‘The siren was sounding, but I had no instinct for flight’

Ukrainians speak of their wartime memories, trauma, and how the invasion has changed their ways of being human

Reportage by Shura Burtin. Translation by Anna Razumnaya.

The journalist Shura Burtin went to Ukraine last May. He spent two months traveling from one Ukrainian city to another, and interviewing dozens of different people, as he tried to understand their wartime experience. This translation is first in a series of extended excerpts from the panoramic reportage he brought back with him. Burtin himself describes it as “a cloud of voices” that took shape in his mind as he arranged his notes. He leaves these Ukrainian voices anonymous, connecting his decision to one particular interview: “A rock musician named Lyosha, who became a partisan during the Russian occupation of the Kyiv region, said to me: ‘So many people, so many stories have entered my life — and they all seem very similar.’” Shura Burtin thinks that the authorship of the stories gathered here is not all that important: they belong to the atmosphere of today’s Ukraine.

I spent the whole week looking forward to celebrating Bartender Day — February 24. It was going to be a grandiose cocktail night: 15 liters of cocktails to compose! And then… “What? Why today? Why couldn’t this shit happen tomorrow?” People started calling me, one by one: “Victor Ivanych, is the evening canceled?” “I don’t know, probably.” I was going to celebrate at my friend’s establishment. Two weeks later, I went there to take back the liquor. And he says to me: “Sorry, I’ve got the troops here, don’t come in — everything has been expropriated for the army, for the victory.” Talk about selling a friend for a pinch of snuff — for six cases of whiskey, to be exact.

***

I said to him, this is plain stupid! Screw going there, it’s suicidal. And the commander says to me: “Just follow the order — or keep loafing under the blanket, that’s fine.” I say to him: “Good, I’ll lie down under a blanket. You were sleeping — and I had to sit up, because there wasn’t enough room here. Why shouldn’t I lie down, too?”

You could sense that death was in the air on that day. I could see the mortars working away, way too close. And they say to me: “Uncle Venya, don’t even get started.” I make two steps — and a bomb explodes right before my face. We jump into the vehicle, realize that Ptitsa is wounded, but Nikitos is a real sport, a clean worker: tourniquet, Nalbuphine, IV… We dragged him into the car, floored the gas pedal — flew along without thinking, all because he was our friend — God forbid we might lose him. These are completely different feelings, driving someone — and driving a friend. Someone else might die, alright. But with him — this is how we talked to him: “Either we take your weapons, or we have sexual intercourse with you.” We talked to him that way to keep him awake, you see, so that he wouldn’t pass out.

Later, the commander says to me, “Are you angry with me?” And I’m like, “What am I going to tell you? I don’t want to talk.”

* * *

The house was on fire, and I was trying to save the documents. I put everything down on the lawn and said, “That’s it, I’m just going back to get my son.” I started running, and suddenly my neighbor comes out: “I’ll go get Andrii, just go into my house.” I turn around — and see this scene: my bags are standing there, with my white makeup bag and my wallet on top. Andrii’s proof of disability is in that wallet. My other neighbor leans over, takes the wallet, and shoves it under her jacket. I call to her, “Hey, what’s that you got there?” I try to take it away, but she keeps pressing it to herself, saying, “Don’t you understand, my windows are all broken, how am I going to pay for them?” And I’m like, what about me? “You don’t need anything anymore.” “You think there’s money in there?” “Yes.” “There’s no money, just utility bills.” “And where’s the money?” “In the house.” “You say you left the money in the house? Go get it, quickly!” To think that I grew up with this woman…

* * *

Someone from our village outside of Kharkiv got ahold of me. They said that the Russians were there, and that they took my family friend and some other men, five people in all. No one knew where they were. The men they took, but they hadn’t yet seen the girls. So I went there on foot. Someone had sent me a photo showing the freshly buried mines and where to look for them. I knew that the rain would wash them away, and you’d never find them again. Together with the volunteers, I drove to the edge of our positions, and then walked, for ten kilometers. It was a risk, of course — the mines could have been anywhere. I came — but the people were all afraid to go. I had to persuade them to come with me. I led 15 people out. They all followed me. Since I had managed to get there, there couldn’t be any mines on that path. The space between the mines isn’t very big, but my footprints were still visible. It was all getting muddy in the rain, but they walked behind me, stepping right into my footsteps, step by step. I got there in an hour and a half, and they walked for two and a half hours. It was very hard, with nine children, the smallest one just eighteen months old — the poor children were crying, and there were things to carry, too. We were in the gray zone when, suddenly, I realized that we could all be seen through a thermal imager. Fifteen little dots — looking just like some enemies that should be mown down from a machine gun… That’s how we walked, for ten kilometers, until we met with my volunteers, who had been waiting at the end.

* * *

Vivid impressions? Sure, I had some vivid impressions. Effervescent indeed. Once, I watched a sunset with three suns — it looked that way, because two houses were burning on the horizon. Pillars of black smoke, those blood-drenched houses, and an ambient sound: all kinds of weapons blasting all at once — the artillery, the tanks, the mortars, the machine guns — Shivaratri, the song of the Absolute. Talk about a rave. A howitzer blast sends your jaws vibrating. What a deadly ecstasy I felt. I haven’t taken mushrooms in twenty years, but it’s exactly like a good dose — and, by the way, you can keep and aesthete’s frame of mind, if you like. But all your ideas of yourself — “I’m an artist, I am this, I do that” — it all just vanishes, and you meet your real self…

There was a well over here. Ten or fifteen people came out for some water, and out comes a drone. We just stepped away from the well, and kaboom! — because they see any kind of gathering and just blast it, no matter what it is. I came out and looked around. No more well. Up in a tree, a punctured water bucket. Tanks blasting at the cross-roads, bombs whistling across the yard… And whenever it grew quiet, for just a second, the birds were just twittering away, very loudly.

***

My parents spent a whole month in their Saltivka. No windows, the walls are all shaking, no one’s getting any sleep — and my dad says, “I’m going to go and water my seedlings.” They just couldn’t leave their personal space. They left only when all the utilities had been disconnected — light, gas, water, everything. When the house finally lost all signs of being habitable, something clicked inside of them. But many people remained — to cook outside over the grill. When I came to pick up my parents, there was this guy in their building — a guy with a rat. Someone had left behind a cage with a pet rat in it. So there he was, skinny, chain-smoking in the entryway… He came outside with us and said very sternly: “There will be no electricity until the seventh!” As if it were a sinking ship and he the captain — like, don’t come back for me, I’ve got the rat, it’s all under control. I had a physical sensation that a person couldn’t survive there for more than an hour. But some people got used to it. They developed a totally different threshold.

* * *

We have this commander named Vlad: he came to fight together with his son. Their house was shelled, and he got hit by a shard — it came in below his lower lip and exited somehow, without touching anything vital. We couldn’t evacuate him, so I stitched him up right in the basement. Headlamp on, thread and needle, needle-holder… Later, he came to a clinic, and they’re like, “who stitched you up so well?” And he says, “this one medic, in the basement.” And they were like, “no way, seriously?”

***

The risk of dying was much greater, but I didn’t feel any fear. You just want to finish some things you’ve been doing. You realize at once what’s really important in life and what’s just some rubbish that’s not worth your while.

“What’s the most important thing, then?”

“Probably that I didn’t swim or sunbathe enough.”

***

Our family’s best friend, uncle Borya, lived in this apartment. He and his family didn’t go down into the basement, and just stayed in the apartment all the time. Once, the neighbors asked them to come out for some reason, and just then a bomb went straight into their window. A fire broke out in the apartment. They had a neighbor with a car, I don’t know why he hadn’t left yet. He got them into his car, and they all drove off, towards the “DNR.” The car had a sticker on it that said “Children.” Some Ukrainian troops stop the car, get them all out by force, put them on their knees, put guns to their heads, cursing at them: “Where are you going? We’re going to die here, and so will you. Where are these ‘children’? Why the hell do you have that sticker?” Natasha, with her voluptuous forms, says to them: “I’m pregnant! The child is inside!” Then there was a blast nearby, the soldiers all hid — and these guys jumped into the car, and floored the gas. The soldiers tried to pursue them — that car was too good.

***

Without calcium, I turn into a Pinocchio, an unmoving log. One of the final stages is when your heart and breathing stop, simply because your muscles stop working. My neighbor, too, needs calcium. We went together. All the pharmacies have been looted. There’s calcium out there somewhere, in might be in someone’s home, but here we are — we need it and cannot find any. So many people died because they couldn’t get their medications. People would give us their expired leftovers, whatever they could find at home. We needed calcium, and they needed some food. Not money. Sometimes vodka, or cigarettes. We don’t smoke, but we had some cigarettes that some friends had left behind.

For a while, I took 100 mg a day. That was frugal. Then I started to ration more: 50 a day, 30, 25. We had a choice: either we stay, and then one of us just rolls the other into a rug — or we have to try escaping together. We couldn’t wait till the last dose — I had to be able to walk, and we had things to carry. I had just 50 mg left in the vial.

***

There were lots of spies around at the time. The Russians have plenty of money, so they had planted them maybe a year in advance — they all rented apartments and just sat there. I have personally seen one serious, well-prepared agent. Some of them had this cover story: they pretended to be idiots. Around seven people had been caught in different places — all with the same cover story. This one guy got caught wandering around, looking for positions and trenches. His clothes are all inside out. He mumbles something unintelligible. You just can’t tell if this is a real psycho or not. “Let’s check his teeth.” We check: he has perfectly white teeth. And these old, worn-out sneakers. We take off his sneakers — and see clean feet, with well-groomed toenails. We question him — turns out, he is maximally prepared, a very tough guy. He is trying to act like a psycho, but he’s really strong, and obviously prepared in case of torture. Doesn’t say anything at all, just moos. So they say to him, “That’s it. We’re going to the basement, and we’ll shoot you there. What’s your last wish?” And suddenly, he says in a normal voice: “Can I just breathe some fresh air by the window?”

***

I have long made this a habit: if you can’t change a situation, just accept it. And booze really helps with this. I hear this roaring once. I come out — and there’s a plane overhead, bombs falling along the Dnipro, then a bunch of blasts… I took a bottle of cognac, drank it all, and went back to sleep. Otherwise, I would have just sat there, all in a panic. It’s really strong stuff — when you see a plane overhead and hear a blast. Puts you right in a split second. This depression I had before — it went away at once, as if someone poured cold water over me. It’s a huge adrenalin shot, sobers you up like nothing. I look in the mirror and see these huge pupils, you might think I was on acid, and brisk as day!

***

In the early days, the mayor of Mariupol would say, “Everything is fine, the city is defending itself, there’s enough food.” I realized it probably meant that the food must be running out — time to stock up. Then he says, “Water supply is fine, there aren’t any disruptions.” I realized it’s time to save up some water. “Everything is fine, the transportation is working, stores are working regular hours, listen only to the official news.” The official news only said that we’re doing great, that we’re fighting, defending ourselves… And then the news just stopped. Only the mayor kept reassuring us, but clearly from somewhere far away. It was early March, and they were gone already, leaving us for the slaughter — like a living shield, like meat — that’s exactly how it felt. He said, “I’m just a manager, I have nothing to do with the military.” Very well, manager. Here’s a list of bomb shelters. People look for a shelter on this list. They come, and find that it’s being used for storage. Another one is closed. The third one is filled with garbage. They break down a door — but the owner comes and welds it shut again. Nothing is prepared in advance, there’s no water — not to even mention food. Our neighbor spent three days outside, in the wind, sitting on bare concrete without as much as a chair. Civilization has ended. Since early March, we’ve been living as primitives.

* * *

The road from Makariv was littered with shot cars. In the village next to our own, 64 people had been shot. That’s Motyzhyn and Kopyliv, two villages glued together. Those devils expected to be greeted with flowers — and instead, all they got was a torrent of hatred and a gun muzzle sticking out of every house. They came to the village council for lists of servicemen, territorial defenders, anti-terrorist troops. The council head wouldn’t hand them the lists, so they killed her.

There was a gigantic Russian grouping in Haivoron. They came in and said, on day one: “If you aren’t partisans, don’t take pics, don’t shoot video — you’ll live. If you start throwing bottles — well, you know what I’m saying.” There was an “elite” community next door: all cops and justices. They all ran off, right away. Their houses were all looted.

***

When you’re on the frontline, you’re totally afraid that someone might let you down. “What if they leave us? What if they forget about us?” It’s a constant feeling. Then you come back, look around, and everything is fine, you shouldn’t have worried. I’m not especially brave anyway, and I had a really hard time in the war. Nothing could be more frightening than that. Or you just sit there, waiting for an assignment — and it’s so boring, my god — you think, I’m so sick of it, I could be doing this and that… And there’s that guy I know, posting stories about how he’s hanging out in Lviv with his girlfriend.

***

It all felt terribly stupid and unnecessary. You couldn’t have imagined a Russian invasion before 2013. Ukraine was Russia’s vassal state, interpenetration was huge. Pro-Russian politicians controlled entire regions, and big factions in the Rada, too. Russians controlled a large part of the economy, they employed a lot of people. However crude, Soviet-like, and corrupt, this was soft power. People had normal attitudes towards Russians, and those could have been improved. Even the Maidan itself wasn’t anti-Russian, no one gave a shit about that, the topic was different. So, everyone now feels this enormous injustice. Yes, we thought of Russia as an aggressor, because of the Crimean annexation and the Donbas war. But no one had hated Russians as a people — the people and the state were still separable. Everybody listened to Russian rap. Slava KPSS’s album was the top album of 2021.

***

Number 69 on our street caught fire, and a grandma had to jump from the fourth-floor window. She had come from East Mariupol to visit her son, and he went somewhere with his wife. She was alone in their apartment. She jumped onto the blanket — there were the Ukrainian troops holding it, and some neighbors helping, too. But she fell and hurt her legs, because a blanket is still a blanket. She hit her head, too, and there was a burn on her hand. They put her in another apartment. Then, the neighbors all went down into the shelter and left her upstairs. Suddenly, we hear a cry: “Help!” I come inside and call, “who is there?” And there she was, lying on the floor. It was –10 C outside, and all the windows had been shattered. We lifted her onto the sofa — and she fell down again… We’d go there to feed her, to give her some water. She was alright, she could have survived if someone could have taken her to a hospital. But who was going to take here there? They were shelling constantly — four people would have had to risk their lives for her sake. She died on March 8. She just grew cold, and stopped calling. She went silent, and we didn’t go in there anymore. It was too frightening, and we’d already seen enough.

***

Here’s a street corner. Behind the corner stands a tank. You have a machine gun, you look at the tank. The tank shoots directly at the house behind you. There’s a man by the house, the wall begins to fall right over him. He stands there, speechless — me, I’m speechless, choking, someone grabs me by the vest and drags me away. Everyone looks totally terrified. No one had prepared us for anything like this.

Some people are just morally destroyed. A direct hit from a tank — psychologically, it’s a very big thing, you start being afraid of every rustle. You just scurry about hiding all the time, you don’t lead a normal life. When people come to our unit, they act really tough — we’re like this, we’re like that… After the first shelling, they’re all like, that’s it, we’re not going there again. We don’t need people like that, they’re just written off. Most of them are already in Kyiv, doing other jobs. A person wants to be useful but he doesn’t want to fight — he might stand at a checkpoint at most. There was a particular category of soldiers who would always say, “Come on, let’s go, let’s kill some Russians!” They were usually the first to flake out.

***

Executions and cruelty to captive soldiers — you look at it differently from inside the army. Not that you’re ready to do it yourself, but it’s normal. Any of our soldiers knows that he will not be captured, and that your side doesn’t take prisoners in some situations. A Russian armored formation was coming past our checkpoint. Fighting broke out, and that formation was destroyed and burned, because Ukrainian special forces were right there. They got a wounded soldier from one of the vehicles and carried him to their positions 500 meters away. Every time I heard our officer tell this story, people would ask him: “Why didn’t you finish him off?” To be honest, it all depends on the unit. You can be captured and people will treat you well, or they might torture you or shoot you, it’s sheer luck. But following the Geneva Convention is more of an exception.

* * *

I’m watching the news, and there’s a Russian woman being interviewed in the street. “Of course I feel sorry for those people, but this is necessary…” She looks all sad, and her kid is there, out for a walk with her. I’m a pacifist, you know — but there’s nothing left of my pacifism now. I think to myself, you bitch, if ten soldiers were to f*** you non-stop for a week and then shoot you, what would justify it? These are such basic things — do you not understand anything at all? You cannot feel any pain until someone beats you? “It’s probably necessary…” And if someone killed you? Maybe you, too, should be written off?

* * *

For the first 15 minutes, I just sat there trying to wake up. My child was sleeping, of course. I never get up this early. I remember that when I sat up in my bed, I looked out the window, and it was still dark, the daybreak was just beginning a little — and I felt that this wasn’t my apartment but some other place. When we were leaving, I didn’t feel that we’re leaving Kyiv to go some place in particular, I just sensed that I must drive in that direction. We got to Lviv. I sent everyone to bed, opened a bottle of wine, and went outside. I looked into the sky — and saw the air defense blasting. The siren was sounding, but I had no instinct for flight. You’re not yourself, and this isn’t your body.

* * *

The village was full of people who had just evacuated out of Kyiv, without expecting to be surrounded, and so soon. I started to meet other people wandering about the village and looking for kindred spirits. We all felt lost. When we got together, there were 15 of us at first, then 40. We organized into units. There were six machine guns, and not a single bulletproof vest or helmet. We called ourselves a “bum crew.” Only later, we received some basic weapons.

Our backbone was five or six people, all very different, most of them complete bumpkins with lamentable manners. But there was no one better at that moment. There were such high spirits: if we go, let’s go, if we die, let’s die. There was this completely sincere feeling: You need something? Here you go! It was an amazing feeling, but eventually it crumbled. Some people couldn’t go on, and left. Some began drinking; lots of people now drink. One guy drank himself delirious, he started walking around and shouting, “Give me a Russian soldier!” He wound up shooting a woman next door — she was only wounded, but he freaked out and shot himself.

* * *

We began to work on March 4, only receiving patients with acute pain — free of charge for the territorial defense and the AFU. The other dental offices — we have two or three of them in town — were closed. There was no transportation. I would pick up the doctors around town in the morning, and drive them back in my car before the curfew. This young guy from the territorial defense, 30 years old, comes in. A normal guy, even polite in places, with a short beard. We’re talking, and then a siren goes off, and there’s a blast in the distance. I look up at him and say, “I’m signing you up for an appointment.” And he goes: “Show me your portfolio first.” And I sense that I’m losing it. “What did you say?” “Your portfolio — show me your past work.” I say to him, “Are you out of your f***ing mind? I’m f***ing driving around the city gathering dentists just to deal with acute pain!” “You shouldn’t talk to me that way!” Well, we didn’t get into a fist fight, but it was quite a shouting match. He left and slammed the door. I don’t know why I hadn’t been able to control myself.

* * *

A woman from Rubizhne came to our place. She talked about what happened there when the frontline drew near. She was there in a basement with her two grandchildren. They had nothing to eat for several days at a stretch. She said that you had ten minutes to run somewhere to find water, or to get into somebody’s bombed-out house for a box of pasta or a few potatoes. She said that people ate dogs. Then they found someone who could get them out for 4,000 hryvnias per person. He got there and signaled — “Time to go!” Her son-in-law had just left to look for some food — and they all took off, just abandoning him there.

Reporting by Shura Burtin. Adapted for Meduza in English by Anna Razumnaya.