toddlers—a girl and a boy. Anke and Martin had seen their grandchildren only twice in the past five years. In that quiet stretch of time, Katya and I became the people they spent the most time with.

The couple had taken up some part-time gigs—Anke at a local church, Martin with an engineering consultancy—to escape the monotony of retirement. Outside that, most of their time was spent worrying about cyclists’ safety on the road, the lack of trees and shade in the city, reckless littering, and dog poop left uncollected by their owners.

Offering shelter to two refugee girls fit perfectly into the life philosophy of their late sixties. Having lived behind the Berlin Wall, they recognized its ghost in eastern Ukraine, dividing me from my own.

We usually met Mama and Sasha in parks or shopping centres. Both of our host families were generous and kind-hearted, and probably wouldn’t have minded if we’d invited visitors over. But it felt like too much to ask. Besides, meeting in public had its advantages—we ended up seeing much more of Berlin.

Mama once called it a big urbanised village—a megacity made up of scattered clusters, almost like villages folded into a single sprawl. To be honest, I liked it that way. But perhaps she missed the convenience of Donetsk, where everything sat on top of everything else—offices, factories, apartment blocks, schools, and hospitals, all packed into the same few blocks.

By the time we left Berlin, Mama and Sasha were already receiving support from the German government—a remarkably generous package. Mama noted that while the system was generous with payments, it carried a quiet expectation: that people would eventually stand on their own feet. Language learning was encouraged not just as a skill, but as a step toward employment.

Mama had no issue with that—hard work, she’d say, was in her blood. You could see that quiet determination in the rhythm of their days: attending government-subsidised language classes, searching for jobs despite employers’ hesitation over her limited German, hunting for the cheapest flat on the market, and trying to find, through online forums, Mama’s childhood best friend Margaretha—the Volga German who had left Donetsk in 1989 and vanished from her life without a trace.

Our journey back to Ukraine was relatively smooth. We flew from Berlin to Rzeszów, a small city in Poland, less than 200 kilometres from Lviv. Flying was much cheaper than taking German and Polish trains.

The UN had launched a shuttle bus service between Rzeszów and Lviv, available to UN staff and members of approved humanitarian organisations. My employer was on the list, so I qualified for the service. Katya was eligible as a staff member of a UN agency. The service, however, was in high demand—we had to wait a week to secure two free spots.

We overnighted in Rzeszów and, just after breakfast, boarded a convoy of three UN shuttle buses. Ours was driven by a Kosovo Albanian, with a Kenyan man as his assistant—both UN staff.

 After a month and a half away from Ukraine, Katya and I found ourselves curious: why were two foreigners driving UN buses into Ukraine? The only explanation we could come up with was that the UN might not yet have secured conscription exemptions for its male Ukrainian staff—and while women could legally cross the border, the UN perhaps didn’t have female drivers in place.

On our bus, we were the only Ukrainians—the rest were expatriate staff. We entered Ukraine through the Medyka–Shehyni border crossing, and the experience couldn’t have been more different from the way we’d exited. This time, we didn’t even have to get off the bus. Immigration officers on both the Polish and Ukrainian sides stepped aboard to check our documents.

After a three-and-a-half-hour ride, the bus pulled up in front of a large Soviet-era hotel in Lviv. The UN agency where Katya worked had set up a makeshift office in the hotel lobby. But no one there knew her. It was almost all expatriate UN staff—new faces, brought in after the full-scale war had begun.

Papa was waiting for me in the hotel car park. He had taken a day off work and travelled from Kalush, in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, where he’d been posted. He had lost weight, there were dark circles under his eyes, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved since leaving Mariupol.

I handed him the small suitcase Mama had packed for him—filled with things she’d bought using the savings from her government assistance. There were razors inside.

I was so very happy to see the Zhiguli. It hadn’t lost its charm. Unlike its owner, there were no creases on the bonnet, no dark circles under the headlights—the Zhiguli still thrived.

Papa took Katya and me to the hotel we had booked for the night. After checking us in, he took us out to a restaurant for lunch.

Papa left later in the evening, after we had dinner together. Katya chose to stay back in Lviv, though she wasn’t quite sure what she’d be doing there—her office didn’t even have a desk for her. They would, however, give her an accommodation allowance. I would head to Chernivtsi the next morning.

I headed to Chernivtsi, where the new humanitarian hub for international NGOs had been set up. My organisation hadn’t launched any programme activities in Lviv yet, so I was being relocated there along with another newly arrived expat colleague.

The choice of Chernivtsi as a humanitarian hub is an interesting one. The city is just a 45-minute drive from the Romanian border. After the full-scale invasion, many expatriate staff stranded in the eastern oblasts and Kyiv were evacuated through Romania, avoiding the western borders where the queues were impossibly long. Since then, humanitarians have developed a quiet fondness for Chernivtsi. It offered a safer place to work—and an easier exit, just in case.

Okello put it bluntly, as he often did: “We humanitarians love our lessons learned. We write them up, worship them, even recycle them. It’s supposed to make us wise—but mostly, it makes us backward-looking. Crises don’t always follow old roads. Sometimes, they break new ground while we’re busy studying the last disaster.”

We start mid-morning from Lviv toward Chernivtsi, and in an hour our car is at a standstill. There is a funeral procession—a car carrying a wooden coffin, followed by many others behind.

Someone’s son is inside.

The malchik with grass stains on his knees and jam on his lips—who once ran barefoot through courtyards, shouting Mama with every fall—now lies still. His knees will never bruise again.
His lips will never call her name.

Someone’s Igor is inside.

Someone’s papka, who turns a game of hide-and-seek into silence. He never comes out from the hiding. Now they carry him home.

The wooden box will rest beneath a metre of soil. Slowly, the body will loosen its grip—flesh softens, bones give in. Heat will rise, gases will swell, then fade. Tiny lives will arrive, not to harm, but to return him. Nature will take care of the dead man.

But the living stays behind. What he gave doesn’t die. It curls up in quiet corners of the heart—like a storm-beaten bird, not flying, not singing, just trembling to survive.

Every time new details surface—fragments from Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel—my chest tightens. Friends, colleagues, even strangers on social media share photos, voice notes, confessions scraped from the edges of survival. Men tied up and shot. Women raped and left in cellars. Children huddled beneath corpses to play dead. These aren’t stories anymore. They’re memories passed from mouth to mouth, like a bitter sacrament. I wasn’t there. But I carry the shame of being from the same species as the men who did that. And the weight of knowing I might’ve walked those same streets just days before.

My heart feels like stopping at the procession and telling the crowd—let the man fly away from your hearts.

Don’t try to bury him inside you. No weight of soil will hold him down—he’s too strong.

He will rise through it and return, on a sunny day, or a rainy day, or a winter night. He doesn’t follow rules. Just let him fly. Let him go.

“Pain is inevitable—suffering is a choice”.  You’ll make the pain permanent if you don’t let him fly away.

Mother, go find another pair of jam-stained lips and bruised knees to care for, another small hand that needs its nails clipped.

Devushka—girl—go find another Igor. Let the attachment go. He’s not coming back—take care of yourself. Don’t feed the pain.

I wish it were that easy—to tie and untie what you feel. My Igor still won’t fly.

What an irony—the kinder and softer a man is in life, the crueller and harsher the pain he leaves behind.

A second funeral procession, just an hour after the first. What has this land become?
Does the ode of grief, pain, and suffering ever find its way to the door of power.

It doesn’t. In war, human lives become statistics—just numbers to track progress, failure, or control. A statistic that never sings the ode of the millions who suffer, dead or alive. It tells nothing to those who read it—nothing of the cries, the silence, the ruin behind each number.

The driver took us straight to the office in Chernivtsi. A short security briefing had been arranged for me and the new expat colleague who’d travelled with me, followed by an individual HR meeting.

There was nothing unusual in the security briefing. The organisation had developed its own alert system—yellow, red, and green. Yellow meant I could choose whether or not to go to a bunker. Red meant I had to. Green meant it was safe to come out.

The HR briefing, however, was more interesting. My salary had been adjusted to reflect wartime realities and the inflation that followed. I was also granted a relocation allowance. But no one could say what I was actually meant to do in Chernivtsi.

That night, I stayed in a hotel at my own expense—a modest cost, just a fraction of the relocation package. The next morning, I returned to the office when it opened. There was no manager to give me any direction.

The Protection Manager—the person meant to guide my work—had only just flown from Juba to Nairobi. If all went well, she’d arrive in Chernivtsi in four or five days.
Until then, I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Katya told me it was the same story at her office. At least I knew I would have work once my manager arrived in a week—Katya didn’t even know what was supposed to happen next.

In the meantime, I spent the first few days attending the usual briefings: the Country Director’s daily update on the humanitarian situation, the Security Head’s rundown on any changes in the risk environment, and motivational speeches from the Head of Support Services about how generously the organisation treats its national staff.

Eventually, my new manager arrived. She’s from Colorado, USA. The Country Director introduced her during one of his morning briefings. From what I gathered, she has extensive experience in humanitarian protection—years spent working in crises in South Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

Ukraine, however, is new to her. She’s never been here before—not even as a tourist.

Katya called after work, like she does every day. For the past week, our evenings have mostly been spent complaining to each other about the big-name international humanitarian organisations. They’re like dinosaurs.

Today, Katya visited some collective sites in Ivano-Frankivsk. In one of them—a worn two-storey building—she saw relief supplies spilling out of every room. Women and children from nearby shelters came by to collect diapers, baby food, old clothes, canned goods, soaps, detergents—everything you could think of.

The whole thing is run by a local group of teenagers. They’d mobilised donations through social media, linking directly with people across western Europe. No offices, no clusters, no strategy decks—just instinct, urgency, and a few Wi-Fi connections.

Yesterday, Katya went to Lviv railway station. She visited the second floor, which had been converted into a temporary shelter for more than a hundred people. The young woman managing the site is barely nineteen or twenty.

I remember the day after the war began—when Katya and I were pushing through the queue at the border. Locals, many of them in their teens, were handing out hot soup, tea, and dry food to the people on the move.

Now, those young people are organising relief, distributing supplies, managing collective sites, while the big-name international organisations are still planning their actions.

I feel ashamed. I spent a month and a half in Berlin, drowning in my own misery, while people like me were out there helping others.

Now I’m back, well-paid as a humanitarian worker—yet with no real work to do.

Back at the office, my new manager has arrived and quickly earns a reputation as a hard-working machine. She stays late into the night, poring over situational reports—SitReps, as they call them—drafting standard operating procedures, writing strategy papers, and designing methodologies.

The Country Director is under enormous pressure. He leads an organisation with a global reputation for humanitarian response—and yet, in two and a half months, we still haven’t delivered a single pack of relief.

The problem isn’t money—our accounts are flooded with donor funds.
It isn’t manpower—we have experienced staff and seasoned managers in every department: admin, finance, supply chain, security, MEAL, communication, HR and programme.

The problem is that our procurement system barely works. It doesn’t work because it’s too good. There are so many layers of checks and balances—meant to maintain transparency, accountability, and ethical standards—that the system has become a dinosaur.

This morning, a truckload of relief supplies arrived at our office. Not something we procured—our headquarters secured it as a donation from a European company and arranged for the truck to cross the border to Chernivtsi.

The Country Director has gone out to the collective sites to oversee the first actual distribution of relief in two and a half months. He’s taken the Communications Manager with him—presumably to take pictures.

It’s been two weeks since my manager arrived. She’s still drafting SOPs, strategies, and methodologies.

In comparison, our Communications team has been remarkably efficient. They’ve printed multiple posters from the relief distribution—each one showing the Country Director holding a box of supplies.

Every room in the office now has at least one poster on the wall showing our staff distributing relief. The headquarters-managed website features the same photos, along with a write-up on the event.

This week, I joined a dozen other staff for a three-day training on something called Protection—a specialized methodology developed by the humanitarian sector. Two experts from HQ, who flew in earlier this week, are leading the sessions.

In the humanitarian world, your life is incomplete if you don’t know what Protection methodology is. Protection is a religion.

The methodology is so vast and nuanced that after three days of training, the one thing I’m sure of is this: I need more time—and more training—just to begin to understand what Protection really is.

Twelve million people—fleeing the ruins of their shelled homes—are now scattered across Ukraine. Men, women, children, the elderly, orphans, persons with disabilities—all kinds of people, with ordinary and special needs alike.

And our manager is still drafting the Protection strategy, SOPs, and methodologies.
It really is a religion. And like all religions, it has become bigger than the human it’s meant to serve.

Okello finally got clearance from his organisation to return. He was evacuated through the Romanian border on the fifth day of the invasion. He’ll be back in the first week of May, with plans to launch programme activities in Lviv.

The war is beginning to follow some predictable patterns. Active confrontations continue in the oblasts bordering Russia and Crimea. In the rest of the country, including Kyiv, daily missile and drone attacks have become routine.

The air raid siren system works smoothly, offering early warnings so people can reach shelters in time. A mobile app now delivers real-time alerts directly to phones, and several social media channels provide more detailed updates on missile and drone strikes as they happen.

Katya is tired of living in Lviv—not because there’s anything wrong with the city itself, the crown jewel of western Ukraine—but because of her work. She’s decided to return to Kyiv, and her office has no objection.

Our landlord in Lukianivka has been charging us only 50% of the usual rent for the past two months—a practice many landlords in Kyiv have adopted. It’s not just a generous gesture; it reflects the state of the rental market. If we moved out, he’d struggle to find another tenant.

Property values and rents in Kyiv have plummeted—especially in high-rises. With daily missile and drone attacks, no one wants to live above the tree line.

Katya won’t set foot in that 14th-floor flat—not even for a day. She’s waiting for Mykyta to find something in a low-rise building with a bunker, ideally on the ground floor and as close to the city centre as possible.

Kyiv’s city centre is full of churches and embassies—enough, Katya believes, to make missiles think twice. It’s a theory she clings to, and I don’t argue. With rents falling and our paycheques rising, a flat in the centre suddenly feels within reach.

Mykyta is in charge of the flat-hunting. He finds a small place on the second floor of a solidly built 1950s Soviet-era block, right in the city centre. It has a bunker. More importantly, the corner flat is attached—wall to wall—to the embassy of a former Soviet republic. No space in between.
Being next to an embassy gives Katya a sense of security.

The asking rent is just a third of its pre-war rate—not even half. That’s enough for Katya to agree immediately. But the issue is the duration. The landlord only wants a three-month lease. He expects the rental market to rise again and doesn’t want to lock in such a low rate for longer.

Katya, on the other hand, initially wants a two-year contract—too greedy, if you ask me. In the end, they settle on a one-year lease.

Mykyta has the keys to the Lukianivka flat. Once he shifts the things to the new place in the city centre, Katya will leave Lviv for Kyiv.

Katya arrives in Kyiv in early June, while I arrive at the end of the month. My organisation realises that Chernivtsi is a poor choice for a humanitarian hub, so they decide to revive the Kyiv office—and I happily grab the chance to return to Kyiv.

Our flat has two rooms and a small common area attached to the kitchen.
There are drone and missile attacks on Kyiv every day—mostly starting in the late evening and continuing through the night.

Katya and I keep our backpacks packed at all times, ready to run to the bunker. Each one has a laptop and charger, a phone charger, a power bank, a bottle of water, and some dry food.

We also have sleeping bags we bought in Berlin. I don’t sleep in the bunker. Even when I go down, I return to the flat once the air siren is turned off.

But Katya doesn’t. She doesn’t like the constant back and forth every time the air siren goes off. She’s left her sleeping bag in the bunker and simply sleeps there until morning.

This morning, around eight, two missiles landed less than half a kilometre from our flat, killing six people. One hit a children’s playground, the other struck the main road.

Andrii, a colleague of mine who usually drives to the office, took the metro today instead. If he’d taken his car, he would’ve been roughly at the same spot on Shevchenko Boulevard at the time the missile hit.

Katya is panicking again. Renting a flat next to an embassy no longer gives her peace of mind.

Mykyta said the missiles were from the old Soviet stock—not as precise as the newer ones. They may have veered off course and landed at random.

It’s grimly comforting, in a way, to realise what we’ve come to hope for: that the Russians run out of their outdated junk and start using the newer, high-tech missiles—the ones that follow predictable paths.

Imagine that—relying on better enemy technology to feel safer.

Papa got some news about our flat in Mariupol. The entire apartment block—like much of the city—was shelled to the core. After that, they bulldozed it. No attempt was made to recover the bodies buried inside.

We had bought the flat with a bank loan and some personal loans. Fortunately, Papa and I managed to pay off the personal debts just before the invasion began. It wiped out all our savings, but still—it’s a relief.

We don’t owe anything to individuals anymore. Imagine having to pay people back during a time like this. Now, we owe only the bank—for the flat, and a bit more for the washing machine.

Papa stopped making instalment payments on the flat and the washing machine after we left Mariupol. The government has made it unlawful for banks to demand payments in situations like ours.

It’s late autumn. Ukraine has bombed the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. Russia built that bridge over the water after annexing Crimea—to create a land connection to the Russian Federation without passing through Ukraine.

In retaliation, Russia has begun bombing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. More sites are hit every day.

With winter approaching, people aren’t just worried about the darkness—they’re bracing for the cold. The freezing, relentless cold.

Winter has just begun. Kyiv is completely dark. The streetlights are all shut off. The only light guiding you after dark comes from car headlights.

Katya’s prudence in choosing a flat has given us some reprieve. The city is prioritising electricity supply in the centre, thanks to the presence of high-profile offices, embassies—and, of course, the elite.

While some parts of the city go without power all day, we lose electricity for only a few hours.

I got my international passport today—something I had prioritised. A biometric one.
Unlike the first few weeks after the invasion, the EU no longer allows entry without a biometric passport. I needed to have mine ready so I could visit Mama and Sasha during my leave days.

Okello called. He’s planning to move to Kyiv as soon as his organisation finds him a flat.

He’s spent the past six months in Lviv, with the occasional trip to London. Lviv has been convenient—easier access to international flights from Rzeszów, Kraków, Lublin and Warsaw. He always uses Kraków. The city fascinates him, for reasons he’s never fully explained.

Okello’s organisation provides separate housing for expatriate staff. His old flat has already been reallocated to another expat. That one had a bomb shelter. Okello is worried he might be assigned a flat without one. He doesn’t want to be out on the street, running for the metro underground while drones circle overhead and missiles are on their way.

A few months ago, a mother and her 11-year-old daughter were killed by debris from a missile intercepted by air defence. It happened in the early hours of International Children’s Day.

Yes, you heard that right. An 11-year-old girl—killed on International Children’s Day—while running for her life, screaming, searching for shelter.

Katya and I find a good flat for Okello—with a large bomb shelter, right in the city centre. We pass the contact details to his office, which will finalise the rental process.

Okello arrives in Kyiv today. We’ll see him tomorrow. I’m a little excited—after nine months, I’ll finally see him again. Katya has met him a couple of times when they were both in Lviv.

These days, most bars and restaurants aren’t operating because of the power situation. The ones running on generators attract big crowds—but the noise is often unbearable. And most don’t have bunkers. You take your first bite of food, the air siren goes off—you pay the bill and run for shelter. So we decide to meet him at his new flat.

Katya and I met after work and headed straight to Okello’s place. Mykyta will join us later. On the way, we picked up a six-pack of cold beer, some salami, ham, and cheese.

Okello gave me a warm hug—you could see the happiness in his eyes, just being with us again. He’d already ordered pizza and stocked up on drinks. We were swimming in food and drinks—not that it mattered. We planned to stay until curfew hit at midnight.

Katya asked if his wife and kids were okay with him working in such a high-risk environment. Okello said he downplays the danger so they don’t panic.

When she asked why he chose to take the risk at all, he shrugged: “Every profession has hazards—some more, some less. Some physical, some psychological. Some both—like this one.”

The air siren has just gone off. A loud wail outside from the city’s alarm system—impossible to miss unless you’ve got headphones on. The mobile app had buzzed before that.

Clicking on the app’s map shows fighter jets in the skies just beyond Ukraine’s eastern border, ships in the Black Sea, and drones already entering eastern oblasts.

In short, it means missiles are likely to be launched soon—from the jets that took off in Russia, and from the warships stationed in the Black Sea. The drones are already here.

A flood of alerts from social media started coming in, one after another. Before checking them, we quickly scooped up as much food and beer as we could and headed to the bunker.

We were among the first to arrive. The shelter is huge—an entire floor. It’s well lit, with plenty of chairs and benches. Some families had already laid out mattresses in different corners.

It was Okello’s second night here. He came down last night too. A few people who recognised him gave him a smile. Some offered the barest movement of the face—a tiny gesture of welcome. The rest showed nothing at all.

Okello mentioned, almost offhandedly, that in Switzerland, people have a constitutional right to a bunker. By law, every Swiss citizen is entitled to one square metre of underground shelter.

According to Okello, Switzerland is the only country in the world where such a bizarre right exists. Still, while there’s no constitutional guarantee, Ukraine—especially big cities like Kyiv—isn’t too far behind.

Most of Kyiv’s bomb shelters date back to the Soviet era, when schools, hospitals, government buildings, and even some residential blocks were built with civil defence in mind. The entire Kyiv metro system was also designed to double as a nuclear shelter.

Ukrainian law prohibits blocking access to shelters. You don’t have to be a resident of a building to use its bunker—anyone can walk in.

The government has also launched a programme to install high-speed Wi-Fi in every shelter. This is the third bunker I’ve used in Kyiv so far, and I haven’t had any issues connecting.

Even though mobile networks usually cut out underground, the Wi-Fi has been surprisingly stable.

Okello is checking his phone – what are the objects flying to Kyiv. He reads for us – “Thirty-five Shahed drones are in the sky, five Iskander missiles launched from the Belgorod region, three Kinzhal missiles fired by jets over Kursk, and four Kalibr missiles launched from ships in the Black Sea.”

The Shaheds are kamikaze drones—they don’t shoot, they crash. Packed with explosives, they come all the way from Iran, Russia’s friend in this mess. Some people call them mopeds because they make that awful buzzing sound—like vrrrrrr—as they crawl across the sky.

The Iskander and Kinzhal are ballistic missiles—they shoot up and drop fast, like a hammer from the sky. They hit at over 2,000 to 10,000 kilometres per hour. The Kalibr is cruise—it flies low and quiet, hugging the ground until something explodes.

We’ve all become missile experts—Shahed, Iskander, Kalibr, you name it. Kids might grow up not knowing how to boil an egg, but they’ll tell you exactly how long you have after a launch from the Black Sea. Who needs nursery rhymes when you’ve got air raid apps?

Okello finishes his beer and reaches for another. We forgot to bring an opener. He tries the wall—angles the cap, pushes—nothing. Masha looks at him, grabs the bottle with her left hand, picks up the apartment keys from the table with her right, and in one swift move—snap—it’s open.

Okello

            Impressive.

Katya 

Ai ai ai ai. Eight years in this country and you still don’t know how to open a beer bottle? What will you tell to your people when you go back?

Okello           

I know how to climb a mango tree and pick one from the top branch. Opening a beer bottle? That’s too mundane for me.

Katya

We don’t climb trees in this country. Here, apples fall on their own. Give it a few minutes—you’ll see things much heavier falling from the sky.

Talking about falling debris—that’s what Kyiv residents worry about most. The Americans have given Ukraine some very sophisticated air defence systems, much of which is used to shield the city from air attacks. The interceptors fired from these systems and the incoming missiles both travel at several thousand kilometres per hour. When they collide, the force and friction are immense. The debris that falls doesn’t just break things—it can set them on fire.

Mykyta called, he is done at the office and ready to join us. Katya asked him not to start walking until the air siren is over.

The noise outside is getting louder and persistent. The sound of the interceptors fired from the air defence system creates a rhythmic texture, and then suddenly, you hear a big, loud bang. Okello reacts to one of the massive bangs.

Okello           

A missile must’ve hit something nearby.

I         

No, that’s the sound of a missile or drone colliding with the air defence system.

Katya

If a missile had hit nearby, your body would’ve told you before your brain did. Your knees would start to shake on their own, your stomach would twist like it’s trying to empty itself, and your head—your head would feel like it’s floating off your neck.

Okello

Everyday is a school day.

There isn’t much air attack in Lviv since Okello came back to Ukraine, so most things about the missile and drone strikes are new to him. He admits that, even after working in conflict zones for more than two decades, he’s never experienced anything like this.

In contrast to Okello’s school day, the newborns are born into this. The toddlers are growing up with it. Colleagues at the office who have young children often talk about how their kids’ behaviour has changed.

This is the world they know. For nearly a year, they’ve been going back and forth between home and shelter. Waking up in the middle of the night—running with Mama to the basement. They don’t go to kindergarten anymore, because the building has no bomb shelter.

For many, the noise doesn’t bother them anymore. It’s part of the background now—like the fridge humming or the rain ticking on the window. This is how life has been, so this is how life must be. One day, when they’re older, this rhythm of fear and waiting will shape how they see the world—what feels normal, what feels safe, what doesn’t.

The air siren is over. Mykyta texted—he’s on the way. We’re cleaning up our mess and packing our things to go upstairs. One guy with a laptop, who seemed to be video editing the whole time, stays behind in the shelter. He never looked up, never cared who came or went.

Okello offered us tea. He has very good English tea, which he insists—quite confidently—was not produced in England. The label on the box doesn’t say where it’s from—maybe Kenya, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that he’d prepare it the Indian way—tea leaves tossed into boiling water and kept on the heat with milk and sugar until it turned strong and thick. We simply agreed, just to make him happy.

Mykyta stepped in, with two bottles of red wine, just as the tea reached our hands. Okello passed him a cup without a word, as if choice was a luxury no one needed. We’re learning his way—food is food. You take what’s there, no questions, no fuss.

Okello has not talked with Mykyta for a very long time.

Okello           

How’s the Ministry treating you, Mykyta? Has the war changed your role at all?

Mykyta          

They transferred me to the EU integration department. It may not be obvious from the outside, but we’re quite far along in our preparations. Every law, rule, and procedure has been reviewed, and we’ve made significant changes to our legal and regulatory frameworks.

Okello

Any idea when you might get a foreign posting?

Mykyta          

Hmmm. Doesn’t look like it’ll happen before the war ends. Things are… complicated.

I was itching to jump in and mention what’s really bothering Mykyta. Then I stopped myself. Let him talk if he wants to. His parents and grandmother refused to evacuate their home in Zaporizhzhia before the occupation. After that, his younger sister, Olga, moved to Donetsk with her boyfriend and took a Russian passport. The boyfriend runs a business—buys used cars and auto parts in Rostov and sells them in Donetsk.

Mykyta is certain his family background will come up during the Ministry’s screening process for foreign postings. Poor Mykyta—his lifelong dream of serving abroad now hangs in jeopardy, through no fault of his own.

Enerhodar was occupied just over a week after the war began. Mykyta saw it coming—given the strategic importance of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, it was only a matter of time. He spent that week doing everything he could to convince his family to move west, if not all the way to Europe.

His grandma refused. She told Mykyta she wouldn’t leave—even if the nuclear plant exploded.

Three-quarters of a century ago, war had already torn her family apart, leaving her adrift like a leaf on a swollen river, carried from Rosilna to Zaporizhzhia in her mother’s arms. She wasn’t about to let war win again—not with only a few years left to live.

Mykyta’s father wouldn’t leave his mother behind, and his mother wouldn’t split from her husband.

Another air siren. We’ve gone back to the shelter—again—with whatever food and drinks we could grab. Curfew starts in an hour. If the siren doesn’t end before then, we’ll have to walk home during curfew. The rules allow limited movement just before and after an air raid—to give people time to reach shelter.

The alert ended around 2:15 a.m. We’d already finished all the beers Okello and I brought for the night, but the red wine bottles Mykyta brought were still unopened. So we decided to keep talking until the curfew lifts at 5.

The three of us working for humanitarian organisations won’t have a problem showing up a bit late to the office—we’ll manage a few hours of sleep. Mykyta, on the other hand, has to be in on time. But he’s not complaining.

No corkscrew, of course. Okello started heading upstairs to find one, but Mykyta stopped him.

“Watch this,” he said, peeling the foil off the cork like a surgeon. Then he rotated the bottle—seven times to the left, seven to the right—laid it on the floor, and pressed the cork in with his thumb. It slid in with a soft push. Like magic.

A few hours of sleep and we were functioning well enough to show up at the office by late morning.

The power situation in Kyiv kept improving, and by Christmas the city was nearly back to its former self. Shops and businesses were open again, windows lit up with decorations for Christmas and New Year.

And then, when spring came again, Kyiv bloomed even brighter than in any year I remember. More flowers in the parks and squares, more people in cafés, clubs, and restaurants—choosing life, even as the sirens kept howling overhead.

Katya and I have adjusted, too. We don’t take drones seriously anymore. We only head to the shelter when it’s missiles in the sky.

Katya is taking Mykyta shopping this morning. He hasn’t bought new clothes in ages—certainly nothing since the invasion. Katya has a healthy income—a UN salary. She seems to have let go of the idea of saving for a grand wedding. COVID killed the first plan and left her jobless for a long time. By the time she recovered, the war had started. She doesn’t have the courage to make another plan. What she’s doing now makes more sense—enjoy the good days while they’re still yours.

I left home about an hour after Katya. Directionless. A lazy Saturday morning.

A man with a prosthetic leg is walking down Volodymyrska Street. The speed he’s moving at surprises me. Where is he going? Who’s he about to meet?

A girl with a bouquet approaches from the other end. A quick hug—nothing too emotional. She hands him the flowers, and they step into a café.

Was she his girlfriend from before the war? Or someone he met recently?
If she was from the past, why so little emotion? Or maybe they’d broken up, and she just came as a gesture of goodwill.

Endless questions circle in my mind.

What if Igor hadn’t died, but survived with a disability?

Would I have lived with him—carried his suffering for the rest of my life?

Can anyone truly answer whether they prefer the silence of the dead or the discomfort of the living?

For a mother, there’s no dilemma. That’s your only son—or one of your sons.

But what about the rest of us? How far are we willing to carry someone we once loved, if that means caring for a traumatized, half-functional man?

Walking along Volodymyrska Street, I ended up at St. Michael’s Monastery. The wall is covered with small portraits of fallen soldiers.

A large number of destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles are on display in the square next to St. Michael’s Monastery. Some are so badly burned they’re nothing but raw, twisted metal. Others are warped, scorched, riddled with bullet holes—monstrous in size, ghostly in shape.

They’re displayed to boost morale—a symbol of Ukraine’s ability to destroy the invading force.

But inside those charred, twisted, bullet-riddled shells, a human life—or many—burned to death.

We collapse all those lives into a single, abstract term: the enemy.

It helps us close our eyes—so we don’t have to see them as bodies made of blood and flesh.

In Moscow, I’m sure they do the same—with our wrecked machines and the soldiers who died inside them.

They were our enemies. But they were also someone’s loved one. Someone’s malchik, someone’s Igor, someone’s papka.

Do the mothers of fallen soldiers hate the mothers on the other side who grieve just the same?

Do the wives of the dead curse the widows across the line?

Do fatherless children carry anger toward the other children left just as lost?

Hatred belongs to those who fight. Not to those who carry the silence that follows.

Put your ear to the silent whispers of the air and listen to the ode of the mothers, wives, and children on both sides. Their songs are strung on the same thread of loss, pain, and grief. They would trade the entire world to bring their loved one back.

I turned my eyes to the monastery walls, where families of fallen soldiers had posted pictures of their loved ones. I started to count—1, 2, 3, 4, 5… thousands and thousands of Igors, staring back from the wall. Looking out as if trying to say something. Maybe not about destroying the enemy. Maybe not about truth or justice. Maybe just a small, human plea: Mama, I didn’t want to die. I wanted to stay your malchik forever—playing in the garden with jam-stained lips.