photo by the author
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Investor and activist from Kyiv, Oleksandr Roshchyn, writes about his impressions after visiting Kyiv and neighbouring settlements after two months of the war.
«…I went to Kyiv for business purposes. The breath of war begins to be felt at the entrances.
Dilapidated houses, burned-out supermarkets along the Zhytomyr highway, parched Russian vehicles, roads broken from shrapnel or shells, and destroyed bridges.
After the relatively quiet western regions, here again, you begin to remember what it is like to feel danger around the clock.
The atmosphere in Kyiv is quite scary. Checkpoints, barricaded roads, half-empty shelves in shops near the house, closed favourite cafes and pharmacies, the need to wander the city in search of 95th gasoline at the gas station.
Casual conversations with neighbours and acquaintances. Most are still terrified. Although they try not to show it. Silent sighs and curses, misunderstandings of how to behave in the 21st century.
I went to my wife’s relatives in the village near Makariv, brought a bit of food and medicine. I drove through Makariv to see in my own eyes what I’d been listening to and seeing on the horizon the other day. I collected spring and summer clothes, machinery, necessary items and went back to Lviv.
Now, it is part of our reality, as never before. And the war will not end tomorrow. There will be local victories and terrible news, from which fists are clenched.
This reality must be accepted as the norm and we must learn to live it fully. With daily news from the frontline, with volunteer activity simultaneously with work, with the need to go into the shelter during an air alarm right in the middle of a business meeting at Zoom. This is no longer a crisis. This is the new normality.
We will overcome Russia. We will rebuild the country. We will remember everything, the war will not write everything off. But we will never be the same again. And the sooner everyone understands this and stops clinging to the comfort that disappeared in the fire of war, the sooner we will start to move forward and rebuild ourselves.
First, our own lives, then – the space around us, and finally – the whole country.»
Oleksandr Roshchyn, translated by Vitalii Holich
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