Kyiv, lately

In the darkness of blackout, the light of the phone torch is your friend.

‘If the artillery fire takes you by surprise’, said the laminated card in the hotel room, thoughtfully placed next to a pillow menu and the array of complicated light switches, ‘if the artillery fire takes you by surprise, and there is no time to react, quickly go to a room far away from where the shelling is taking place.’ It was in a fancy hotel which I had booked because not many places were open in Kyiv at that time, and it had advertised a bomb shelter on the home page, which in reality was some folding chairs arranged in a corner of the underground parking garage.  The laminated card maintained a calm and practical tone, and advised keeping your mouth open and your eyes closed, the better to protect your sight and hearing from the artillery fire surprise. 

More than two years later I thought about this card, as we rushed to the corridor of the flat when the screech of the air alarm quickly turned to loud explosions outside. Not artillery but Russian cruise and ballistic missiles, whose trajectory towards the city had been charted, moment by moment, on a dedicated telegram channel. The arrival of the missiles was thus not strictly speaking a surprise, although their speed gave little time to get anywhere further than the corridor, hopefully ‘far away from where the shelling is taking place’. There was an electricity blackout, so it was pitch dark, but at least there were two bars of mobile internet to keep across the latest developments. Not that we needed the internet to hear the huge explosions, some of them so loud that the apartment shuddered in shock. It was not yet five in the morning, and the debris from the bombs outside would be falling somewhere, on someone’s home or kindergarten or car. There was the echoing sound of air defence and then what sounded like shooting, a breathless update on Telegram ‘another missile group is on the way, stay in shelter’. It was my friend’s birthday and his phone was pinging with messages, commiserating with this less than ideal start to his day. And then finally it was quiet in the darkness just before dawn, and we shuffled back to bed, hoping for a couple of hours of sleep before the next arrival: the relentlessly punctual workers on the construction site next door. 

Blackout schedule for one day in Kyiv

There is a blackout schedule nowadays: to follow it you can subscribe to another telegram channel, uploading it next to the one which informs about missile trajectories. Kyiv is divided into sectors and the ‘There is light’ channel will tell you when each of them is due to have power and when it will definitely be off. Sometimes the timings are precise and other times there is an emergency outage or the lights simply don’t come on when you thought they would. You stand at the bottom of the stairs in the apartment block with your heavy bags of shopping and think: ok, it is only the ninth floor, call it exercise, who needs a gym, pity the guys who bought a flat on the 24th floor. The traffic lights do not work and you hover by the redundant crosswalk, phone torch in hand, choosing your moment to forge out into the traffic. Everywhere there is the sound of generators: one powers the coffee stand, one keeps the pharmacy lights on, one chugs away by the fancy clothes shop which keeps its windows far too bright for such an electricity-challenged time. My friend remarks that she cannot bear the heavy sound of all these generators, that you can’t escape it. But then she adds ‘but I would rather have this noise and still be able to buy food’. 

The generator soundtrack of wartime life

We reach the cafe where we had planned to get lunch and it is clearly not able to serve food: a few people have plastic cups of lemonade or espresso tonic, but the kitchen has stayed closed. We go around the corner to another place which is operating with a special ‘blackout menu’, with a little lightbulb printed next to the dishes they are still able to make on generator power. There seems to be a surprisingly good choice available, and we order plates of smoked salmon with scrambled egg and salad, and some waffles with baked vegetables and melted feta cream.  After a morning which began with 20 Russian missiles, we also order too much coffee, and thank the staff who went through this night and still came into work.

Impressive ‘blackout menu’ waffles

Walking back to the flat in the evening I am too early for the end of our sector blackout by at least half an hour, and hold a brief debate with myself between sitting on a roadside bench in the dark or walking up to the ninth floor. I take the stairs, breathing heavily in my unfitness and the closeness of a muggy night. Ukrainians have lived like this for two and a half years. The exhaustion and stress they deal with is unimaginable. So too, the power of their strength and resilience. Our peaceful western skies are thanks to them.

Blackout hacks: If you shine a pen torch at the ceiling it makes a surprisingly effective light and you can read a book or a magazine or write in a notebook or whatever you used to do for amusement before the internet. The fridge is an expensive cupboard but you can use the time when the electricity is on to freeze bottles of water and put them in the turned-off fridge later to keep it vaguely cool. Have lots of power banks and when you have power use it to recharge the power banks. If you have a car you can turn it into a giant generator. The phone light is your friend. Or one of those head torches that runners have.  If the artillery fire takes you by surprise, quickly go to a room far away from where the shelling is taking place. The corridor will usually have to do. And as I write this, just before midnight, the air alarm begins wailing yet again.