The war in Kyiv is boring and mundane. Documenting the war doesn’t work. Instead, all sorts of nonsense get documented.
My life in Kyiv depends heavily on the type of Russian weaponry.
If Shaheds are flying, I have plenty of time in reserve — a Shahed reaches me in about thirty minutes (if regular) and in ten (if fast). So I go to the basement of the neighboring house. Attacks last long, so I end up being bored there for half the night.
When I arrive in the basement, Grandma Kateryna is already there with a small group of older women. Grandma Kateryna recounts the latest news digest. Most of it I already know, so the digest is outdated.
— Trump went to Iran, — she says, — with an attitude, thinking they’ll kick everyone’s butts there. But now the Iranians have blocked everything for him in the gulf. “Sit there, loser, without oil,” they told him. That’s what Trump deserves, I tell you. It’s karma for not wanting to give weapons to Ukraine. By the way, the Hungarians have declared war on us. Or maybe they haven’t. It’s unclear yet. All the bloggers say different things. And did you hear that a PVP has already fallen over Kyiv? Soon a swarm of PVP will come buzzing under the window. But the main thing is the nukes soon. That’s for sure. A military guy said in an interview that before attacking Estonia and Latvia, the Russians will definitely nuke us. To scare Europe. You get it. Go to the pharmacy tomorrow and buy anti-nuke pills.
When Shaheds are flying, I sit in the basement and listen to Grandma Kateryna’s digest.
And a ballistic can arrive in a minute. It rarely comes during the day, but at night, if there’s a ballistic alert, it’s hell. From six to eighteen missiles, and then MiGs might take off and add Kinzhals. You shouldn’t go to the basement for ballistics because there’s no time to safely cross the street. So I sit in the common corridor.
From there, you can hear a neighbor arguing with her husband to help her lower the stroller with the little one.
— Kolya, — she says, — Kolya, get up, there are missiles.
— Fuck off, — Kolya replies and snores.
— Kolya, get up! Help with the stroller!, — the neighbor says irritably.
Kolya snores.
The neighbor fusses a bit more in the apartment and comes out into the corridor with the stroller. At this moment, I usually say:
— Good evening. Ballistics are about to drop.
The child is about five, speaks poorly, and as soon as they see anyone in the corridor, they immediately try to kick or throw a toy car at their forehead.
— Good evening, — the neighbor says angrily and walks past me to the stairs.
She loudly clatters the stroller down the stairs and goes outside just as the first explosions happen, adding to the sounds from the sky with a loud bang of the entrance doors.
Then the corridor becomes quiet. Only Kolya’s snoring is heard. And more missile strikes.
The alarms can last long, and I sit in the corridor for hours. To not waste time, I work.
My colleague Anya writes in the evening:
— The deadline is looming, but there’s a heightened ballistic threat, — I’ll manage to do it at night. I hope the shelling will be just enough to keep me awake, but not so intense that it scares me to death. Because if it’s too terrifying, I can’t concentrate.
At night, right after the first hits, Anya writes:
— Oh, you’re still up, make a report for me.
— I can’t today, — I reply, — I need to finish my dissertation.
I probably wrote a quarter of my doctoral dissertation in the hallway.
I didn’t write in the basement because I have an expensive laptop, and I was afraid it would be stolen if I fell asleep. But in the hallway, there are extra doors, so the laptop is safe. Of course, in the hallway, it might burn from a missile strike, but only together with me, so it’s not a problem since I won’t need to buy a new one.
A massive missile strike is the most convenient option. Then, I immediately stay in the metro overnight. Monitoring channels warn about a large-scale attack in the evening and sometimes even in the afternoon.
To stay overnight at the metro station, you need to enter before it closes. At my station, this means being inside by 10:30 PM. I take a folding bed and a sleeping bag, which I had bought in the army, and at exactly 10:15 PM, I head to the metro.
During the day, I enter the metro for free with my combatant ID. But at night, when I go to the shelter, I feel uncomfortable showing my ID. What will the controller think of me? At night, I pay for entry.
To access the toilet at the station, you need to go through a door marked “Service Entrance” across a bridge into the tunnel. They usually leave these open for those spending the night in the shelter. But if they’re closed, you need to press buttons 3 and 5 simultaneously. Note this down in case you need it. You should check that no train is approaching the station, press buttons 3 and 5 at the same time, and then walk across the bridge to the sign “Svatoshyn Station Boundary.” You won’t get lost because there’s a homemade sign hanging on a string saying “Passage Prohibited.” Written in blue marker.
In the metro, I immediately go to sleep because if there’s no alarm, they wake everyone up and drive them out at 5:45 AM when the station opens. You can sleep like royalty in the metro. Shaheds, ballistic missiles, daggers — it’s all the same.
But you need the right gear for this. I take a good folding bed, earplugs, a sleep mask, warm clothes, and a sleeping bag. With this set, I can sleep in the metro every night. Once, the shelling lasted three days in a row. Every night I slept in the metro, and in the morning, I went home for a shower and meetings. By the third day, I even got used to getting up early. I even thought about starting to write morning affirmations as trendy bloggers recommend.
I try to grab the best spots — under the stairs. It’s quieter, darker, and generally cozier there.
No conversations are heard in the metro. In winter — everyone coughs. In summer — some people have an unpleasant smell. Until midnight, trains with empty carriages screech up and down. Mostly, they pass by without stopping. But sometimes, they bring workers in orange vests. The workers laugh loudly and go deeper into the underground.
After midnight, the metro becomes almost quiet. At first, there’s still a noise from some machine in the tunnels, similar to a large hand dryer. In my dreams, it seems like some giant is drying its hands in the tunnel.
Once an hour, a bell rings “zzzzzz-zzz-zzz,” and twice a night a horn sounds “uuuuuuu.” The monitoring channels report: “Eight missiles on Kyiv,” and I keep sleeping. Life feels like a resort. The main thing is to wear multilayered clothing because, for some reason, it’s always cold in the metro, even in summer. Perhaps it’s because of the stone surroundings.
In the morning, during heavy shelling, two civilizations — above ground and underground — meet in the metro. To the sounds of explosions, people slowly descend into the passage. The ground shakes, smoke wafts, and fiery trails flash in the sky. They buy coffee at a glass booth near the metro, finish their cigarette, film the missile flying overhead on their phone, and head down to the platform to go to work. The underground residents look at them with no understanding. In response, they look without understanding at the underground residents and board the first trains.
I spent the night in the metro before defending my dissertation. The defense was in Uman, starting at 13:00. Imagine: a commission, live streaming on the Ministry of Education and Science website, everything as it should be. I had to leave home by car no later than nine in the morning. My friend, a scientist from New Zealand, supported me morally:
— I know how hard and stressful it can be, she said. — Believe in yourself, and everything will be fine!
In the evening, I went to the metro to be sure I got a good night’s sleep. Went to the toilet at the Svytoshyn station boundary and lay down to sleep. I woke up at 7:30 and saw the missiles still flying. I have an alarm on my watch, on my wrist, because you can’t hear the phone in the metro. My alarm started to tug at my wrist, I woke up, checked the monitoring channels, and the shelling was still ongoing. “Three missiles on Kyiv! Ten drones over downtown. Ballistic threat from Bryansk. Ballistic descent!” the telegram channels gathered in the “war” folder flash with red exclamation marks.
And for some reason, I woke up hungry as a dog.
I waited for the ballistics to descend on the city and then went up to the surface for a minute.
Got myself a coffee and a hot dog, went back down, ate, reviewed my presentation for the defense. Time’s ticking. The missiles keep flying! It was time to leave to get ready. I had, of course, anticipated this possibility and did the main thing — washed my hair the night before. But for a successful defense, that wasn’t enough; I still needed to go home and change.
At 8:30, the missiles finally stopped; only the drones remained, so I went home and changed. As I was leaving the yard, a drone hit a building in my area.
The defense was broadcast live on the Ministry of Education’s website, and it couldn’t be interrupted. Whether it was ballistic missiles, a nuclear attack, or personally Putin landing in a helicopter and throwing TNT blocks over the university, the dissertation defense had to continue until the vote and the announcement of the dissertation committee’s decision.
And so, I stood there, telling the committee about my gender-based violence research, and suddenly, an air raid alarm went off. And it wasn’t just drones or a flight of a MiG carrying Kinzhal ballistic missiles. No, all monitors in the folder wrote: “Missile on Uman.” We continued, because the show must go on. Everything seemed to be going normally, but I got distracted by the missile passing, and something terrible happened — I forgot to thank my opponent for the question, thereby challenging the fundamental and unshakeable tradition of Ukrainian science to thank for every question during a defense. However, the committee, amazingly, forgave me this mistake. I defended successfully.
During the day in Kyiv, the alarm sounds approximately once every two to three hours. Since I quit smoking, it’s been hard for me to organize work breaks to rest my eyes. A video course on preventing vision problems when working on a computer, which I watched on YouTube, emphasized that a useful habit should be tied to regularly recurring actions. So I tied this useful habit to the signal of the air raid alarm. I see a ballistic threat, go out into the corridor, and do eye exercises. It was quite regular. Actually, I have minor vision problems after a concussion during my military service, so I try not to strain my eyes.
But in winter, I was incredibly lucky and thanks to a scholarship from INDEX, I lived in Lviv for three whole months.
The war in Lviv is completely different. There is one major downside here — there’s no metro. So, during a massive missile strike, you can’t go down into the metro and comfortably lie down to sleep. There are no more downsides in Lviv.
Missiles rarely hit here. However, I still always go to the shelter.
I arrived at the beginning of January and was given a wonderful apartment on the sixth floor with windows covering the entire wall and a view of the fortress founded by King Danylo of Galicia in the 13th century on a hill 413 meters high — the architectural monument High Castle. One evening, I was sitting and finishing writing my book, taking the opportunity to do it not in the corridor. And then suddenly outside the window, the alarm wailed. I looked at my phone, in the “war” folder, and there were red exclamation marks in all channels — probable launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Oreshnik.
I went down to the basement. Friends wrote:
— Did you go to the shelter there too?
— I did, though it’s silly, what Oreshnik in Lviv? — I replied.
One blue check under the message turned into two just as the sound of the first arrivals of the five Oreshnik missiles was heard.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
I heard Oreshnik for the first time, and I didn’t really like it.
Then there was a terrorist attack not far from my apartment. I wrote about it to my friends. They asked:
— How many meters away is “not far”?
— Eight hundred, — I looked at the map and replied.
— Eight hundred is far for a terrorist attack, — my friends said.
We discussed this topic a bit more and decided that “not far” is closer than three hundred meters. And eight hundred is quite far for a terrorist attack.
Recently, eight Shaheds flew in here in the middle of the day. There were 32 casualties, several of them in critical condition. The Shaheds burned a few buildings and hit the Bernardine Monastery Complex. UNESCO issued a statement that wars should be conducted in such a way as not to endanger 17th-century monuments.
There is a comfortable shelter in the cultural palace here. It’s not very deep, but it’s located in the basement auditorium. There are rows of empty numbered chairs. You can take any seat. And there’s a very convenient toilet. Not at all like the one at the edge of the Svyatoshyn station. It’s quite quiet and not cold there.
In Lviv, I organized a drama course for veterans as a resident of the Veterans’ Theater project. We are looking for new talents and giving them a professional start. People often call it therapy. In Ukraine, it’s fashionable now to call any projects with veterans therapy — cat therapy, molding therapy, pot therapy, theater therapy. But I think this is not true.
I googled the word therapy. It means a return to a previous, healthy state.
In two theaters in the city of Lviv, performances of my play “Balance” are being staged. It’s a story about how I packed my friends into garbage bags at the front. Theater critics say this performance is genuine art. But my friends are still dead. This performance has not helped to restore them to their previous, healthy state.
Sometimes I forget about it. Then I have the illusion that life can go on. As if you can adapt, and life continues. Then I visit the parents of my deceased friend. I come to them from the outside world and immediately start offering:
— Maybe you’d like me to buy you something? Do you need any medicine?
And his mother says:
— No, we don’t need anything. Our son has died.
These meetings greatly help me stay connected with my people. To keep my feet on the ground.
I would take foreign delegations to their apartment. For example, in April, I might bring a couple of people from UNESCO. If you have contacts of such people who should also be brought along, please write to me.
Today there is a massive missile attack. I sleep in a Lviv shelter.
And I dream that I am standing on a bridge in the metro tunnel, right at the edge of Svyatoshyn station. In front of me is Yura. And he says:
— How are things here? What’s new?
— Somewhere in the shelter is Mrs. Kateryna. She will tell you the news about Trump, come with me, — I say.
— I won’t go. I don’t go to shelters because I’m not afraid of missiles. I’ve already been killed by the Russians, — Yura laughs and doesn’t go.
And I go.
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The essay was written in March 2026 for the publication Narysy INDEX: Institute of Documentation and Interaction.
Photo: Facebook of the author
