A Chinese Diplomat’s Account of Kyiv’s First Night at War
Ding Jianwei, then a Chinese diplomat in Ukraine, offers a rare firsthand account of the fragile contingencies on which the capital’s survival seemed to depend.
When Russia’s assault on Ukraine began on 14 Feb 2022, Ding Jianwei was serving as a diplomat at the Chinese Embassy in Kyiv. That night, as the Ukrainian capital fell into darkness under curfew and blackout, Ding listened from just beyond the wall as a fierce firefight erupted in Mariinsky Park, less than a kilometre from the Presidential Office. He would later learn, he writes, that Ukrainian guards had made a tenacious stand and stopped a Russian special forces unit moving towards the seat of the presidency.
His grave, compassionate account is a rare Chinese eyewitness narrative from that first night, showing how narrowly Ukraine’s survival seemed to hang in the balance.
Ding is now retired from diplomatic service. Publicly available records as recently as December 2025 identified him as a researcher at the Eurasian Social Development Institute under the Development Research Centre of China’s State Council.
Ding studied Russian literature at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Nanjing Institute of Foreign Languages, now the College of International Studies at the National University of Defense Technology, before completing two years of military service in 1987.
The article was published on the WeChat blog 永久的心路 on 2 June 2026.
We also put out translations of Ding’s other accounts on Pekingnology and The East is Read.
基辅亲历：那一夜，上帝拯救了乌克兰
Kyiv Firsthand: The Night God Saved Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, Russia-Ukraine war broke out.
By the time night fell over Kyiv, this thousand-year-old East Slavic city was no longer the place it had been.
At 11 p.m., the whole city sank into a deathly silence. A citywide curfew had been imposed, and the power had been cut to avoid missile strikes. Kyiv lay in total darkness. Now and then, a bomb tore across the sky, leaving behind a brief, piercing flash, before everything slipped back into the endless dark. From time to time, the rumble of armoured vehicles could be heard in the distance, dull, oppressive, like the breathing of some enormous beast.
It was in this darkness that, in Mariinsky Park, just beyond the wall from where we were, fierce gunfire suddenly broke out.
Machine guns, submachine guns, grenades—the sounds of every kind of weapon blended together, punctuated by screams and shouted commands. The gunfire crackled in rapid succession. Bursts of explosive light flickered in the dark, throwing the outlines of the trees into sudden relief. The exchange lasted for more than forty minutes, and then stopped all at once, as if nothing had happened. Only the night wind went on blowing, carrying with it the smell of gunpowder and blood.
That night, all of us listened tensely to every movement outside the window. Fearing stray bullets, no one dared turn on a light, still less go near the window. We could only judge the course of the fighting by the direction of the gunfire—now close, now distant, now seeming to close in from every side. Every second felt stretched without end.
Only later did our Ukrainian friends tell us what had really happened in that battle.
As it turned out, on the very first day of the war, a Russian special forces unit had successfully landed on the outskirts of Kyiv. This elite detachment of several dozen men slipped quietly into the city under cover of night. Their objective was unmistakable: to head straight for the Ukrainian Presidential Office and carry out a decapitation strike.
Under the plan, they were to cross Mariinsky Park at night, since the park lies less than one kilometre from the presidential office. Once they had passed through that belt of greenery, the presidential compound would have been right before them.
But as they entered the park, Ukrainian guards posted around the Verkhovna Rada, the Ministry of Health, and the Central House of Officers spotted them. A fierce firefight followed immediately. The Russian special forces were highly trained, but the Ukrainian guards, using the buildings inside the park as cover, held them off with stubborn resistance. The battle lasted nearly an hour. In the end, the entire Russian special forces unit was wiped out.
It was that close.
Had that unit made it across Mariinsky Park; had they broken through the defence line a little faster; had the Ukrainian guards failed to spot them in time—the history of the war might have been written differently. Had the Presidential Office fallen, the consequences would have been too grave to contemplate. The whole course of the war might have taken another turn.
Afterwards, many Ukrainians said, “God saved Kyiv.”
Behind those prayer-like words lay the relief of having survived catastrophe, and the aftershock of fear that came with realising how narrowly disaster had been averted. That night, Kyiv was only one kilometre from falling. That night, the war stood on the edge of a very different ending.
The war has now lasted more than four years. Looking back, people may remember the great counteroffensives that shifted the course of the fighting, the fierce debates at international summits, and the events that shook the world. Yet sometimes, history is turned by a single night, a single park, and a small detachment that never made it through.
History is often like this. Beneath the great tide lie countless moments of “almost”. And it is precisely these almosts that, in the end, converge into the outcome we see today.
That night, the gunfire in Mariinsky Park woke Kyiv, and it woke the world. It reminded everyone that in war, victory is never written in advance. Between defeat and survival, there may be only a wall, a grove, a timely discovery, or a desperate stand.
Whether God truly saved Kyiv, no one can truly say. But one thing is certain: that night, the ordinary Ukrainian guards posted around the Verkhovna Rada, the Ministry of Health, and the Central House of Officers used their flesh and blood to stop a blade aimed straight at the city’s heart. They were the true guardians of Kyiv.
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