The Theatre of Playwrights was supposed to open in Kyiv at the beginning of March. February 25 was the deadline for the competing writers to submit new plays for consideration. There is a topic about anxiety. The competition statement implied that everyone understood what kind of anxiety it was.
I wanted to be a part of that initiative and write my first play. Preserve the exact moment in time. There was a picture in my mind of huge, black clouds of chaos above us. The crows flicker in the darkness. I didn't get to finish the play, but I am certain that there would have been a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood image, a powerful ray of light cutting through the darkness. This darkness is completely empty. Chaos is feeding on chaos. This is all that is left of it.
I didn't get to finish my play because I was woken up by war. Chaos woke me. There is noise of Russian helicopters.
Hostomel, a town near Kyiv that my wife and I own, is now known around the world. One of the hundred episodes that contributed to the foundation of a new Ukrainian reality was the battle for Hostomel's airfield.
On the second day of the war, my neighbours sent me messages saying a group of armed Russians were breaking into their homes. They brought people out of their houses, pointing guns to their heads and forcing them to leave.
The forest is close to our house. A few years ago, a group of neighbours, including my wife and I, were fighting against an illegal redevelopment of the forest zone. We lost the battle against the local sportsman and his bought-for-money group.
Russian people took up positions behind the development in the forest. They didn't understand that it doesn't matter how much Ukrainians quarrel, or how much they spend. We will confront the enemy together if an activist is protecting the forest or a little tsar is helping the enemy. We did it hundreds of years ago.
Every one of us has a list of things that we will never forgive the occupying forces for. On the first morning, I opened my count. It started with a conversation with my mother, who lives near Hostomel's airfield grounds. She is a professor of ancient literature and 19th-century American writers. We had a conversation after the first raid.
The same voice that used to sing me a song is now saying "first, second, fourth, seventh, 10th helicopter" over the phone. She told me that she had just watched the movie in front of her eyes.
I will never forgive them for this. Every one of us has a list.
The whole country is co-ordinated at the moment. There is a lot of Goodwill around. Arguments won't happen at petrol pumps. You won't see traffic rules being broken.
How long can the war last? It was 34 hours for me and my wife.
My social media is being used for official information. Ukrainian media have united in the marathon to provide objective information to the public. They announce when an object is lost. Inform us if it has been regained.
This is a war with Russia and it has been going on for eight years. There are no Russian troops in the area. Eight years of war crimes against the Ukrainian army, Ukrainian citizens, international laws and humanity. The 283 passengers and 15 crew who perished on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 are remembered.
We don't need to explain why it's not a crisis and why it's now a Russian invasion.
A few days before the war, my wife and I had dinner with a few servicemen who defended the airport. They talk about war with Russia. They apologized for using the language of war. Everything has its own name in this language.
War is not a military operation.
The Russian ship bombarded Snake Island, a strip of land in the Black Sea, and the Ukrainian troops responded with "Go fuck yourself!"
Knowing that your loved ones are okay, that the city has held, and that the Russian invaders are being repelled is the greatest solace.
I saw a post by a Russian literary critic on my news feed. Since the beginning of the war, what have her posts been about? There are books that allow you to escape reality. There is an instant block.
The war is theirs as well as the Russians'. Not one of their films should be shown at a film festival. None of their books were translated. There should be no retrospective of Russian classical art in any museum. There should be no republication of Dostoyevsky. Russian money shouldn't be used to finance a film.
As long as artists and journalists are holding weapons in their arms to defend their land and gathering in bomb shelters under cultural institutions, nobody needs their work.
We need you to speak in foreign media. The things on Facebook are called what they really are. Putin is a murderer. We need your presence in Russian cities. The Ukrainian army needs your money to end the chaos. The name of the war criminal who started this is being written without a capital letter.
There are more personal accounts of the war in Ukraine.
The diary of a journalist who asked if he was right not to leave.
Haska Shyyan told her daughter about the war.
Sergei Loznitsa, a film-maker, says that lies bring us to the catastrophe we are facing.
What can foreign people do now? Call upon their governments to help Ukraine. The airspace over Ukraine should be closed. Help with the settlement of refugees.
Give maximum media coverage to the Russian attack on independent Ukraine and to the fact that Putin's logic is beyond limits of absurdity. This is the war that the Russian government cannot justify.
In front of Russian embassies and consulates, organize action. Every second the world needs to be reminded that a cruel and evil war is raging in the center of Europe.
Donate to the Ukrainian army.
Don't work with representatives of Russian businesses, politics, sport, industry and culture.
Don't forget how the officials in Belarusian allowed hostile forces to break the border.
Don't sell Russian goods in your stores.
Any country that causes chaos must be isolated. Everyone is concerned with this war. The chaos knows no limits and will spread.
People are helping those like me, who were able to get to safer locations. The battle is still going on. People are making Molotov cocktails.
I feel safer looking through the library of our hosts since I left on my own.
Our neighbours have kept the community together. There is no literature more important than their chat on Messenger.
My parents are spending another night in their basement in a makeshift bomb shelter with their neighbours and a black cat.
Babies are being born in bomb shelters while Russians are shooting at hospitals.
We don't know what day of the week it is, but we count days of war.
This is a war of all nations.
I have never written about politics. I find these texts too long and full of hot air. Not enough detail. I want to anchor this moment in time and place. When the country is one entity. The language of war is the only language that can be spoken by a Ukrainian writer.
The play that I wanted to write about anxiety in premonition of war should have had a refrain: The Four Primary Rules of Firearm Safety. I had never held a gun in my hands until February 2022. We had hours of training to figure out what to do with it. Just in case. I regret not doing that training before.
Oleksandr Mykhed. It was translated by Marina Gibson.
Oleksandr Mykhed is a writer. I Will Mix Your Blood with Coal, an exploration of the Donbas and the Ukrainian east, is forthcoming in English translation and is available in German. He is a member of a group called PEN.
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