Photo: 2J6HRMX Depressed Ukrainian immigrants sitting and waiting at railway station. Credit: Alamy via Reuters

This Isn’t Hemingway: A Ukrainian Bombardment Diary

Early January, 6 a.m. I get a text from my colleague, a young and energetic editor-in-chief of a Ukrainian media outlet. She and her husband are making their way to the subway station.

By Tetiana Bezruk

January 24, 2024

Minutes ago, the Ukrainian Air Forces shared news via social media that 16 Russian bombers, TU-95MS armed with cruise missiles have taken off and are heading to their firing positions. This means Putin’s regime plans another wave of bombardment for Ukrainian towns and villages. Many of them have no anti-missile protection.

When you read Ernest Hemingway’s novels war novels — like A Farewell to Arms — your imagination pictures a rather gentle version of events.

It’s all so romantic that you could imagine reading it on a beach: a refreshing cocktail in one hand, a book with war rampaging across its pages in the other, with the sun and sand all around you.

As for me, I’m writing this in the bathroom of my Kyiv apartment, wearing a fluffy bathrobe and sitting on a chair I hauled from the kitchen.

I hear two loud explosions outside.

In the kitchen, the windows rattle, and the dishes on the shelves clatter. Just last week, I treated myself to two new china cups with saucers, a perfect match for the teapot that my friends gifted me on my birthday last year.

Come evening, I brew tea in the pot, gazing out the window while listening to the wind and watching the tree tops swaying across the street. It might sound ridiculous, maybe even inappropriate, but I worry about my cups when ballistic missiles hit the city.

Even so, we have all become practiced at letting things go. In my reporter’s grab bag, a backpack that was my constant companion through February and March 2022, you’d find two sweaters, a pair of jeans, a couple of towels, some socks, and also a pair of earrings and some perfumes.

At some point, I started to tuck the bottles of perfume next to a tourniquet which could stop bleeding from an injury. War teaches you many things: to forgive petty squabbles, love deeper, hate harder, think faster, and make decisions in the blink of an eye.

It’s like a pendulum, swinging you first to the grim side where there’s blood, death, and the sounds of artillery shelling, and then to the other, where you contemplate some semblance of a future, dream, cook delicious food, and even feel happy.

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The bottles of perfume next to the tourniquet in my backpack are precisely about this. I have no clue when the pendulum will thrust me into this or that side. I must be ready for either.

Just before New Year’s Eve, I caught up with my friend from Donetsk. She moved to Kyiv in 2014 and then to Lviv in 2022.

Throughout these eight years, as she navigated the challenge of creating a new home and figuring out the next steps, the war has skulked along by her side. She knew what it felt like to lose your home.

Even though we often talked about the war, I never quite understood her. It wasn’t due to my unwillingness or a lack of a shared experience. The truth is, war isn’t something you can comprehend solely through the videos of shelling. It’s a rock ever-present in your chest, and you live with it even when the sun is shining and birds are singing outside your window in the morning.

The explosions pause for a moment. Seizing the lull, I decided to unload the washing machine and hang my clothes to dry. I hear a drawn-out symphony of firetruck sirens as I step out of the bathroom.

Ambulances follow closely behind. Their sirens have never been bearers of good news, but if they wail during bombardments, it means that a Russian missile hit a residential building, and casualties are likely. Ukrainian poet Victoria Amelina, who died aged 37 after the Russian missile strike on a pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, Donetsk region last year, wrote:

Air-raid sirens across the country
It feels like everyone is brought out
For execution
But only one person gets targeted

Usually the one at the edge
This time, not you; all clear.

Only later do you find out where the missile struck and who’s been wounded or killed.

I hear explosions again and retreat to the bathroom and cover my face with the bathrobe. I can’t even say if I am scared. I just have to wait it out.

The screen of my phone lights up with a notification about the end of the missile attack on Kyiv. I step outside, grab a coffee, browse the bookstore, contemplate watching a Wim Wenders movie, read an opinion essay on whether the wines in some film were fake, and wonder whether I’ve run out of dish soap.

Ha. Quite the ordinary life. The pendulum has swung back. But how long will it stay? I don’t know. I can never predict when I’ll be jolted back to the memory of bodies exhumed from mass graves in Bucha and Izium.

It’s a bit easier now that I can barely recall that stench. The stench that made me throw away the jacket and the boots I wore that day. The stench I’m trying to mask with three different perfumes.

Tetiana Bezruk is a Ukrainian journalist and war correspondent.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.