Below is the text my friend from Estonia asked to write for their newspaper back in March 2022. It’s about the things happening in Kyiv, Ukraine back then. My personal experience. With no analysis but feelings. One year has passed since then, and it’s hard to read it and remember the emotions I had. But I don’t want it to disappear, so I decided to share and save it here.
Please forgive the mistakes. Hard to think about grammar and writing style when under shelling… But I don’t want to edit it now. Let it be as it was: doomed, desperate, disappointed.
***
I’m writing from Kyiv. When looking at the calendar, I see it’s March 6 today, but it becomes harder and harder to follow the dates and understand the course of time.
It feels like a year has passed, not 10 or 11 days. Everything has merged into a single stream happening with someone else, not me. It feels like a parallel world, with my reality — the one with sunshine, work, family nearby, and plans for the future I had back in February — eaten by the Langoliers.
Russians are trying to surround our capital from all sides. The small towns near Kyiv — Bucha and Irpen — no longer exist: Continuous shelling and bombing turned them into ruins and left thousands of people with no homes. Ukrainians have been hiding in basements for 4–5 days already, with no light, heat, food, and mobile connection. Friends and relatives can’t contact them and don’t know whether they’re still alive.
The occupants do not allow people to evacuate and immediately start shooting at the residents once they try to come out and leave their ruined shelters for safer places. There is no way to get help there either: those Russian bastards don’t let anyone anywhere, shooting and bombing when our army or volunteers try to help. And, sure thing, Russian TV channels show this as the Ukrainian army of Nazis doesn’t allow peaceful Russian soldiers to free civilians. I don’t even have words to describe this blatant and cynical lie!
Kherson, Mariupol, Nova Kakhovka, Chernihiv, Sumy… All these cities are in ruins. People have no communication, food, water; everyone is waiting for the green corridors. The Russians do not allow our humanitarian aid there! And yet, people find the strength to go out into the streets of their ruined cities with Ukrainian flags in their hands and the desire to chase this scum off their land. Many civilians have been killed and wounded, and the Russians are just shooting at everyone indiscriminately — hospitals, schools, apartment buildings. It’s worse than the worst nightmare a human mind can imagine.
Do not believe Russian propaganda saying Ukrainians are happy to get help from Russian soldiers. We all hate them here: We didn’t ask them to come; we can’t understand how it’s possible to throw bombs on our homes and say, “We save you.” In what reality is this considered normal? If such a reality exists, we don’t want to live there.
My sister lives in Kharkiv with her husband and 3-year-old son. They stay in the city, listening to constant shelling and explosions. She can’t leave now: there’s no transport, and it’s close to impossible to reach a railway station. There’s panic and a terrible crowding at the station itself: She’s just afraid of being trampled in the crowd.
The day before yesterday, a rocket flew into her neighbor's house and broke the windows in her apartment. There was no heat, electricity, and practically no Internet. We kept in touch through the phone and text messages, but they tried to save the battery. By some miracle, they moved to relatives on the other side of Kharkiv yesterday: She says they still have light there, but rockets are flying over the house, and they hear loud explosions. Food is running out, and most stores are closed. Those open are almost empty.
My parents are in the Luhansk region now. A few days ago, Russians came and said that my hometown is a part of the self-proclaimed puppet state of LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic) now. Lighting fast, they introduced Russian currency, time, and TV channels there. So Mum and Dad can’t see our Ukrainian news on TV, only a version of the Russian propaganda channels. Cell phone service is gone, and so is the Internet today. Only SMS are left, but Mum just wrote to me occupants are changing mobile operators now, and she won’t be able to call or write me from there…
I must confess that I somehow gave up in spirit this morning. I woke up and caught the thought, “Maybe it’s time to leave?” And then it was like, “Where to leave if my home and my family are here?” And then, “But what to expect here? Even if all this ends by some miracle, what will we have here?” I do not imagine how to restore the country, what jobs we’ll all have, what money we’ll live for, with thousands of people left without homes. Many have no place to come back — their houses are ruins.
Such are my inner swings. But I’m still here. And I do my best to believe in the happy end for Ukraine.
***
More reflections: Forgive me, Ukraine; My war-life balance: Part 1 and Part 2.
Thank you for reading! Feel free to follow me here or on Twitter.
