The driver of a blue minibus, crammed full of people, was desperately trying to slide the door closed. Then I watched as a frantic woman stopped him from departing – handing a new-born baby girl to one of the passengers.
After the vehicle sped off, the middle-aged woman, weeping softly, told me that her sister was on board, taking the last bus to Uman, a city in central Ukraine, where she would join their parents.
So why was she not going? 'Why should I go? If they start bombing the cities they'll bomb all of them. It's not safe there but at least she'll be with the family.'
The heartbreaking scene was eerily reminiscent of flickering film footage of the early days of the Second World War.
I found myself among crowds of desperate people clutching bags, suitcases, pets and the hands of their partners as they tried to flee from an advancing army invading their country on three sides.
Traffic jams are seen as people leave the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday after Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine
To make matters worse, I later saw footage from a CCTV camera that showed the deadly impact of Vladimir Putin's armed forces in Uman – the destination for that bus – when a missile blew apart a 39-year-old cyclist and wounded five others.
This was just one desperate story among many that I came across yesterday on the streets of Kyiv – capital of a country facing the tragedy of our times as a malevolent dictator unleashes the hellish power of his massive military machine to crush its desire for democracy.
My day had begun about five hours earlier – when military targets outside Kyiv were targeted by missile strikes soon after 5am.
I heard a loud thump in the distance. I realised the war had really begun – and Putin was carrying out his crazed threat.
I found my Ukrainian colleague and photographer, Kate Baklitskaya, staring out the balcony window. 'Did you hear that?' she asked. 'It's started.'
Those were two haunted words I heard repeatedly yesterday as the fears of millions of Ukrainians turned into the most horrible reality with an assault on their land that was brutally announced by missiles and shells raining down on at least ten cities.
My early morning shock was being shared by countless others in this city straddling the Dnipro River – the capital of a land facing the tragedy of our times.
A woman waits for a train trying to leave the Ukrainian capital on Thursday after big explosions were heard before dawn in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa
A quick look at social media on my phone showed that a military airport beside Kyiv had been hit – where a young mother called Natsya had also heard the pre-dawn missile strikes.
She told me how she had looked outside her home in Vasylkiv, a town 25 miles from Kyiv – and to her horror saw the nearby air base for Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter planes being struck by shells.
'I heard it and also saw it through the window,' she said. 'So I collected up my things, packed my son's clothes and we left. I'm not panicking, I just want my child to be safe.'
I met Natsya, 28, standing with her ten-year-old son Vanya in queues for buses with thousands of other fear-filled Ukrainians.
'I'm leaving everything behind – my home, my job. None of it matters when my son is in danger. That was the only thought that struck me as I woke up to the sound of shelling today. I instantly knew that we needed to go as far as we can.'
Natsya admitted she had not prepared for this catastrophe despite the massing of Russian military on Ukraine's borders.
'Whenever I heard some bad news, I always thought it sounded so unrealistic, like a terrible dream. I could not believe that something like this would happen.
'I still hope I'll just wake up and it's all going to be normal, that life is going to be fine.'
But things look far from fine.
My colleague Kate and I left the apartment that we are renting in central Kyiv shortly after 7am.
A bearded man with a sleeping roll dangling from his red backpack followed us down the stairs and told us to take care.
People hug as a woman with a suitcase passes by outside a metro station in Kyiv in the morning of February 24
Vitaly was too rushed to talk properly but said: 'I'm going to my elderly parents, who live on the outskirts of the city, because they are so nervous. I have a small child. Yesterday, we went to the kindergarten but today there is war. It has started.'
Across the courtyard, a middle-aged couple with their son were also leaving with suitcases. The man had the car door open, then yelled back at his wife to ask why she was taking so long.
'I can't find the keys,' she screamed back. A brief burst of panic. Then the howl of sirens across the city.
Yet the atmosphere seemed calm in our local cafe when we went to buy croissants – and some people clearly seemed determined not to have their lives disrupted.
This was shown by a surreal overheard conversation among the counter staff. One woman, whose daughter worked in a beauty parlour, said: 'We woke up to the sound of shelling and my daughter started calling her clients to cancel appointments. But one girl refused to cancel. She kept saying, 'What's the big deal? I need my nails done'.'
The roads seemed so quiet following Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's imposition of martial law, except for the thundering traffic on one heading out of the city, jammed
