Kyiv is like a frying pan, sizzling and hissing with apprehension and uncertainty, as Putin keeps turning up the heat on the stove.
Wednesday, November 20th, should have been a belated final day of Indian Summer, or what Ukrainians calls Babine Lito (loosely translated as a woman’s last chance). The air was warm, the sun shone shyly across red and orange leaves sent scurrying across the pavement by a cool breeze that promised colder weather.
Instead, I gulped down my breakfast to the sounds of whirring drones often visible on the horizon followed by ant-aircraft fire and the ocassional but now altogether familiar hollow boom that breaks the silent interval between the other noises of war.
One follows the attacks with his ears … until it suddenly appears before your eyes – or right in your flat.
This isn’t western Donetsk but the capital, and these scene have become common if not constant.
I rarely hear the air raid sirens at night, but when I do wake with the phone next to my pillow, I know there will be reams of updates on incoming drone attacks on the Telegram channel I follow.
But you don’t need social media to check the pulse of the city during an attack. The waves of air assaults create a throb of activity in the city below.
When an explosion rings out, I see a flock of birds launch into the air in confusion. I know all’s clear even without looking at my phone by the squeals of children being released onto the school playground near my building. In the local grocery store, the silence is broken by the resumption of the store’s music blaring back to life
Street life here has begun to resemble the city’s Metro stations, where the platform empties and fills up every couple of minutes as trains arrive and depart – except that the Russian drones don’t keep to a time table.
On Wednesday, the news of Western embassies shuttering their doors was felt like a poke in the ribs during an already scary movie. People here remember the prelude to 2022 all too well.
And so, apparently do the Russians, who have flooded social media with all sorts of disinformation to send the population into panic.
Rumors of a possible collapse of the Ukrainian front don’t help matters much. A friend of mine just returned from northern Sumy Region, which has been fully mililtarized to support Ukrainian troops that have occupied Russia’s southern Kursk region.
There’s a subtle fear, that a retreat of those troops could lead to another attack on the capital from the north. Meanwhile, there remains a marginal but possibly future threat from within. Torchings of military vehicles and other army property have become common and often carried out by teens recruited by Russian agents on social media. A friend of mine who’s a priest told me a 17-year-old in his parish was recently jailed for lighting a jeep on fire. He became addicted to drugs while his parents were living as refugees in Poland.
Large protests held in the city center calling on the government to do more to free the hundreds of Ukrainian POWs still held in Russia are also a possible tinder box to be exploited by provocateurs in the crowd. Entire blocks are often occupied by admittedly peaceful activists trying to attract attention to this often forgotten cause.
But outside the frying pan of war and social unrest things are ironically expected to get much colder. Rolling blackout have returned, and rumbling generators again line store fronts. The stairwells go black at night, and the outside locks on doors no longer work.
Mr. Putin must be quite pleased with himself.