“The war that was so far away was suddenly real”

Kiev Russia began invading Ukraine last night. Shortly thereafter, the first Kievans with packed suitcases were already running across the street to head west. One of them is Olga, who is driving with her two children to Lviv – the city near the Polish border to which the German embassy staff has already been withdrawn.

The day before we met her in a café downtown. Olga is a podcaster, her partner flew to his family in London the day before.

She had 10,000 euros and the same amount in Ukrainian currency ready for emergencies, along with all her documents. “We’re not planning to leave town — we’re just preparing for it,” she said. “That’s our plan B.”

But she has no illusions that the future is “dangerous” for her children. Many Ukrainians have been at war with Russia for eight years. However, many in Kiev did not expect that he would move to the capital so quickly.

So are Katja and Mikhail, she is Ukrainian, he is Russian. Together they have three children, two of them from a divorced marriage. The two met ten years ago and only moved into a high-rise downtown building in January that looks like big Tetris blocks. It’s the most expensive property in town.

“We’ve been saving for it for a long time,” says Katja. “And until three days ago we also thought that we would spend our lives here.” But with Vladimir Putin’s television speech, her life plans would have vanished into thin air. “The war that was so far away was suddenly real.”

“If we had to leave town tomorrow, we couldn’t”

Katja and Mikhail tell that at dinner with their children on the tenth floor, from here there is a unique view over the city, high-rise buildings can be seen on the horizon. On Wednesday, they still thought the possibility of Putin bombing was a distant threat.

They don’t have an exit plan like Olga, they don’t sit on packed suitcases. “If we had to leave town tomorrow, we couldn’t,” says Mikhail. Having three children alone makes it difficult to simply drive away.

Her background is symbolic of the Ukrainian population, many here are rooted in Russia. They can’t talk about the war in their family, the topic is too charged for that.

Mikhail’s mother is a supporter of Putin, Mikhail himself now feels more like “Ukrainian than Russian”. And in the city he is now afraid of his own president.

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However, the fear was not felt on the city streets the day before the bombs. In the Loggerhead, a so-called Secret Bar in the center of the city, which can only be entered through a steel door, young Kievans drink an evening cocktail as if normal life were going on. Not a trace of fear, not even on the streets, which are very busy.

The bar has bricks inside, Mikhail popped in here for a drink. “It reminds me of a bomb cellar,” he says. He doesn’t know what will happen next. In the morning when the bombs fell, he wrote: “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but we’re safe for now.”

The streets are now closed. The military no longer lets civilians outside.
Collaboration: Ekaterina Bodyagina

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