its destruction captured on mobile phone recording a bright orange flash in the night sky. The daylight revealed its wreckage strewn across the street,a mass of smouldering metal. The pilot would have stood little chance of surviving. Ukraine estimated Russia suffered 1,000 casualties within 30 hours of the launch of President Putin’s invasion,a figure that could not be verified.

At about 7am GMT,shortly after first light in the residential Obolon district just a few miles north of the Ukrainian parliament,members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces ambushed a Russian truck heading into Kyiv. The vehicle was equipped with a ZU-23-2 23mm autocannon and the troops inside were wearing Ukrainian Army uniforms.

Local intelligence had identified the men as “saboteurs”,members of Russian elite forces,whose aim was to infiltrate the city.

Ukraine will not quit without a fight. From his bunker,Zelensky vowed to stay in the capital despite the bounty on his head. “The enemy has marked me down as the number one target,” he said. “My family is the number two target. They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state. I will stay in the capital. My family is also in Ukraine.” Later he took to the streets to rally the public,saying “this is our country,and it will stay this way”.

As Putin’s army gained ground,the Ukraine National Guard took up strategic positions in the city,lying in wait for the enemy. Photographs showed them lying prone on a highway into Kyiv waiting for the Russians.

Vitali Klitschko,the champion boxer turned Kyiv mayor,dressed in battle fatigues,manned a heavy machine gun. “The city has entered a defensive phase,” he said. “Now in several districts there are several shots and explosions. Ukrainian military forces are neutralising Russian saboteur groups.”

The streets of Kyiv were largely deserted. Air raid sirens rang at hourly intervals,possibly simply to deter citizens from starting outdoors.

Hotels barricaded themselves in to deter fighters - either Russian or Ukrainian - from taking them over as combat positions or makeshift barracks. Roads remained jammed and crowds gathered at bus and train stations.

In the rush to flee,Ukrainian guards fired warning shots to prevent a stampede at Kyiv’s central railway station as thousands tried to force their way on to evacuation trains. When a train drew up at a platform,people rushed to the doors,some of them with their children and pets. The guards fired several shots with blanks to disperse the crowd after screams broke out.

Thirty-year-old Maria gave up trying to leave after spending four hours at the station with her child,husband and dog.

“You can see,it’s dangerous to break through the crowd with a kid. The dog is scared. Honestly,we’re exhausted,” she said. When Ukrainian soldiers marched through the station,people clapped their hands and shouted the military greeting:“Glory to Ukraine!” “Glory to heroes!“.

“I’m not afraid of anything,” said Iryna,a 35-year-old woman who had failed to get on a train. “We stand for the truth and if we stand for the truth,God is on our side.”

Many others chose to flee in their cars,choking roads outside the capital. Stuart Mackenzie,a Scottish expatriate who has lived in Kyiv for 30 years,managed to escape to Poland by car in the early hours of the morning.

He told the BBC:“I could see by 4am that things were getting very,very bad. I decided to wake up my family. You know you make these decisions all the time,should we go,should we stay,but my wife and I always promised that if anything got serious enough that it threatened the children,then that’s the point we leave,and I felt that[4am on Friday morning] was the time.”

Still stuck in Kyiv on Friday were Manisha and Mitaish Parmar,a British couple who were hoping to have twins via a Ukrainian surrogate but now fear the worst.

Manisha said:“It’s just been absolutely devastating,terrifying,we’ve just been hearing loud noises,explosions,gunfire. And we just feel absolutely stranded where we are. We’re stuck,we can’t do anything,we can’t go anywhere. And it is just absolutely devastating. We are terrified. This is a life or death situation.”

The British embassy has offered them emergency travel documents if they can get to Lviv,but Manisha said:“We cannot go anywhere. The roads are gridlocked,the trains are absolutely jam packed,people are waiting hours on end just to get on the trains,and obviously there’s no air space,airports are shut... We’re pleading for help.”

New legislation has been passed to help the country battle the Russians,allowing citizens to carry guns to defend the city,and another that has funnelled the entire national budget into the defence of the nation. Politicians are also arming themselves.

“Around 100 MPs from nearly all the factions have got guns,” said Yevheniia Kravchuk,an MP from Zelensky’s ruling party,Servant of the People. “Right now,anyone who wants a gun and can get to the defence unit and give the password can have one. Almost 20,000 guns have been issued[to civilians and lawmakers] in Kyiv.”

She added ominously:“Today is a crucial day because the Russians put all their forces to Kyiv. Our army is here to defend the country and they will for sure. President Zelensky is not going anywhere,the government will stay until the end.”

Russia may have overwhelming firepower but Ukraine is fighting back.

The Telegraph,London