This was my first trip to Ukraine since the invasion in February 2022.
After a long journey from Brussels, the first contact with the reality of war: Przemyśl, a Polish town on the Ukrainian border. Many Ukrainians, mainly women, often carrying heavy loads, are waiting patiently to pass through Polish customs. On the station platform, a train decked out in Ukrainian colours is waiting to take them (back) to Kyiv. In February 2023, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees counted nearly 8 million Ukrainian refugees.
In my sleeper-bed compartment, two women will be reunited with their husbands. One of them is now living with a host family in Dublin, with her 17-year-old daughter - who is still in Ireland. This is only her second return since leaving Ukraine in April 2022.
After a passport check on the Ukrainian side, in the middle of the night and on the middle of the track, the train continued on to the Kyiv station, which it reached in the morning. It's the near-normality of life in Kyiv that really shines through. Apart from the protective covers on the station windows, everything seems normal, with people rushing to catch their train. In the street, traffic jams form, shops with full shelves open and people leave for work, coffee in hand. You’d think you were in Paris or Brussels.
Whether in Kyiv or in Chernihiv, a town in the north of the country virtually besieged by the Russians at the start of the war, at first glance there is nothing to suggest that Ukraine is at war. In the tumult of everyday life, only the presence of soldiers, sandbags to protect statues and official buildings or the display of tanks captured from the Russians raise questions. The town centres are virtually intact.
Apart from the mosquitoes, of which there are many this year, there is no perceived danger on the horizon. The restaurants are full of life, and the locals are soaking up the sun on the terraces and in the parks. The souvenir shops are open. As they stroll along the streets, the Kyivans even have the luxury of taking a selfie with their mayor, Vitali Klitschko. A daily life that resembles that of any other European, as a symbol of resilience and resistance.
But the war quickly takes over. Every night of my stay, around midnight - the official start of the curfew, in force until 5am - or in the middle of the night, missile alerts sound.
No time to think, just slip on your boots and walk down the steps to the hotel basement shelters. The wait then begins, sometimes lasting several hours, sitting on more or less comfortable chairs, hoping that the telephone application created to warn of alerts will ring to announce the end of the danger, and the return to bed. The more courageous, optimistic or tired, as the case may be, stay in their rooms. Until the detonation caused by the destruction of a missile for an anti-aircraft system finally drove them into the shelters.
Only foreigners are found in the shelters of frequented hotels. Most Ukrainians have given up going down there every time there is an alert. Because, as the stay goes on, the lack of sleep caused by these alerts becomes more and more acute. However, recent missile salvos - including in broad daylight - have forced the Ukrainians to return to their shelters. In May, the capital experienced alerts on an almost daily basis.
Those still taking shelter have changed their lifestyle. A Ukrainian friend of mine explains that she goes to bed earlier to get enough sleep, even in the event of an alert, “because the next day, alert or no alert, I have to be at the office at 9am”.
Over cocktails in a cosy but secret bar, another woman explains that she has no shelter in her building. If necessary, she hides in her bathroom - respecting the instructions to be separated by at least two walls from the outside - in particular to protect herself from broken glass. With a smile on her face, she admits that she has already held several professional videoconferences from her refuge. “Thank you neutral background!”
The semblance of normality in city centres disappears as soon as you move a few kilometres away. Traces of the bombing soon became apparent. Along the road, one destroyed building follows another, and it's easy to imagine the suffering experienced by its inhabitants.
In front of a destroyed school in the village of Yahidne, around twenty kilometres from Chernihiv, Paulina, aged 2, waves at strangers with her little hand, and is in herself a symbol of the horror of the war. In March 2022, when she was just one year old, the Russian army forced her and her family to take refuge in the damp, dark basement of the local school. Crammed in with 366 other people, including 73 children aged between 1 month and 17 years, suffering from hunger and thirst, and promiscuity, she spent almost a month there (see EUROPE 13191/8).
In Kyiv, the testimonies of former political prisoners imprisoned in Russia and the relatives of those who are still there are deeply moving. But it is above all the image of this mother, mourning her son in the bright sunshine, a soldier who had fallen at the front and whose coffin is carried by his comrades, that captures your heart.
This soldier alone reminds us why international and EU support for Ukraine is so important. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant, deputy editor-in-chief)