In times of war, everyday life in Ukraine continues to have many surreal snapshots, some unspeakable, some bittersweet and public, others unusual just for the fact that they occur in the midst of a bloody war.
A mattress is placed in front of the entrance door. Another is lying on the right side, and one more, on the left side. An adhesive tape completes the picture, placed, as it is, in the form of a cross on the windowpanes. At first sight, the hotel (its name will not be mentioned for security reasons) appears like this, like an empty skeleton, the rest of something that, long ago, stopped hosting life.
But it’s just a mirage. The site is not closed, nor is it lacking in guests of all kinds. It is a war hotel in a city at war, which protects itself as best it can, like others, with underground bedrooms, underground restaurants, underground clients. Apparently anonymous buildings that, instead of leaving the shutters down, have embraced a peculiar transformism with the sole purpose of being able to survive, resist, and get ahead.
In times of war, everyday life in Ukraine continues to have many surreal snapshots, some unspeakable, some bittersweet and public, others unusual just for the fact that they occur in the midst of a bloody war.
The mother who stopped cooking the first time she heard an explosion. The couples of soldiers who got married in military uniform, while missiles fell here and there. The group of hipster friends who continued to celebrate their traditional meeting, every Sunday, despite everything, even being less than fifty kilometers from the troops that invaded their country.
Ukrainians no longer trust air raid sirens
Even air raid sirens have contributed to blurring these realities. In kyiv, they had from the very beginning a classical rhythm, like that of the movies. In the rural areas south of the Ukrainian capital, two beeps gave the warning signal, three, that of an attack in progress.
In Lvov, the first blast of a siren indicated for a long time the presence of a threat, the second, the end of that danger. In the center of Dnipro, they became continuous, they were never silent. It was possible to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with that musical band in the background.
So much so that, in almost the entire country, the population has stopped believing in that danger signal in recent weeks, and Volodímir Zelenski, the Ukrainian president, has already been forced to send a message, which has circulated on Telegram, to remind people that yes, that the most precautionary thing is not to ignore that alert. It has been of little use.
In most of the Ukrainian cities under kyiv’s control, people today often ignore noises, unless they are heard nearby, and there are not a few who – in the areas already close to the battlefront – claim to have learned to understand if the sound corresponds to the departure launch of a missile, or an arrival one. The latter, of course, means that destruction – and perhaps death – is closer.
The importance of the ‘other’ essential workers
As also happened with the war in Donbass that began in 2014, it has also been quite common to see freshly pruned trees and flowers in public gardens, even at the intersections of squares and streets, the result of the diligent work of commandos of elders and officials. public.
Many ‘essential’ workers, as happened in the days of the last pandemic – so far away now in Ukraine, where masks have completely disappeared from the landscape – have not stopped working.
Not only those of recognized popularity, such as firefighters and paramedics, but also many other battalions of workers have been fixing streets, painting railings, collecting garbage, passing brooms where attacks were taking place and glass fell.
Rethinking rivalries in the context of war
The inhabitants of eastern and western Ukraine, in their eternal rivalry, also signed a kind of truce so as not to appear divided at a time when the threat comes from outside.
Although some of the consequences of the war that are already difficult to hide is that when speaking Russian, in the West they answer – most of the time, with a bad face – often in English or directly in Ukrainian. And that those from the east hide their accent and their mother tongue.
Many others have lost their jobs, and already think that, when the war is over, they will want to leave Ukraine, a country with a long history of emigration. But in the meantime, however, they have not stopped celebrating birthdays, getting drunk with friends, reinventing themselves as interpreters for foreigners.
Some also worry about what may come in a country where a large number of weapons are now in circulation – thanks to a law passed by the Ukrainian government – where prisoners have now been sent to fight on the front lines of battle, where there are groups and small groups of armed commandos that, at the moment, interact peacefully with the population.
Of course, in the snapshot, journalists from all over the world have not been lacking: many Anglo-Saxons, many Europeans, who in some cases have been the only presence in the place together with hustlers, armed civilians -many from the most unlikely professions, wine merchants, computer scientists, artists-, the police and the Army.
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