The Surreal Normalcy of Kyiv

By Connor Burrill

War only lasts for 30 days. That’s the saying in her family. “After that,” she says, “you just get used to it.”

In May 2022, at age 12, she fled Kyiv with her mother. The two would rendezvous with her father in western Ukraine, then arrange transport to Spain. Her father would stay behind to maintain his business and wait as a volunteer in the military reserve.

The invasion had started two months ago, and she was among the last of her circle to flee. She resisted for as long as possible before her parents determined that it was time to leave. “I wanted to stay in Kyiv for as long as I could, even if there was war, or bombs,” she says. 

It was the first concession to a war that would keep demanding more. The environmental stability, socialization and education that are so important in adolescence were put on hold, and she was forced to move a continent away. 

After living in metropolitan Kyiv for her entire life, Bailén, a town of 18,000 in southern Spain, was absolutely foreign to her. She lacked friends, experience with the Spanish language, and most of her family. 

For six months, she entered a depression with symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress disorder. She says, “It was one of the hardest periods of my life. For the first half-year I had really tough mental issues. I think everyone in Ukraine has some PTSD. I had this block when people tried to talk to me. I was pretty cold.”

She showed little interest in learning Spanish or practicing English, and she generally avoided people. She went to school, but she couldn’t understand the curriculum. It wasn’t until a classmate invited her to a volleyball game that she felt like she had a community. “That’s not something that really happens in Ukraine. People don’t just invite you places if they don’t really know you. I think now they might have seen me as ‘exotic’ or something, but it helped me,” she says. She was still new to volleyball, but she left the game with a handful of Spanish friends. 

War and migration mean that things turn around quickly. Shortly after she began to feel at home in Bailén, her mother decided to return to Kyiv. She cried when it was time to leave, and she regretted her time wasted in isolation. Still, she recognized the importance of returning home. In Ukraine, she could graduate high school and go to university, but, as she says, “people in Bailén stay in Bailén,” and she couldn’t see a future there. Many outsiders in the U.S. understate the agency of those in crisis, but ambition doesn’t suddenly die when the missiles fire. 

And the missiles do fire. Once, while having tea in her kitchen, she saw the sky turn orange as four of them raced by. She sat unfazed and finished her tea. “My parents were really upset with me about that,” she says. She has a stoic view toward death. She doesn’t believe in an afterlife, and she doesn’t see any reason to be afraid. 

Usually, when the sirens go off, she doesn’t react. At her mother’s apartment, they use social media to keep track of the bombings, and they only seek shelter in the bathroom (which, with running water and no windows, is the safest spot in a bombing) when things are particularly bad. 

At school, where safety rules are stricter, each siren means a visit to the shelters. “Some students even get excited about the sirens, because they get to miss class. I don’t know how you could care so little about the destruction,” she says. 

Her culture mirrors her experience of the war. She’s been uprooted and made to question her identity more than most her age. She’s one of 14 million Russian speakers in Ukraine who struggle over their own language. Since Ukraine’s independence, the schools and government have operated in Ukrainian, and the Russian-speaking regions of the country have a history of separatism. Bookstores no longer sell works from Russian publishers, and they avoid selling books in Russian altogether. She supports the cultural distancing from Russia, but she believes the language belongs to her as much as to the Russian people. She says, “I still speak Russian. People still speak Russian on the streets. It’s my language, and I have the right to speak it.”

Life goes on, though. Despite that destruction, she falls back into strange, familiar routines. “It’s not chill in a sunny way, but in an autumn way, where things are bad, but you don’t really care.” Fear and stress, when they’re consistent enough, lose their edge.

During the week, she goes to school, spends a few hours with friends, then comes home to read, study, and watch movies. She loves math and sports. Her favorite football team is Barcelona; despite speaking with an American accent, she refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the word “soccer.” She plays soccer and volleyball. Her old Ukrainian friends haven’t yet returned, but she’s made new ones (because, as she puts it, she’s “f---ing hilarious”). Day-to-day problems that once would have upset her seem trivial. 

There’s a difficult future ahead. The war isn’t over, and the effects of the conflict will last well beyond its end. “Ukraine is going to be pretty f---ed for the next few years,” she says.

But she has a lot going for her. She’s worldly and well-read, especially for her 14 years. She speaks Russian, Ukrainian, English, and Spanish. She reads Erich Remarque alongside Steven King. She listens to Eminem, Queen, Arctic Monkeys, and a selection of Spanish and Portuguese-language musicians from her time in Spain. She plans to write a memoir.

In a sense, war does only last for 30 days. Any cataclysmic event might seem all-consuming, but people solve their problems or learn to live with them. There’s a blurry line between inner peace and the apathy that can come with constant struggle. If you can accept your mortality and limitations while holding onto your cares and ambitions, are you not closer to the former?

Even for those away from the front lines, war can look like the end of all things. For her, life doesn’t end until it ends.