A group of friends gathered to watch a soccer game on the ninth floor of an apartment building. The first day of summer in the capital city was outside. They all looked at the time. A little more than an hour remained before the start of the game. Ivan had a spread for his friends. He opened a fried cheese platter, chicken wings, and a few bottles of Wild Turkey. Nobody seemed particularly nervous that Ukraine needed a win tonight and another in four days against Wales to qualify for the World Cup.
Ivan said you don't stress about sports during war.
A soldier on leave from the front lines in the east is sipping on a craft beer in an easy chair at the end of the coffee table. Volodya was an IT guy before the war. There were moments when he seemed to disappear, his body here in his hometown but his mind back with his brothers. He looked at photos and videos from the fight. He showed me two dead Russian soldiers. He went to the front line to call his friends. They are so close to Russia that they can shoot at the enemy border guards. His friends were on the phone to talk to him.
He asked if they were watching football.
They said yes.
The soldiers were waiting on the game. The guys were in the apartment. A man draped a flag over his daughter's dollhouse. Volodya ate a piece of beef jerky and told stories about the American military advisors who trained him. Someone opened a beer. Two guys stepped onto the terrace to look at the city.
There were air raid sirens.
Everyone in the apartment turned towards the balcony to listen to the noise, which was long, loud wails, stacking on top of each other.
Ivan said to pray.
"I don't like this sound," my Ukrainian translator said quietly.
The sirens said a Russian missile had been launched from a ship. The guests didn't head to the basement shelter because they didn't want to distract from the game when it was just minutes away. They made fun of themselves. A guy is singing a song. Volodya showed him a photo of a bomb crater and said the air raid sirens don't scare him. The television broadcast showed a graphic of the players on the Ukrainian national team.
"We have a starting 11!" "Mish said."
They debated tactics and players. There were empty beer bottles. The missile was flying through the darkness.
I came to watch a game.
A security team and film crew rode in a black van with me. We looked out the windows on the road. The car was abandoned by the road. A family trying to escape was shot at by a car. There were bullet holes in the driver's side door but not in the back. He said that the children were killed.
The horses broke farmland for planting further down the road. Teenagers wash and wax their cars. Others were playing soccer. The buses chugged along the highway filled with people returning home.
Locals sat at tables in the cafes. Our first night in town, a group of journalists went to a restaurant to eat and a table of former British soldiers sat nearby. We saw them at the Hotel Intercontinental. The lobby bar has become the epicenter of a strange tribe of people, including security details with beards and tattoo sleeves, reporters and producers from around the world, and profiteers and humanitarian volunteers. They sit beneath an enormous oil painting of Neptune plowing through the sea with a team of horses.
Smoke was coming from ashtrays and waitresses were dropping off beer. Journalists ate sandwiches and used their laptops. Markiyan, a local power broker, stopped by my table and tried to explain how he felt about the Scotland match.
He said that before the 24th of February, he would have said it was a nucleus for unity. It's easy to get along with the team. There is no need for that after the 24th. This is an outlet of national unity that hasn't existed before.
The rest of the world would have a chance to see what is clear to everyone who has come back to Kyiv if the game created something new. This is a war about memory and symbols, but also about land and resources. There is no such thing as Ukraine, says Putin. The Russians have tried to destroy the Ukrainian identity by bombing museums. The most important monuments in the city center are covered in sand. If a soccer team wins or loses, it will deliver a message to the Kremlin: If we don't exist, why are we running together? Our people cheer and wave banners.
The roots of the city run deep. The city is old. Moscow was still a swamp when the empire came here. The empire was split in 1240 by the Mongols. Some people went north and became Russians. Others became Ukrainians. Russian leaders have always believed that Ukraine should be a little brother to their northern neighbors. While unity and resolve are ineffable ideas, they are also unmistakable, as evidenced by the fact that Putin wanted to erase a culture but has instead unified one.
People in the city ordered coffees. They made reservations. They walked through the rubble to work out at the reopened gym.
A woman was asked if she was scared. She was laughing at us.
"Scared of what?"
Wrecked buildings, phalanxes of metal barricades designed to stop tanks, and dozens of concrete and sandbag bunkers are some of the scars of Kyiv. The trenches and barricades were held by the soldiers at the northern edge of the city. The Russians have been pushed back in many places by the Ukrainians. Land was lost and citizens were killed.
Markiyan was in the lobby when I asked for a prediction.
He smiled and asked, "The war or the match?"
There was a monastery at one end of the square. Oleksandr Petrakov told me a few weeks ago that this is his favorite place in the city, where he feels his soul rest. There were wrecks of Russian military vehicles in between the Intercontinental and the gold domes of the church. A steady line of people walked solemnly to the strange museum. They looked at the tombs. Petrakov's daughter was one of the pilgrims on the day before the game.
She stood next to the destroyed tank.
As she tried to explain how she felt, a cloud over her face. She finally found the right word. She was happy to stand so close to the place where her enemies died.
"This is what death looks like," Viktoria said to me, and then almost to herself, "I hate Russians."
She looked at the canned food.
"They have their food," she said.
She touched a piece of clothing.
She said their clothes.
She looked at the labels. She wiped it off after it stuck to her hands. A kid is holding a sword. Nobody spoke much. There were coffee cups that were bent from the heat and burned mess kits with orange handles. A piece of metal was kicked by a child.
Viktoria said that her city felt empty. Many people haven't returned. There should be tables of people drinking coffee and pretending to be annoyed by skateboarders down by the river. The city is alive with cranes and construction crews, dancing to the sound of hammers and bulldozers, rebuilding, cleaning, and standing back up again after a disaster. There is a vague sense that nothing will ever be the same again, even though they have known for a long time that the success they've had could turn to defeat, and that the destruction of war could return to Kyiv.
She told me that there was something flying in the air. There is pain in the air.
We entered the church. They talked about the match. The great coach's daughter was taken up in the bell tower by the priest. When the first Russian attacks came, the church played a World War II resistance song that became a kind of shadow national anthem. The priests play the song on the bells at 4 a.m. They played it for Viktoria before the game. The people walking around the burned tanks took out their phones and recorded the sound of the music.
The first time I heard the song was in Italy. The stadium was full of refugees as Ukraine was playing a match against Empoli. The wind blew across the field. A woman named Olena was singing along when the public address system played a folk anthem. Some of the worst fighting happened when she escaped from Kharkiv. She told me her story while standing near the pitch. She hid in the basement with her family. The Russians only fired missiles for three days. She heard the sound of an airplane one morning. That was their warning. There was a bomb that hit the school. The girl woke up screaming.
She is having recurring nightmares. About airplanes.
Olena wanted to get her children away from the Russians because she was afraid they would take children from Ukraine and give them to Russians. They were trying to leave. The family car didn't work. Three times the local government canceled buses. Her husband got the car to start by going to the garage. He drove. She was sitting next to him. The kids squeezed into the back. Her oldest son refused to leave. He and many of his classmates joined the army.
The sirens went off when they left town. Bombs fell. It took four days to get to safety. Local citizens fixed meals for travelers in small towns along the road. She and her family slept outside. She said that an elderly couple invited them into their home one night after they got into town. The dining room table was covered with food.
A city in the west of Ukraine let them sleep in a gymnasium and after three days, her husband secured a bus ticket to Poland. He dropped her off and then went back to his native country to join the army. He was offered two exemptions, one because of his age and the other because he has three or more children.
He was stepping out for milk when they said goodbye.
She said she was still praying that she would see him again one day.
She didn't cry as she talked but her eyes were filled with tears. None of the adults cried. They looked hollow and spent. The team gathered to sing the national anthem. The orphans were singing with them. Olena's tears started to fall, not because of memories of pain, but because of this celebration of home. She tried to destroy them all while singing, "Our enemies will die, we'll live happily in our land."
I was shown around the places that were hit hardest by Russian missiles and bombs. The residents of the apartment building were hit by a Russian cruise missile. There was a hospital and two schools next to the building. The man led me to the elevator. The lift sounded like a wounded animal as it climbed up into the air. He led me down the stairs and then opened the door of his old home. The entire skyline of Kyiv was covered in a gaping hole. There weren't any walls. He sighed as he pointed out the empty air.
His daughter's room was there. She is 9 years old. He was sitting in his chair watching tv when the missile hit. The shock wave blew him into the kitchen, where his wife was cooking macaroni for their kids, after it struck the unit directly below him. His daughter's life was saved when she was sleeping in the hall. His voice became quiet.
He said it was a miracle.
An air raid siren went off as we stood there, 21 stories up in the air, with no walls or visible supports. He told me that he wouldn't let his family come home until he could protect them, and that the noise around the city was making him sleepy. His daughter confronted him after the attack and said he had lied to her when he said the Russians wouldn't hurt them.
He said that he had only a feeling of rage.
I entered the apartment where the missile hit after walking down a story. Oksana, who had evacuated the city two days before the attack, met me inside.
She said to be careful. This floor is no longer there.
There are items from her old life inside, such as a hair dryer and a bottle of cleanser. There is a tile portrait of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe in her shower. There were pieces of couch cushion on the floor. A neighbor stuck his head in the door and said the missile strike sounded like a church bell. People ran to the stairs when the building was filled with smoke. A resident ran to the basement to turn off the gas line so the place wouldn't explode. People looked out for each other. They raised money to fix the building. A person planted flowers outside the entrance.
The people were targeted by the Russians.
A resident is walking with me. Her daughter's stuffed animal was carried by her. The gardener at the school next door found it after the explosion. He remembered seeing a kid carrying it around and he searched until he found a little girl who had lost everything.
I left the wounded building and went to an elegant restaurant run by a local chef who has become famous for elevating traditional Ukrainian recipes. I was taken to have a bowl of borscht, a traditional Ukrainian soup, by our fixer, who had left Kyiv on February 24. She said if she had to choose a restaurant, she would go to this one. Everyone ate in silence, still processing the violence of a cruise missile slamming into an apartment building. That's the city of Kyiv. Just steps from a cherished object. At war and at peace. Both modern and ancient. It was beautiful and ruined. I think that's what Viktoria was talking about when she talked about the shadows. If foreign money dries up, there might be Russian tanks rolling through the streets of Kyiv, a beacon for a new and proud Ukrainian future. Nobody knows how history will end. The last days of a regional war or the first days of a world war are possible. The 15 seconds between waking up and your brain clicking into gear is the best part of the day. Everything is the same in those fleeting moments.
I went to a wedding chapel the morning of the match. They had three ceremonies scheduled before lunch on a Wednesday, which would not have been done before. More people are getting married in Kyiv every day of the week compared to before the war. The woman running the chapel told me that people don't want to delay anything. The ceremonies are quick because there aren't as many big parties anymore. The guests had a bottle of champagne. The bride and groom stood in front of a big circle of flowers, the bride in a white dress and the groom in gray slacks. There was music on the stereo. They were greeted by their friends on the sidewalk as church bells rang. The groom and bride waited for the room to be reset so they could get married again. Everyone was happy. There are days of hope and forgetting.
There are days of pain and memory.
A man named Denys met me at his house in a northern suburb after the last wedding. He is a quiet guy who loves military history and wears a tactical hat. The town's name has become synonymous with the violence of the invasion after Russian troops occupied it in the early weeks. The torture, rape and execution of hundreds of citizens found in mass graves there have been reported by journalists and human rights groups. There is a road lined with medieval destruction. There are burned gas stations. There are thousands of bullet holes in the walls. There are mines in the forests. There were tread marks on the highway.
Denys' living room was where we sat. He told me that the Russians had broken into his safe. He said he and his mother hid in the chicken house and a soldier poked his head in but didn't see them. He was alive to tell this story. His grandparents are Russian. He has family in Russia who believe that the Ukrainians killed themselves in order to make Russia look bad. He doesn't talk to them anymore.
He thinks they're zombies.
Denys walked me out of his house. He pointed in a different direction. There is a column of people moving. He pointed at himself. The Russian army started shooting at them here.
He slipped beneath the wire and walked over to the hole. There was a shovel stuck in the dirt. He pointed again. There was a mass grave. Four people were killed by the Russians while trying to escape, and he watched his neighbors bury them. One day, when the history of this war is written, there will be volumes on the tiny acts of humanity and love that ordinary Ukrainians showed, not because they knew each other, but because they were bound together by something more powerful than friendship or geography. Four strangers were buried by his neighbors because they didn't want them to rot in the sun.
The bodies were in the ground for a period of time from March 5 to April 15. Denys and I don't talk much. We make eye contact a few times, but mostly stay out of sight. A piece of blue cloth covered in blood was used to cover the bodies in the hole. Denys will remember one day when the people here fill up this hole.
He was asked if he was going to watch the game.
He asked if there was a game. "Who is playing?"
Ivan told everyone to stop talking at the apartment.
"Alright, guys," he said. "The anthem."
They all stood up. Two guys are smoking outside. The guys in this room were singing along with the team on the field in Scotland. There is no way to know how this war will end or what will happen to Ukrainian unity, but on this night around the city of Kyiv, people gathered in small groups to watch their nation try and win.
Everyone had to leave before the game ended. One local pub showed a match if the viewers brought a sleeping bag and didn't try to leave until 5 a.m. About 30 people showed up. This game was a private one that was happening in little Pods all over the city. The men were talking about the war. Americans were asked what they thought about them. They wanted to show their children. They wanted to look at my pictures. The soldier wanted the aircraft carrier to park off the coast of Ukraine. They joked that Putin had hacked the feed because of the sound cut in and out.
Ukraine scored in the 33rd minute. There was no mention of the past or the future during the high fives.
I left the apartment at halftime to go back to the hotel. There were a few people at the bar. The game was not on. The staff said that the hotel didn't get the channel. The security guy pulled up chairs. The lobby speakers played saxophone music. We all listened to the game on the radio, as Ukraine scored again to go up 2-0, and then as Scotland scored to make it 2-1. She shook her head at the radio.
She said it was like olden times. "This is World War II!"
A man lit a cigarette. Some security contractors left after paying their bill. News producers were in the room. Two people were injured when the missile which sparked the air raid sirens landed in western Ukraine.
The game ended in favor of the Ukranians, who will play Wales on Sunday for a spot in the World Cup. A few people were in the bar. She smiled when she checked her phone. Denys, who had looked weak and gray while telling his story, decided to watch the game.
A friend took some videos of their watch party. In another, the camera pans across the room until it lands on Denys' face and he smiles and gives a thumbs up. Three months ago, he hid in his chicken house and watched the Russians loot his house, and on Wednesday night he watched a game like any other person in the world. He was still standing. His team was still playing.
I watched that video again in my hotel room, which was about to be emptied. I opened the blinds after 5 a.m. and saw the sun was up, the morning sky was blue, and birds were flying down a side street.
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