About the habit of war

Morning in Kyiv begins with anxiety. First of all, you read the news.

The terrorists fired at the columns of Ukrainian technology ... The Ukrainian military repelled the attack ... Presumably so many were injured. So much killed ...

You are trying to calculate how many deaths per night. And how many people have died and was wounded in the last months in an undeclared war in the east of Ukraine. Exact numbers are unknown, everyone has already lost their account.

In appearance, Kyiv lives a familiar life. It became even more lively here than before. Exhibitions and new spaces are opened almost daily, concerts and festivals take place, experts discuss reforms on endless forums and try to build a model of a new country, which Ukraine can become.

Kyiv is now rapid, like a fast branded train flying on fresh rails right to the west. But if he should make a stop at the intermediate station, as from the platform to the windows begin to jump the news from the east. The theme of war surrounds talk about the future.

Artist Alevtina Kahidze, member of Biennale "Manifesto" in St. Petersburg, which most Ukrainian artists announced a boycott, calls his mother in Zhdanovka Donetsk region every day. At twelve kilometers from this place, Yanukovych was born. Previously, he and his mother discussed the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, the separatism and the consequences of the Maidan, and now all the conversations are about the anti -terrorist operation. Mom is afraid that tanks will appear in her city, but she doesn’t want to leave: it’s hard to leave the household.

Now adult ideological people who have never held weapons in their hands go to the National Guard.

“Here, under the Krasnoarmeysky, a pumping station was knocked out,” Alevtina tells me a trembling voice. - Do you understand what this means? Now there is no water, and no one will repair ... It's just like that of Herbert Wells in the “War of the Worlds”. Now diseases will begin there, people will begin to die from this. This is even worse. ”

There, near Krasnoarmeysk, a native aunt lives with the artist. She says that shots are heard every day. They shoot in Slavyansk, and in Gorlovka, and in Lugansk with Donetsk. She also does not want to leave: she fears that the looters will take her house.

In conversations with people in Kyiv, helplessness is felt. If in winter, when there was a confrontation on the Maidan, everyone knew how everyone could help protesters, now they don’t know. Then, on the Maidan, everyone understood what they were fighting and dying for, and what to fight and die now in the east, it seems not everyone is understood.

“If this goes on for a long time, what will happen to people there? - Alevtina asks. “They are completely helpless and lost, and our army is so unprepared ...”

After the Second World War, Ukraine did not enter into military conflicts. There was neither the army nor a strong police in the country. Now in the National Guard - a division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - mainly adult ideological people who have never held weapons in their hands. Managers of large companies, small entrepreneurs, cultural figures. Only two weeks of training - and for war. There were no military experts or military journalists in Ukraine. Everything has to be studied in the process.

Those activists who were searching for the missing during the Maidan now make up the lists of people who fell into hostages in the Donbass. Those who raised funds for the treatment of the wounded are bought and removed to the ATO zone of armored vehicles and helmets. Someone pays for food for the fighters. There is practically no money in the state treasury for warfare. And in general, no one wants to fight against the related people.

Why fight and die now in the east, not everyone understands.

On the day of mourning for the dead military, the plane with whom the militants shot down in Lugansk, I meet the photographer Anna Grabar; She rented events on the Maidan almost daily. She was not in the conflict in the conflict in the Donbass, but just like many, she could not break away from watching news from the east.

“I feel as if I had put on new shoes and they rub it, but I still leave the house, I don’t want to change my mind,” says Anya, thinking about how she feels the war. - At first it hurts, but after half a day you no longer feel pain, and only when returning home, you find corns and blood. Also with tattoos. You are afraid of the first touch of the needle while the master lubricates the skin with alcohol. The first injections cause pain, and then the body gets used to it. ”

“Some of my friends live a familiar life, try not to read news and have no concepts of what is happening in the East,” she continues. - I stopped condemning them for it. In the situation, when people are going on somewhere and people die, I want to enjoy life and make plans for the future. Such a protective reaction of the mind. The war reminds us that we are mortal, and we desperately rejoice at life. ”

Every morning, waking up and reading the news, you try to imagine that a bad dream just continues: terrorists, military, wounded, hostages ... The whole country now lives in a state of restless sleep, and there are two parallel to Ukraine. One, like a quick train, hurries on fresh rails somewhere west, and the other, clicking the shutter of the machine, jumps into the windows at stops. Probably during the war always.