A Journey Through War and Love, Now Interrupted: The Kyiv to Kramatorsk Route

landscape of Donetsk region, summer 2025

The Kyiv–Kramatorsk train can’t run up to its final destination anymore. The final stops of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk have become too dangerous, as Russia now targets railway infrastructure all along the frontline.

I was on board this train often, and each time, it was an important lesson in what this war is about.

What is that journey about? A Kyiv-Kramatorsk journey begins very early, with an alarm clock ringing at 5 a.m., and a race to Kyiv’s main station to catch the Kramatorsk-bound train which departs, still, at 6:44 in the morning, sharp, no matter what. At dawn, hundreds of people with red eyes—from crying, from exhaustion after a night of Russian air raids—hop on or say goodbye to their cherished relatives who are going on board.

It is called the “Love train” because it links families to their loved ones, from across the country, from the rear to the frontline, soldiers with their lives, in many ways. It is a war train. On the racks, camouflage bags in all shades of green show the presence of servicemen returning from permission. Chevrons show legendary brigades fighting in the direction of Lyman, Kostyantynivka, and Pokrovsk.

As the train departs, the sun rises and basks the statue of Mother Ukraine in a beautiful pink light, or wraps her up in a fog, depending on the weather. The train lulls us away from the capital. It is quiet, apart from the back and forth of the coffee-trolley that circulates across our carriages.

At 9 a.m. sharp, the daily minute of silence and the stern countdown in memory of all the people who gave their lives defending Ukraine plunges each carriage into an atmosphere of deep and quiet reflection. Some people stand, others just bow their heads. In Ukraine, everybody knows in their flesh the price of blood paid for the country to remain free.

On board, everybody is involved in the war: humanitarians, journalists, soldiers, and their families. Yet it is a train full of life: each ride brought back home dozens of people uprooted from Donbas and coming back to visit their relatives left behind, a handful of humanitarians, and dozens of wives, girlfriends, and children of soldiers.

Landscape of Kharkivska Oblast, a hill in the background, the sky is cloudy but luminous.
Cattle is in a field in the distance. — Kharkivska Oblast as seen from the Kyiv-Kramatorsk train © Emmanuelle Chaze, July 2025

Riding this train, slowly heading towards Donbas, through the hills of Poltava and the vast fields of Kharkiv Oblast, is a travel through Ukraine’s rich landscapes and a travel through its history.

The closer one gets to Donbas, the more visible the war becomes. As the scenery passes by the window, it fills with ever more grey, dark green, and all shades of military vehicles that drive towards or come back from the frontline.

There are scenes of ordinary lives: babusias on their bicycles, mothers in pink hoodies walking their toddlers.

Then there is the Ukrzaliznytsia message upon arriving in Kramatorsk: “Thank you for your support. Our trains are getting ready to return to Donetsk, Luhansk… see you soon on Ukrainian railways.”

Each time, arriving in Kramatorsk felt like it could be the last. Earlier this summer, seeing the Lozova station in ruins foreboded the worst: it was only a matter of time until the Kyiv–Kramatorsk would stop running up until its final stations.

At each station, emotional reunions of families and lovers took place on the platform. But the most moving of all happened in Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, as the train finally came to a stop and the doors opened. At this moment, time stopped. We all knew one has to walk away from the station as quickly as possible, as it is Russia’s target of choice. Yet, time stopped right here. Tired but happy-looking men in military clothes, of all ages, welcomed their wives, fiancées, and girlfriends with tight embraces that let all their exhaustion and relief transpire. So many tears, most of happiness. Each hug is a victory against the aggressor. Each reunion a blessing for one soldier and his family.

Finally, love. Finally, this long-awaited hug. Love, through blood and sweat, and the smell of Ukraine’s soil and its hundreds of posadkas, the hiding lairs where tens of thousands of Ukrainians shelter along the frontline.

Love, the only thing that still makes sense. The one thing everybody fights for. This love persists, despite all this blood, all this misery, all this horror. All those killer drones.

The Love train no longer brings together lovers on Kramatorsk’s platforms. It is a tragedy. It was a handy commodity for thousands of customers.

But to think that love can be stopped because of the aggressor would be to grossly underestimate what Ukrainians are capable of—what love is capable of.
Life will be tougher for soldiers in that sector; travel will become even more uneasy.

But there will be other routes. There will be other reunions. And there will be love, always.

The author holding a ginger cat while on a Kyiv Kramatorsk train — A frontline kitten being evacuated from the frontline towards a Kyiv life © Emmanuelle Chaze, summer 2025

November 5, 2025 0

The darkness around us

A police red and white cordon in the foreground. In the background, a street in Podil and one of the buildings impacted by a recent russian drones strike. the facade is partially destroyed, a lot of windows are shattered. People are working on the scene.

Podil was hit badly two nights ago, it was the second night in a row that we had been having strikes in the city center. Considering, anybody living in the heart of Kyiv is very privileged: we can enjoy a relatively normal life most of the time. Except when Russia strikes.

The following day, when I asked my friend Katya, who lives in that district, if she was ok, she told me that everything was fine with her. I was dealing with my own trauma that day, reporting on the death of two journalists, murdered by Russia with a drone, in Kramatorsk, a city I know well, a city which I know faces the same fate as too many others in Donbas before: Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, Toretsk, which you, reading me in English, might know only through pictures of their utter devastation. But those places didn’t use to be ashes, they used to be full of flowers, and full of life, until Russia came and levelled them to the ground.

So after reporting on the death of Olena Gramova and Yevhen Karmazin, I felt nothing but emptiness. Somehow, this particular murder hit me, my hands were shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t know them personally, I knew them through their work. I shelved the ton of reports I was supposed to hand in because I simply could not think, let alone write. I watched one of their reports, embedded with an NGO evacuating civilians in Donbas, something they filmed in March this year. Under Russian attack, they follow an NGO in Kostyantinivka now evacuated hospital. I can’t help but cry when I see that this video got a little more than a thousand views since its publication in March. Those are colleagues who day in, day out, risked their lives on the ground, close to the red zone, to report on Russia’s crimes against Ukraine.

But back to Kyiv. Today I was chatting to Katya’s sister, on a completely different topic (namely, why does a Kramatorsk hospital still invest in a 5 million hryvnias top-notch new X-ray machine when the city is being bombed daily and whether this will ever make sense), and she let slip that she is very stressed out “given what happened to Katya”. Follows a moment of confusion, what have I missed? It turns out that Katya’s building got hit with shrapnel that night. I write back to Katya. “and you told me you were fine?!”. She answers “well, I’m fine, and the windows shattered were on the other side of the building, and I’m alive, so, considering, yes I’m fine”. I’m both relieved and appalled. This is neither fine nor normal, yet it is our reality.

This week, on October 20th, 84-year-old Larysa Vakuliuk, a goat herder from Kherson region, got targeted and killed, alongside her two goats, on a country road by a Russian FPV drone. It will never be said enough: FPV, First Person View, means that the pilot sees very well what, or who, he is targeting. Larysa had refused to leave her home, because she didn’t want to abandon her animals.

In Chernihiv region, half of the population was plunged in a full blackout and emergency tents, “invicibility points”, had to be set up.

On October 22nd, in Kyiv region, Antonina Zaichenko, her six months old baby girl, Adelina were killed, alongside her 12 year old niece Anastasiia. The family had moved from Kyiv to the village of Pohreby, in Kyiv region, as they thought this would be safer.

The same day, October 22nd, Russia launched a kamikaze drone on a kindergarten in Kharkiv. The 48 children present were apparently uninjured, but one man died, one person lost a leg (authorities communicated on a “traumatic injury resulting in amputation”, and another person suffered burns on 20% of their body”).

Back in Kherson, on October 24th, Russia also attacked the city with a multiple launch rocket system, resulting in three deaths and at least 14 injuries, and in Odesa region, Russia launched glide bombs, a first in this part of Ukraine.

This week, the numbing sound of diesel generators roar in most streets in Kyiv. It is deafening. Many shops, cafes and restaurants are plunged in obscurity. It is dark and cold, I am writing those lines wrapped in my coat, with the desk light flickering, and all my electric devices are charging, just in case. In the corridor, I have lined up water supplies, in case Russia hits again and deprives us from running water. Next to the bottles, a fire extinguisher, in case a drone, or worse, a missile, hits the building. A bag with my important documents and the cat transport boxes are ready to be grabbed in case I have to leave the flat in a hurry.

I am lucky to live in the safest area of Kyiv, a European capital which still shines in many ways, except not at night because now it’s mostly plunged in an unwelcoming darkness, and it does not feel safe anymore. As I am writing those lines, I ask myself, am I fine? I am, because I am alive and I still have all my limbs. My loved ones are alive. I get to write these lines. This is what we consider fine here. But if I answer the question “are Ukrainians fine?” (which they can answer themselves, please, please ask them directly), I would say, no, Ukrainians are not fine, they are surviving, although like every other being, they deserve to live safely, instead of seeing their country being ripped apart daily.

October 24, 2025 0

I must be living in an alternate reality.

I must be living in an alternate reality. A reality where children are listed online for adoption, where journalists are tortured and killed in captivity, where hundreds of drones & missiles are routinely thrown at Ukraine, because the more I voice those horrible things, the more they are met with indifference, and the other side invariably asks: “are Ukrainians hopeful about peace”?

I feel that in the public sphere, the lines between ‘both sides’ have become very much blurred. Yet nothing has changed on the ground: Russia is still attacking Ukraine to expand its territory, bombs it daily, murders prisoners, kills Ukrainian civilians, traffics Ukrainian children. Ukrainians are not being difficult or unreasonable for defending themselves.

It’s terrifying to see how many people are unable to grasp the extent of the crimes Russia commits daily — and how easily they hide behind ‘both sides’ narratives, or ‘Ukraine says / Russia says’ false equivalence. It feels like walking among anesthetized people. It’s terrifying to report on horrific news and be met with, ‘But are you sure this war crime really happened?

What takes the most energy isn’t living under bombs, losing people I know regularly to the war, or even reporting on it. What worries me is how many people choose not to see, choose not to speak the truth too openly, and prefer to fool themselves into believing that Russia can be genuine in negotiations — just so they can continue living a normal life.

Rescuers working on the site of a russian strike in Kyiv, July 31st, 2025. Credit: Emmanuelle Chaze.

August 12, 2025 0

Kyiv mourns another Fallen

© The pictures featured in that post, included the featured picture, were taken by Danylo Dubchak for Frontliner, which gave me permission to publish them here.

It’s early on Saturday morning and Kyiv’s city center is quiet. The weather forecast announced rain but there is a pale morning sun peaking through scattered clouds and a light breeze. There are no cars yet, the streets are still empty. There is the sound of my heels on the pavement and the hissing of the wind in the chestnut leaves, the petals of their flowers already beginning to scatter away. I’m walking towards Saint-Michael’s golden-domed cathedral. The other night, I’ve met Dasha, whose friend Denys Zelenyi, killed in action at the age of 28, is being buried today. We decided to attend his funeral, as a sign of support for his family, for his friends, and as a sign of respect for the ultimate sacrifice he paid to defend our home.

I didn’t know Denys, and now I never will. He has joined the ranks of Ukrainians that my circle of friends knew, of people who walked the streets I feel so comfortable walking, of people who worked in restaurants I like. Before the war, Denys was the manager of a very trendy Kyiv restaurant. He left it behind to serve, and saw some of the worst battles as senior lieutenant of the National Guard of Ukraine. I didn’t lose a friend, but I lost yet another opportunity to meet a new one. The bravest, those who joined, are being taken untimely and unfairly from us, from our society, here in Ukraine. They are the people who loved Ukraine the most, the ones for whom Ukraine came before everything else, before their own lives.

One by one, in Kyiv and elsewhere, people who used to light up a room have their own light abruptly switched off for eternity.

One by one, Ukrainians who have only known an Independent Ukraine lose their best to the folly that is Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Funeral of Denys Zelenyi ©Danylo Dubchak, Frontliner

Dasha and I meet at a crossroads, and walk together to the Cathedral. On social media, the news of Denys’s death was widely shared, but not very many people showed up, in comparison to other funerals. People who are here though are truly devastated. Servicemen are visibly upset, they lost a brother-in-arm. Kyivans arrive with eyes red and swollen from crying, they lost a friend, a colleague, the one among them who took up the arms. Their pain is immense.

We are asked to form a guard of honour for Denys’s procession towards the Cathedral. On the one side, the soldiers, on the other, civilians. We wait long minutes in silence. We hear the whistle of birds, and the wind gently sings in the chestnut leaves again. It feels like Life makes itself known, just as we are faced with Death. It feels like eternity is speaking.

It’s 9am, the moment when all of Ukraine stands still to honour the memory of all its Fallen. It’s the moment the faint melody of Plive Kacha resonates, breaking everyone’s heart even more. Carried by soldiers, Denys’s casket arrives, covered by a blue and yellow shroud. We all kneel before the Fallen. The sobs intensify. A young woman collapses in the arms of her friends, crying uncontrollably. Her broken heart breaking the silence. Indescribable pain, everywhere. Irreparable loss.

Funeral of Denys Zelenyi © Danylo Dubchak for Frontliner

We follow the casket inside the Cathedral. I stay at the back, and Dasha walks a bit closer. Slowly, the cathedral fills up. We surround Denys’s closed casket in a silence only broken by the funeral litanies of the priests. We are lulled by their voices and the sweet scent of incense. There are a few photographers, who discreetly document the scene. I know some of them for having met them on sites of other tragedies before. There is a sad irony to this: here in Ukraine, funerals have become a new, and saddest commonplace of socialization since the full-scale invasion. I think about taking pictures, but I can’t lift my hand and point with my phone at so many people grieving their loved one.

A soldier holds a picture of Denys Zeleniy on his funeral © Danylo Dubchak for Frontliner

A soldier kneels and cries in front of the casket of Denys Zeleniy on his funeral © Danylo Dubchak for Frontliner

A woman kneels in front of the casket of Denys Zeleniy at his funeral © Danylo Dubchak for Frontliner

More tears, more sobs, and people holding each other and the flowers they brought, and the ceremony ends. I stay behind to light a candle. I’m an atheist but I don’t know what else to do to conjure fate and pray that none of the soldiers I know will ever take central stage at one of these funerals.

Outside of Saint-Michael’s golden-domed Cathedral, life has resumed in Kyiv, streets have filled up. Denys’s casket is now in the funeral car, its boot still open so that people can come lay their flowers and kneel for a last goodbye.

The line is long, Denys will be missed by many. A young boy dutifully lays his roses, looks a last time and, breaking in tears, brings his hands to his eyes, comforted by his mother. Dasha places a hand of the coffin and kneels to say goodbye to her friend.

It is over. Ukraine lost another son, Kyiv lost another one of its children. Later, another casket will come in, followed by another family mourning the loss of their loved one, in a terrible litany of funerals that will forever change the face of the country.

May 11, 2024 0

People live here

On the foreground, two people, a woman dressed with a purple jacket and a pink woollen hat, and a man in a blue hooded jacket, look on. In th background, a 20-stories residential building is partially destroyed by a strike, there are huge traces of smoke and dozens of broken windows.

I didn’t want to go on the site of the strike in Holosiivs’kyi this morning, I knew what I would see: death, despair and destruction. We see it too often here. One shelling would already be one too many, and it keeps on happening, at various scales and over various cities, everyday.

But we need to see. We can’t afford to close our eyes. Hours after the strike, the smoke is no longer there, but the air is still filled with its smell. It has started to rain and a strong wind makes debris swirl around the people still there.

As the night falls on dozens of flat no longer inhabitable, people look on what used to be their homes. Some are waiting at the entrance of the building hit, they are trying to retrieve whatever belongings they have left. Others already carry a backpack, suitcase and plastic bags. Firefighters are still on site to clear up the crime scene. The sounds of drills indicates that wooden panels are being installed to replace broken windows.

Today, in Kyiv alone, here in that residential building in the otherwise quiet, green district of Holosiivs’kiy, four people died and over 40 got injured, including a pregnant woman. Other civilians lost their pets to this horror.

As you can see from the some of the pictures, despite all this, lights are on in the untouched part of the building. People live here. Люди живуть тут.

Close-up of the corner of the building worst affected by the strike - charred floors and broken windows. Parts of the facade are falling apart.

Three firefighters are clearing-up the pavement next to a building hit by a Russian missile. There are glass shards on the ground.

Firefighters are tending to residents waiting to retrieve their belongings next to a building hit by a Russian missile. There are glass shards on the ground.

February 7, 2024 0

Coming back alive

You might remember Max from the day of his liberation, a year ago, when after ten months in Russian captivity, he was returned to Ukraine. That day, a photographer captured the moment when Max was looking at an apple in disbelief and awe, having not seen fresh fruits or vegetables during his whole time of detention.

Last year, on the picture, he was looking gaunt, having lost 32 kilos during his ordeal. Shaved, skeletal, he was nothing like the tall, healthy-looking man who stood in front of me. The wounds run deep, he still have to deal with injuries both physical and psychological, but he is alive, and safe, for now.

It is almost a year to the day since he was freed, and I have a thousand questions, and the fear that each of them could cause more damage by reviving all the trauma. I know that I shouldn’t show emotion, in order to not make it worse. I know that I should not feel as much as I do, because it is not my place, but that particular day, I feel more intensely than usual, and I know it from the moment I leave home to meet Max. I feel the pressure and the privilege of being able to hear and share his story: we all want to know how he, and any other person who survived this ordeal, is doing right now. We all have those thousand questions.

Only, how do you ask them? How do you ask someone to share the unspeakable?

I don’t think there is a roadmap. What there is though, is very simple: we are many things, me a journalist, having moved to Ukraine, a learner of the country, and an ignorant of war until recently. Max, a civilian turned soldier, returned to civilian life for now, a husband, a father, a victim and a witness of the harm caused to his country, to his people and to himself, by the aggressor neighbor, now sitting here at a café table with a coffee and a macaron in front of him. My first thought is that I would like him to have all the macarons in the world for the rest of his life, every day, as if that could erase the ten months of privations. What there is, is very simple: humanity, as two people simply sit in front of each other.

And then we start talking. We start from the moment when Max, a civilian but also a reservist born in Donetsk, joins the army again. His battalion was surrounded in Kyiv region at the end of March 2022, and dozens of soldiers were captured. His ordeal starting March 20^th. What he tells me is something I only ever read about. The pattern of abuse, beating, tormenting, reminds me of what a survivor of Russian torture in Balakliya, in Kharkiv region, was saying, but on a way larger scale. You can’t listen to such things without feeling you are having a bad dream, a dream you can’t wake up from because you are already wide awake. Several times, I am shocked not just by what Max went through, but by the casual aspect of the torture routines he describes, until Max says “one moment, please…” and looks for the exact word in English for the feeling he wants to express: “Absurd! It was absurd…” he says.

The banality of evil is here, right here. Everything he explains reminds me of what Charlotte Delbo or Primo Levi described when talking about concentration camps. The malnourishment – two large cups of clear soup with sometimes a leaf of cabbage in it, the randomness of “punishments”, people being chosen at a drunken guard’s will to be beaten up or tazed, hundreds of squats or push-ups having to be made by already frail prisoners, civilians and soldiers alike. And the utter ignorance of guards and officers alike when it came to Ukraine, assuming it was as backwards a place as the ones they came from, and assuming Max was constantly tormented in Kyiv because he came from Donetsk. thinking that because Max came from Donetsk, not believing him and other prisoners that Ukraine was a country where people had, prior to the war, an actually nice life.

With every word describing life in captivity, I understand that we are beyond the limits of reason, not to mention way past the respect of international law, and that the only difference I see with the concentration system of WW2 is that Russian prisons are not extermination camps – they are places where the individual is meant to be broken, emotionally and physically, subjugated, and forced into submission and admission that Russia will crush all of its neighbors. As months go by, the violence eventually decreases, minus some outbursts, because even tormentors understand that those prisoners have more value alive than dead.

Throughout our conversation, Max sometimes holds his cup of coffee, and I see the same hands as the ones that held that apple a year ago. Those hands could be those of any of my friends, and like the hands of thousands of civilians turned soldiers after February 24^th. They are the hands that held a phone for the first time in ten months on February 4^th, 2023, to dial in the number of his wife Julia, the one number he knew by heart, and he could finally hear his love after all that time, and tell her he was free. Max got lucky to come home, he now can hold his family, his wife and his daughters, his parents, tight in his arms again. He told me that he had been so worried to lose his ageing father during captivity, and to remain imprisoned for years.

After everything Max told me, I have one question: how did he manage to remain sane all that time? and again, the answer is very simple: because he is human, and along the dozen other prisoners in his cell, they kept each other sane by sharing stories, recounting nice moments of their lives, exchanged recipes of their favorite foods, looking forward to the next time they would be able to eat it. Those very thoughts of the love they knew existed, contributed to keeping them alive. All of this was stronger than the abject mediocrity and casual violence they were subjected to.

What is there to say, and what is there to do after having been through that, and having recounted it? Max and I look at each other, he asks me why I decided to come to Ukraine. I share my story as well, and now both of us have tears swelling in our eyes. It’s not sadness. It’s very simple: it’s our humanity.

Max Kolesnikov, a year after his liberation, on Khreshchatik in Central Kyiv.
Behind him, a bullet-ridden civilian vehicle. — Max Kolesnikov, a year after his liberation, on Khreshchatik in Central Kyiv © Emmanuelle Chaze, February 2024.

February 4, 2024 0

In Kyiv, under missiles and drones

It didn’t come as a total surprise. For quite some time, the skies above Kyiv were far too quiet. We all knew Russia was probably saving as many missiles and drones as possible to hit Ukraine at the worst possible time, in the middle of the winter.

Living in Ukraine, we are used to the sound of wailing sirens, shrieking through the night. This is the best case scenario. The worst is when we hear the whistle of a missile, or the buzzing sound of a drone, and of course the sound of an explosion.

Last Friday, on December 29th, I slept through all the night’s air raid alerts. Instead, I woke up to the roar of an explosion nearby. The ceiling lights shook, the windows as well. I got up quickly and opened the curtains – to a scene of devastation. In a sunny, otherwise beautiful morning, columns of dark smoke rose high before me, towards Lukianisvka subway station, in the Shevchenkivs’kiy district, my district. Somehow the nice weather made it all the more terrible. I looked at my cats, eager to get breakfast and no longer scared by a sound that had become familiar to them, and looked back in the direction of Lukianivksa. A lot of my friends live nearby, so I immediately thought of them, messaged to see of they were ok.

In the safest place of my flat, as I had no time to seek shelter elsewhere and it was pointless to go out, as the danger of strikes persisted, I messaged the newsroom, with “URGENT: Kyiv under attack”. Catching up with the news through multiple channels, I could see that Ukraine was again under a barrage of missiles and drones launched by Russia.

We, journalists, are first responders too, we do not rescue, we do not repair, but we do show what is before our eyes. Security-wise, we are not supposed to leave a shelter during an on-going air raid alert. Plus, there is a risk of double-tap – as Russia has a well-documented habit to wait for rescuers to be on site before launching a second strike on the same spot.

When it is safe enough to do so, I meet with Illia, my producer today. He was on his way to the swimming pool with a friend, when the attacks happened. We have to decide which site to cover first – the warehouse on fire in Podil? The subway station in Lukianivska? I opt for the latter, it’s closer and we think we know where to go.

A dark cloud of smoke rises from the site of a missile strike near the subway station of Lukianivska, in Kyiv. People look on. — A dark cloud of smoke rises from the site of a missile strike near the subway station of Lukianivska, in Kyiv. © Emmanuelle Chaze, Kyiv, December 2023.

The thick column of smoke comes from the very same place shelled last summer. Dozens of ambulances are on site. Police cordon off the area, not accessible to the press yet. There is a factory of interest in the neighborhood.

An elderly woman shouts at us to stop filming, saying that we’re helping Russians. We tell her we are authorised to film, she goes straight to a police officer and points her finger at us. She’s frantic, still shocked because of the explosion. The officer looks at her, looks at us, we wave towards our accreditations which we quickly took out of our pockets. He silently nods in approval and looks, unfazed, at the woman who seems now dejected.

We can’t go live on the scene of an attack for the first couple of hours, precisely so as not to give out any information to ill-intentioned people.

Fragment of a rooftop pulverised by an incoming missile on December 29th, 2023, near Lukianivska subway station, in Kyiv. — People look on at the damage caused by an incoming missile thrown in the central district of Shevchenkivs’kiy in Kyiv, near the subway station of Lukianivska, on December 29th, 2023 © Emmanuelle Chaze, Kyiv, December 2023.

We meet with people whose offices were already destroyed the last time this area was shelled. There is Oleh, a business owner who exclaims: “In Ukrainian, we say that a bomb never falls twice on the same place. Do you see, this is the answer for politicians: in a city far away from the frontline, without fighting. Should they be helping us or no? They should come in Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, looking at what happens to our Ukraine every day!”. Katarina, a young mother, and her little boy Vovochka who tries to steal my microphone, were about to leave their home to go to the kindergarten when the missile struck the subway station. Katarina says: “We decided against the kindergarten and sheltered at home, and it was for the best, because it quickly became so chaotic over there, with of all the people seeking shelter”.

Katarina and her son Vovochka. The little boy is playing with the microphone. — Katarina and her son Vovochka both survived the shelling of December 29th, 2023, near Lukianivska subway station in Kyiv. © Emmanuelle Chaze, December 2023.

After filming, I call V., my friend and also producer, to use his laptop, as mine is broken. We spend the afternoon between editing and radio lives. In the evening, back on Sophia Square for more TV lives, I hear a street musician playing “Forever Young” on the guitar and this is the last straw that day – this is forever the song of Arman, a French journalist who died last year in Chasiv Yar. But people stroll, they enjoy the music, while I enumerate the horrors of the day for an international audience.

***

It only takes another couple of days, during which various other shellings happen: Kherson, Odesa, where teenagers, among others, are killed, their lives cut short by drones and missile strikes on civilian infrastructures, before the capital is hit by another large scale attack.

On January 2nd, we in Kyiv wake up again to the sound of explosions. Drones had already been sent in the middle of the night, but I hadn’t heard anything. This time, it’s missiles. 99 of them, most aimed at Kharkiv and Kyiv. It’s loud, it lasts several hours. I had no time to get out and reach the safest shelter: the Kyiv subway, to I shelter at home, in my corridor. One of my cats in my arms, the other two hiding somewhere, while the windows are shaking, and the light is flickering.

I’m texting with my colleagues in Paris, they’re worried for me, ask if I want to postpone our live. Precisely because we are under attack, I want to proceed, from my corridor.

Today is the 2nd time in four days that Illia and I check on each other during the shelling, then he picks me up when it’s safe to do so, and we go to a site where destruction and death try to obliterate life. From the road, we can see hellish dark columns of smoke, all across the city.

Firefighters working on the site of a missile strike in Solomians'kiy district of Kyiv. Pipe hose on the ground, amidst debris. Residents are walking past.

A firefighter is extinguishing a fire on the facade of a residential building in Solomians'kiy district, Kyiv, following a missile strike. All the window glasses are shattered, smoke rises from one of the flats, charred frames are seen.

Smoke rises from a building hit by debris of a falling missile in the Solomians'kiy district of Kyiv.

A Christmas snowman decoration among the debris found on the site of a missile strike against a residential building in Kyiv, firefighters walk past, there are debris and shards on the ground.

Smoke rises from a building hit by debris of a missile launched against Kyiv by Russia in Solomians'kiy district, Kyiv.

Dozens of charred cars were seen in the Podil district of Kyiv on January 2nd, 2024

Emergency workers secure the site of a missile strike in Podil district, they're around the crater left by the missile, in which a charred tree lies. Electric cables lie around.

Destroyed traffic lights hang in an industrial site of Podil district, following a missile strike, people are looking on, emergency workers are seen behind a cordon.

When we arrive on site, we arrive shortly after first rescuers. When we can, if authorities agree, we report live from the spot, and we film. It’s a sadly well rehearsed ballet of responders. We all know our job, and all acknowledge that we belong together here. The firefighters, the police, the intelligence, the army, and the press. And in the middle, the countless victims.

There is no time to cry, but it’s always time to feel.

Just before recording that video, I was greeting a photographer from Frontliner, a photographer who I always meet during those awful, awful circumstances. He too is visibly shaken.

There is no time to cry, because people need to know. Until you spot a friend in the crowd. You think he’s working too, as he is a journalist as well, but no, he tells you he lives in one of the buildings damaged, and you see his eyes full of tears.

All around us, firefighters, fire hoses, smoke, ashes, people injured, people crying, people already removing shards from their flats and trying to fix what has been undone by Russia.

We move to another location. Charred cars, more emergency workers. A strong smell of gas. Is it dangerous still? Everything is grey and muddy. Everything but us. We’re alive, still.

There is no time to cry but I often wonder if it will ever stop, why it keeps on happening, and if I will ever unsee all the horrors before me.

Reporting in the Solomians’kiy district of Kyiv, on January 2nd, 2024 © Emmanuelle Chaze, January 2024.

January 2, 2024 0

Under Mother Ukraine, the History of Ukraine during WW2

I had wanted to go to the Museum of the History of Ukraine during the Second World war in Kyiv for quite some time, but the current war always got in the way. I managed a few weeks ago, and there were many, many interesting aspects to talk about.

Entrance of the museum of the history of Ukraine in the Second World War in the foreground. In front of it, some sandbags and ammunition boxes. Some visitors are seen exiting the building. In the background, statue of Mother Ukraine. — The Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War in Kyiv © Emmanuelle Chaze, Kyiv, November 2023.

First of, for those unfamiliar with Kyiv, the museum itself is located under the monumental Mother Ukraine, Україна-мати, a 62m-tall (102m if you count its base) Soviet-era titanium statue built in 1979 as a war memorial. Its two sculptors were both born in Dnipro: Evhen Vuchetych, who died in 1974 and is also the designer of the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park in Berlin, and Vasyl Borodai, who completed the project.

You might have heard that Mother Ukraine got a decommunisation make-over on August 1st, 2023, when the Soviet crest, showing the hammer and the sickle, got removed to the benefit of the beloved (here) Ukrainian tryzub. Although this was years in the making, since Soviet and communist symbols were outlawed by the Ukrainian Parliament in 2015, a referendum held in July 2023 showed that an overwhelming majority of the citizens consulted were in favour of getting rid of the Soviet symbol on Mother Ukraine’s shield.

To illustrate this sentiment, my first sight upon entering the museum was that of a Ukrainian soldier giving a disdainful kick in the Soviet Crest, now exhibited in the entrance hall, but looking belittled by an immense blue and yellow flag engulfing the entire ceiling.

In the same hall, the monumental architecture is entirely subdued by Ukrainian identity. Ukraine now is reappropriating itself spaces of propaganda, and the museum of World War II is one shining example of that effort made for Ukraine to decommunize, decolonize and redefine its history from a Kyiv-centered, and no longer from a Moscow-centered perspective.

In the darkness of what used to be a Soviet architectural token, Ukraine has managed to make shine not only its beloved flag, but also its history, which it is now intent on separating from that of the agressor.

Some signs of Soviet times might still hang on the iron doors, but inside the museum, the Kyiv- and not Moscow-oriented history of Ukraine is on display © Emmanuelle Chaze, Kyiv, November 2023

In one of the rooms, artifacts retrieved from the battleground and families’ archives give an idea of what everyday life was for a Ukrainian soldier, not unlike the possessions of soldiers currently fighting.

A vitrine showcases pictures of burnt cities. Kharkiv destroyed. Kyiv destroyed. Again, not unlike the current aftermaths of Russian shellings. There are also birth certificates – they emphasize the regrowth of the country. A very moving display shows a postman’s bag with letters from soldiers that never reached their recipients. They were written in Kharkiv region in June and July 1941. A team of researchers is still trying to find surviving family members and hand them over, if 80 years delayed. 660 copies of letters have been handed over to relatives, and the research continues to find recipients of the several dozens remaining.

Postman's brown leatherbag with a bunch of letters displayed within and outside of it. Envelopes are stamped and handwritten.

A sepia toned picture of soldiers lying in the snow in Kharkiv's city center. In the background, smoke is coming out of a destroyed building; Landmarks of the city are recognizable (today's main square).

In another room, the monumental architecture is matched by an equally monumental display of thousands of pictures retrieved from family archives: ad infinitum, “The Wall of Memory” depicts thousands of soldiers, “a collective portrait of a generation that has suffered the bloodiest war in history. There people were in different armies, under different flags, some returned and some remained lying in the soil on the land for which they fought until the very last”, reads a sign.

Along music instruments and a long banquet table where funeral letters are displayed in a macabre last supper formed by soldier’s mess tins and a few music instruments, the display is a reminder of the humanity lost in what historian of Ukraine Timothy Snyder calls “the bloodlands”.

On two curved walls, thousands of pictures are hanging from the ceiling to the floor. In the middle, a banket table

An accordeon is on display on a banquet table covered with traditional tablecloths with Ukrainian embrodery and soldier's mess tins and bottles.

Like a solemn reminder to contemporary Ukraine, the sign reads further: “We are the memory we keep. The attitude to human life as the highest value determines the maturity and civility of a nation. Therefore, the memory of the Ukrainian people about the war is the memory of each lost and destroyed life.”

November 12, 2023 0

“Artifacts of Kilometer Zero”, Khanenko Museum

With more than 25000 artworks, the Khanenko Museum used to host Ukraine’s biggest collection of Fine Arts, ranging from Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian art, to Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese artifacts, while also being home to artworks from Hieronymus Bosch, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Antonio Canova, Peter Paul Rubens, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, and many other European artists, but the full-scale invasion drastically changed the collections presented. Thousands of paintings were brought to safety – the museum recalling the losses suffered during World War II. On October 10th, Russia launched missiles on the very heart of Kyiv, aiming for, and missing, the Shevchenko University and the Khanenko museum. One missile fell on a playground, only a few meters away from the museum, and another in the middle of the road. Both blasts blew up hundreds of windows. Albeit plunged in the dark from the wood panels sealing its windows, and empty from its collections, the museum now hosts a series of exhibitions from contemporary artistes inspired by the current events.

Two wooden doors open on an exhibition room with almond green walls and a wooden bench in th middle.

Entrance to an exhibition room of the Khanenko museum. The door frames are of light wood, instead of the paintings of the collection, to presentation boards hang on almond green walls.

These days, the work of artist turned fixer for foreign journalists Evhen Bal is showcased in a vitrine full of objects he found on the frontline (“point zero”, for soldiers), and worked into artifacts reminiscing the artist’s life: “Things that the artist finds in the front-line area or in everyday life become triggers that make him recall scenes from his life. At the same time, they highlight the events that have become our common past (…). We become a single body into which the bullet invades and which continues to live with it”, reads the museum’s presentation board. It continues: “Metaphor transform pain into struggle. In this project, working with found material objects is an attempt to grasp reality and displace the fear of the unknown through knowledge”.

Kalashnikov cartridges and piano decoration were found by Evhen Bal in April 2022 near Pisky, Pokrovsky District, Donetsk Oblast. © Photo taken in the Khanenko Museum of Kyiv by Emmanuelle Chaze, November 2023.
Fragments of Russian explosives into a porcelain statuette of Alexander Pushkin. © Photo taken in Khanenko Museum by Emmanuelle Chaze, November 2023
Aluminium fragment of a missile found in Kramatorsk in April 2022 © Photo by Emmanuelle Chaze in Khanenko Museum, November 2023.

In mixing these artifacts with everyday objects, Evhen Bal recalls to the visitor the presence of war in every aspect of life in Ukraine. The “two octaves of bullets” created within a piece of piano decoration seem to give life to a new music instrument, while a dented aluminium shrapnel planted into a base painted in red looks like a houseplant from hell. Irony is everpresent, such as with a porcelain statue of Russian writer Alexander Pushkin pierced with rusty shrapnels and cathartically called “Suicide of Russian culture”, at the very same time that Ukrainian culture and heritage is being endangered by daily shelling and war crimes committed by the Russian agressor.

“Artifacts of kilometer zero” also reminds that behind scraps of metal and empty shells, human beings once held or made the decision to throw those objects with an aim of destruction. Equally, the non-lethal everyday objects showcased emphasize what is lost in civilian life during the war, especially for people stuck on the frontline: the uncertainty of every moment, the fragility of life, and the daily loss of what used to be normal, seem to be conveyed in the artifacts exhibited. They are a vivid testimony of what war feels like in Ukraine.

Interior of the Khanenko museum in Kyiv. Dark-green walls, and a vitrine in the background showcasing artifacts gathered on the frontline and reworked by artist Evhen Bal. — A vitrine of the Khanenko museum in Kyiv exhibits the work of Ukrainian artist Evhen Bal © Emmanuelle Chaze, Kyiv, November 2023.

November 9, 2023 0

The month of falling leaves

In a year from now, I’ll probably say “Листопад”, “November” in Ukrainian, like I would any other word, but for now it still feels magical to call a month with a word that means “falling leaves”. Here are some of my pictures of Kyiv’s beautiful autumn foliage.

November 1, 2023 0