When the Kyiv opera house reopened in late May it was seen by many as the symbol of a return to normality after months of war, with the melodies of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville replacing the din of Russian artillery.
Around the same time local authorities relaxed the curfew hours, anti-tank roadblocks were moved aside and the main thoroughfare of Khreshchatyk Street was once buzzing again with busy cafes, businesses and bars. Oleksandr Litvin, a 23-year-old marketing manager, surveyed the weeks of calm and decided it was time to go back to his apartment in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, returning this weekend after months away.
“I left Kyiv right after the invasion,” he told the Guardian. “I moved to a village in the Zakarpattia oblast – the westernmost region of Ukraine. My friends told me the capital was quite safe now and I thought maybe it was time for me to return after more than three months. I thought the bombings were over. But I was wrong.”
Four explosions in the space of a few seconds in the early hours of Sunday morning catapulted Litvin and the entire city back to a crude reality. Columns of smoke rose over buildings next to his apartment, home to a cluster of universities, restaurants and art galleries, as air-launched Russian missiles fired from the Caspian Sea served as a violent reminder that the Ukrainian capital is still in a conflict zone.
In spite of normal life slowly returning, Kyiv is still at war at a time in which the entire country, with its back to the wall in Donbas, is perhaps facing the most difficult moment since the beginning of the invasion, with up to 200 Ukrainians believed to be dying every day on the battlefield.
One man was killed as two apartment buildings were hit and six people, including a woman from Russia, were taken to hospital, while a seven-year-old girl was rescued from the rubble. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, called it an attempt to “intimidate Ukrainians” before the Nato and G7 summits.
“I woke up and saw a large plume of smoke from my window”, said Litvin.
“I was out with some friends that night. We started to scream because there had been other blasts. We locked ourselves in the bathroom and waited 10 minutes. Then we went out to see what had happened. It was terrifying.”
Litvin said he was moving back to his parents’ house. “I no longer feel safe in that apartment. I will not go back until the war is over.”
Before the invasion, the greater Kyiv area had a population of 3.5 million, but after the first bombardments in February the capital began to look like a ghost town, with one in two residents leaving the city.
After the announcement that the region of Kyiv had been liberated from the Russians in what was described as Ukraine’s biggest victory in the war, thousands of residents started to return. Many people had left the city with the sounds of Russian artillery explosions in the distance. Hopeful that the war here was just a bad memory, they started to ignore the daily air raid sirens and queues began to form outside nightclubs.
In a sometimes surreal atmosphere, residents would sip coffees and beer among occasional explosions in the distance.
“I got used to living under these new conditions,” said Sonia Lassud, 34, an interior designer. “What before I thought couldn’t happen is now the new reality.”
Lassud stayed in Kyiv after the Russian invasion and knows war and its destructive force. She is originally from Mariupol, the long-besieged city that fell under Russian control. Her mother and brother, who was wounded in a Russian air strike, stayed until just before the Russians arrived and later took refuge in a nearby village.
“They slept in the cold because their windows had been broken in the explosions’’, says Lassud. “In the house, the temperature was six below zero.”
After the capture of Mariupol, perhaps the most strategic breakthrough for Vladimir Putin since the beginning of the invasion, Russia has continued to consolidate its gains in eastern Ukraine, as the war’s momentum slowly and incrementally has shifted in Moscow’s favour.
After having reduced the city of Sievierodonetsk to rubble, Russian forces in eastern Ukraine are now trying to cut off its twin city of Lysychansk. If Lysychansk falls, the entire region of Luhansk, which along with Donetsk makes up the Donbas region, could fall into Russian hands.
Ukrainian troops, who proved to be formidable at the beginning of the war, are now struggling on the battlefield.
However, in spite of heavy losses at the front, a lack of weapons and relentless Russian bombardments, its citizens continue to fight and, despite the difficulties, are not willing to make any concessions to the enemy.
“Yes, it’s true, the Russians have more firepower,” says Lassud. “We may be running out of weapons, but our spirit … our spirit will never die.”
