Kyiv July 15th
I saw President Volodymyr Zelensky on the street in Kyiv today, ambling along, small in stature, unshaven, wearing his trademark military fatigues and olive green t-shirt, surrounded by a group of men in uniform.
Except it was not him. But it could have been; his everyman persona substitutes for the experience of many in a city where soldiers are everywhere, on and off duty, walking singly and in groups. I am even stopped at my first my road block in front of a government building, soldiers asking for my passport and scanning my cell phone for videos.
Nearby the city’s handsome Mykhailivska Square is mounting a display of destroyed Russian military equipment, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, some of it gathered from the Kyiv suburbs, names that are now infamous—Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel—where the Russian advance was stopped, just 20km away.
Videos of Russian tanks being blown up in Ukraine are now so common on social media they have become a genre themselves, often accompanied by blaring heavy metal music, a reduction to a video game meme. I had a good look at a destroyed Russian tank today. The force that detaches a tank turret is a fearsome thing, buckling inch thick steel like tin. Terrible ends were met in this destroyed equipment, now littering a fine city square in front of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church. the saddest display of all is a Fiat car that had been occupied by fleeing civilians, pock marked with bullet holes, the interior littered with shattered glass and blood stains.
Kyiv is a great European city, a metropolis with wide avenues and grand architecture. It may be a city at war but has not lost its energy. It is still a place of hipster neighbourhoods, e-scooters, fashionable shops and beautiful people who fill the cafes and bars. Before the war it was a place on the cusp, with a huge art scene, proclaiming itself the new Berlin and moving on to greater things.
Until the war. Everyone speaks of it as a rupture; now vs the past, what was before when lives were unfolding and the future was bright. From 4m the city has shrunk by a third. It is a huge contraction and those people aren’t coming back soon.