Kate Gladka: Blood, sweat & tears in Kyiv

Grumpy Old Men contributor Kate Gladka tells stories about how daily life goes on in war.

I'm 33, and I'm from Kyiv. For most of my life, I've been involved in writing and journalism. After February 24, 2022, the history of my country, my city, and myself took a sharp turn. Like yours probably did. And I understand that words don't stop the war, but they can carry a charge, unite, and evoke empathy in people, and that helps us live. Every day, I ask myself: is the war inside me? It sounds abstract, but I mean quite specific things: where do I fight, where do I not take responsibility for certain aspects of my life, where do I feel anger? And these moments are becoming fewer. For me, war has, first of all, become a state of consciousness, a state of mind. It's easy to blame Russians for everything, and I don’t minimize their crimes or what they are doing here. But I'm interested not in them, but in us.

When I was abroad in the first year of the war, in every country from Hungary to Ireland, I was bombarded with questions, sympathies, handshakes as a sign of respect, and similar gestures. Often, I felt awkward and knew that after the phrase "I'm from Ukraine," the conversation would continue for a long time. Now, in the third year of the war, the questions have changed. "How do you even live your daily life?" a young French woman asked me at the beginning of April when I was traveling in Ireland. And indeed, how? How do I live? Then, I decided to pay more attention to the details of the daily routines of a young woman from the independence generation in Kyiv.

Solomiansky: Life and death in a military district

The area where I live in Kyiv can boldly be called “military”— it's the Solomiansky district. The Ministry of Defense, a strategic avenue leading to one of the airports, a railway station, and military facilities are all here. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, it has been featured in almost every attack by Russia on my city. And, of course, it all started with the airport.

This winter, fragments of a Russian missile smashed a sports training base for children, which has existed all my life. There's a wonderful stadium there. Competitions are often held. The explosion wave blew out windows in nearby buildings; cars burned, and a concrete fence melted. Miraculously, there were no children there that night. I often walk along this road, although at first, it was difficult even to walk there. This is also a part of the reality that I really don't want to make routine. But you get used to living in this constant seesaw - alarm or no alarm.

‘I didn't choose to be a military spouse’

Not far from my home, there is a coffee shop that opened in 2023. It's a small and cozy place where, traditionally for Kyiv, you can come with pets. So my dog was happy. When I first went there, I saw a young woman sitting at the next table, her face was familiar to me. And I saw that she was looking at me the same way. "Do I know you from somewhere?" she finally asked me. We found out that she had worked as a public relations manager on a project where I had been teaching for some time. So we started talking. It turned out that Lera is the co-owner of this café. She opened it with her husband who fought in the Azov regiment, the same regiment that Russian propaganda still scares its audience with.

I started going for coffee more often. It's my way of being in an atmosphere of calm where no one bothers me with questions—a ritual if you will.

If I had chosen the path of donations and writing, translation, because it is in words that I feel most capable, including during the war, then for Lera, her path was active participation and involvement in her husband's affairs, mostly as a volunteer. But I felt some dissonance in this. It was as if she brought some hint of doom to her volunteering.

And then, during one of my visits, we had a deep and trusting conversation. It was a conversation between two young women not only about the present but also about the future, about how war irreversibly deforms the psyche, how it changes familiar people beyond recognition. We talked about her husband, and I realized that they had only recently married, and this beautiful first year, instead of enjoying each other, he had plunged into military affairs, and she practically had no choice. She automatically became a military spouse. And this role is far from as romantic as it may seem from beautiful commercials. It's that state when you don't know who you'll meet next time or what condition your husband will come back in. "I didn't choose to be a military spouse," she said, almost in tears. And I felt her pain. I felt it because I caught myself thinking that after breaking up with my ex-boyfriend, who was Portuguese, I didn’t even consider having a relationship with a Ukrainian guy. Why? Because sooner or later, they may go to the front. And I don't feel ready to be a military spouse. So, in 2023, we talked, and Lera felt that she still had a choice. We don't know how it will be, but we are not robots; we are women, and maybe we will want to have children.

Whenever I went to the café later on, I always felt like something was happening with Lera. Eventually, I found out that she had divorced her husband. She made a choice. And I understand her. It doesn't mean that she stopped volunteering, and it doesn't mean that anyone stopped donating. Of course, we do what we can.

But despite the fact that war, from books and movies, from news and political analysis, may seem black and white, it's not black and white. And so, when a young French woman in Ireland asked me how I live every day, I told her: "I just keep on living."

I live with a sense that death is always nearby, that there is no tomorrow. But every day, I can choose to live the best I know. And death nearby isn't in a dramatic sense but in a sense that only by feeling it, only by looking into the eyes of a real living person, stopping in my thoughts all sorts of generalizations, affirming the strength and beauty of life every day, can you truly feel it. We choose to live life every day — in Kyiv, in Ukraine, for the third year, we defend ourselves with blood, sweat, and tears.