Greetings from Kyiv. It is a chilly winter, with snow and rain alternating most days. The rain freezes, making walking in a city full of hills and valleys challenging, like my native Portland, Oregon. Nonetheless, the streets are full of people shopping for Christmas, or Chanuka presents, as the case may be. Smoking and laughing outside of coffee houses or drinking mulled wine outside of Podil bars.
People often ask me how I feel about people who aren’t in the east or the south of the country going about their normal lives while I am at war. Shopping for presents, smoking outside of coffee houses, drinking outside of bars. Here’s the answer: I feel great about it.
I will explain.
Anywhere you go, the battalion military intelligence officer wants to know three things: (1) Where are you? (2) How many people are there? There’s a very specific format for the answer: how many men, how many women, and how many children. (3) What are they doing?
I’m in a city that is currently having 2-4 air raids a day. (Two days ago, I watched flaming objects fly over the building across the street. For a while, the residential neighbourhood where I stayed sounded like the front line. In cities, your visibility is limited, so you rely on the sound of car alarms to tell you how close something hit. There were a lot of car alarms going off.)
There are plenty of men, plenty of women, and plenty of children. They’re doing the normal things that you do for Christmas and Chanuka–see above.
If you’re a battalion military intelligence officer, what does that tell you? Seeing the streets full of men tells you that the narrative about guys hiding at home because they’re afraid of getting picked up for military service is bullshit. The women? They could be in Poland if they chose to, but not only do they choose to stay in Ukraine, but they are also deciding that their children will be safe there. And what are they all doing? They are going about their normal lives.
If you’re a battalion military intelligence officer, this tells you that people here feel that the war is going well. Well enough to stay in a city that is currently getting 2-4 air raids a day. Well enough to stay in a place where you have to rely on car alarms to tell you where the drones and missiles are striking. And their daily lives? Look a bit closer. The coffee house across the street from me, full of people laughing and smoking? They’re doing a fundraiser for the army. The teenagers listening to a band play American rock music in Kontraktova Square? It’s a fundraiser for the army. The cluster of women sipping mulled wine and giggling outside a bar? They just spent the afternoon weaving camouflage nets. For the army. (Yes, I do speak Ukrainian well enough to ask–and to understand the answer.)
So, yeah, how do I feel about people who aren’t in the east or the south of the country going about their normal lives while I am at war? I feel great about it. Their normal lives, their lives of free will in a democratic country– that’s what we are fighting for. Not everyone has to fight; not everyone should fight. Everyone should support those who do fight, and everyone does. And I feel great about it.
