“NOT HELPING”
The mood at Boryspil Airport was as relaxed as it has been across Kyiv and most other Ukrainian cities throughout the weeks-long crisis.
Travellers were calmly drinking coffee and eating cake as rays of sun streamed into the terminal on a cold winter day.
Ukrainian leaders have been increasingly angry at Washington for releasing almost daily intelligence briefings pointing to the imminent threat of war.
“All this information is only provoking panic and not helping us,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said over the weekend.
Lucins said he was worried about his safety “at some level”.
But he said he has been living in Ukraine since its 2014 pro-EU revolution was followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for a separatist insurgency in the east that has claimed more than 14,000 lives.
“I guess we just wait and see what happens,” he said.
Armenia native Armen Vartanyan looked up at the schedule board before flying to Istanbul and saw one flight cancelled to Canada.
“They are more careful about this stuff even if there is a 0.1 per cent chance, they always take precaution,” the 36-year-old said.
But he scoffed at the idea of Russian troops marching into Ukraine in a bid to reverse its gradual drift toward the West.
“Russian troops coming to Kyiv? No, I don’t think that’s going happen. That would be World War III – too much.”
“The Donbass – yes,” he added in reference to the eastern separatist region under the rebels’ control.
“It’s already separate, they are using the ruble,” he said. “Putin might take that.”
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