ITEN, Kenya — The Ukrainian marathoner Mykola Nyzhnyk was asleep in the Kenyan countryside on Feb. 24 when he received a call from his pregnant wife, Olga. Alone in their apartment in Brovary, roughly 13 miles from Kyiv, she’d heard two explosions, so strong that the windows were shaking, she said. Ten minutes later, a third blast drowned out the piercing siren of car alarms, and she described a growing cloud of smoke in the distance.
Nyzhnyk told his wife to gather their documents and whatever essentials she could fit into a backpack. By the time Olga left their home 30 minutes later to go to a friend’s place in Kyiv, she heard a fourth explosion.