The first news David heard of Russia’s war on Ukraine was the explosion near his Kyiv apartment. David, an American, has ties to Ukraine, and has lived on and off there since 2015. After COVID-19 travel restrictions ended, he visited Kyiv again. At about 4 a.m. on Feb. 24, a resonant “ka-boom” woke him, he told The Epoch Times. He knew instantly it had to be a Russian missile. “It woke me up. And that was the first,” he said. “It was so loud that I was like, ‘Okay, we’ve got a war on our hands.’” To David and other Ukrainians, Russia’s missiles and invasion came as a shock. Russia President Vladimir Putin had never done anything like this in Ukraine before, he said. “Everybody said, ‘There’s no way Putin’s going to do this. This is insane,’” David said. “He bluffs, but it’s only to negotiate. He never goes all …