WATCH: CNN Correspondent On the Ground in Kyiv Reports On Hearing Air Sirens for the First Time in Days After Biden’s Arrival

CNN’s Alex Marquardt reported on Monday that the air raid sirens heard while President Joe Biden walked the streets of Kyiv were the first to be heard in days, observing that a year after the Russian invasion of the country began, life has largely returned to normal in the Ukrainian capital.

“Just a year ago, and I was here, we did think that the Russians were going to loop around the capital — perhaps cut it off from the rest of the country,” said Marquardt.

“There were all sorts of questions about what would happen to President Zelensky, whether he should stay here, whether he should flee. The fact is life is relatively normal here in the capital these days,” he continued. “I’ve been here for the past five days. I have not heard any explosions, I have not heard any explosions until about half an hour ago, right when President Biden was in the center of Kyiv.”

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the Russian Government was notified that Biden would be visiting the capital so as to prevent any kind of international incident or escalation in the hostilities between the United States and Russia.

Marquardt was careful to clarify that while Kyiv had returned to some semblance of normalcy, the fighting goes on elsewhere in the country. He also said that the Ukrainians he had spoken to were mostly ambivalent, though “positive” about the idea of a visit from Biden, but were mostly focused on securing more aid from the U.S., which has spent billions of dollars on the defense of the country.

On Fox News, Tucker Carlson used the clip to attack Biden for the visit as well as the Ukrainian government for continuing to ask for military aid.

“So here you have Potemkin air raid sirens, just the touch required in this — the most tightly-scripted, most completely dishonest war in history. The fakest war. And the point, of course, is to sell Americans on yet another 500 million in tax dollars for Ukraine,” argued Carlson.

One recent estimate by the Norwegian military pegs the number of Ukrainian civilians to have died since the invasion at around 30,000 and the number of military casualties at 100,000.

Watch above via CNN.