First day in Ukraine | Live like there’s no tomorrow

Former journalist and MP Paule Robitaille has been traveling across Europe for several weeks to report on the concrete impacts of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

(Kyiv) The windows of the night train that takes me to Kyiv are all covered with transparent adhesive tape. My neighbors in the compartment explain to me, skeptical, that this will protect us from Russian rockets. They’re laughing. ” Do not worry. Everything will be alright ! “Still we think about it anyway. During the journey, we undergo regular checks by the authorities and the visit of a sniffer dog. After all, I am entering a country at war.

Six o’clock in the morning, we arrive at Kyiv station. We follow a trickle of weak light to the exit. The taxi driver enters my friend Tatiana Koctiouk’s address into his cell phone. We are plunged into darkness, but Google Maps show us the way. On the bridge that crosses the Dnieper, the buildings appear like columns of threatening shadows. It’s six-thirty in the morning and I’m reassured and moved to see Tatiana waiting for me in the damp cold in front of her building. “We have electricity,” she tells me before anything else. It was supposed to stop at six o’clock, but it still holds. Go on ! Quick ! Get in the elevator with your suitcase. Me, I go up on foot. If the electricity goes out, I’ll call the janitor. The old elevator creaks loudly. I cross my fingers as it goes up and I let out a huge sigh when the door finally opens at 10^e stage.

Tatiana joins me panting. She opens the door of her friendly and warm apartment which contrasts with the gloomy appearance of her Soviet building from the Brezhnev era. We hasten to make tea. You never know when everything will drop. We breathe a little and look forward to meeting again. Her youngest son is studying in Prague. The eldest joined the Ukrainian army. But everything is fine. And now she was going to take a shower when everything goes out. Never mind ! She lights a candle and washes herself with lukewarm water.

On my way to the office, she drops me off at the mall where I meet Natalia, my researcher. I hear the hum of generators everywhere.

We meet at the “Tea Room”. They serve excellent coffee. As soon as she arrived, she calmly told me that Russia had just launched a shower of missiles. “It could be big,” she tells me.

Everyone at the mall seems to have gotten the alert at once, they all head out looking at their phones. “Do you want to go for a walk around town?” In the car, there’s no real danger,” Natalia told me.

I prefer to follow the herd that rushes into the metro, Kharkiv station. We are about half a thousand there. I don’t sense any panic.

Some are seated on the steps of the stairs, others stand on the platform, clustered around the columns that offer chargers for telephones and laptops. Babushkas chatter away. Mothers and their children watch cartoons on their tablets. Others play cards. A beagle dog gnaws his bone. A young man is engrossed in an online math class. But most are following the attack live on their phones. “Twenty missiles will enter Ukrainian airspace… Take cover! Fifty cruise missiles flew over the capital… our air defense is doing its job… After the explosions, the light flickers in the Kyiv region… turn off the power to your electrical appliances! »

In the meantime, I take the opportunity to talk to an accountant who is discussing “holiday menus” with her colleagues. “The most difficult thing is not the power losses,” she told me. It’s never knowing when and where it’s going to fall. It’s having no idea when it will end. »

The electricity staggers in the subway and returns.

Nearby, a young couple hugs their 6-year-old daughter very tightly by the shoulders. “Of course she’s scared. But that doesn’t stop the family from sending him to school, which has a shelter in case of an attack.

I hear a beep-beep left, right. I look on my phone: “Green light. There is no more danger. The watchword is given. A voice on the loudspeaker confirms this. We all go out.

Natalia and I are therefore going downtown to do some shopping. Traffic has resumed. People come back from work. Bars and cafes are crowded. In the street, in front of a kiosk, I hear Harry Belafonte singing Christmas. This is one of the worst missile rains since the Russian invasion, but the Ukrainian capital is stubborn. She lives, feverish, as if there was no tomorrow.

I go from Natalia’s car to Tatiana’s. We come back home. On the radio, we learn that there would have been 70 missiles launched on Ukraine and that 60 of them would have been shot down by the anti-aircraft defense.

“But what are the Russians thinking? That we will submit? That we’re going to ask Zelensky to stop all this because we’re out of electricity or water for a few days? If Putin’s regime wants to crack the Ukrainians by subjecting them to a deep humanitarian crisis, it is not there yet and it may never happen.

Natalia falls silent when she hears the Ukrainian national anthem playing on the radio. We look at the city from the top of the bridge. It’s eight o’clock and the lights of the buildings are shining everywhere. Arrived at home, we go up in the elevator without thinking too much. We hurry to make the tea kettle work. I take a shower, the water is hot. Let’s enjoy. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Big day…