As the fifth month of Russian aggression against Ukraine strikes, a certain routine seems to be setting in. From abroad, if the amazement and indignation sometimes begin to fade, nothing or almost nothing has changed for the inhabitants of kyiv. They continue to live and to love, to be born and to die in insecurity, under the threat of bombs and saboteurs. In “the shadow of the monstrous”, Jünger would write.
From the start, on February 24, 2022, writer and photographer Evgenia Belorusets, born in 1980 in kyiv, set out to keep a “war diary”, It’s 3:30 p.m. and we’re still alive, made up of daily entries and photographs taken in the streets, convinced that the war would only last a few days. Having lived for a long time between kyiv and Berlin, she wrote it in German, and it was also partly published by the weekly Der Spiegel.
In the wake of her past artistic work, at the crossroads of visual arts, literature, journalism and activism, it is a way of channeling the amazement she experiences and of seeking meaning in what is not has none. Telling the daily life of the inhabitants of kyiv also allows him to measure the effects of the war in the Ukrainian capital.
Sounds of explosions, anti-aircraft sirens, unusual silence in streets that have become practically deserted. This woman, who grew up with the motto “Everything but war!” no longer recognizes kyiv, where every crossroads is guarded day and night by armed members of the Territorial Defence.
Inconceivable
On the sixth day, she has the strange impression that the war has been going on for fifty years. Is it Monday, Tuesday or Sunday, she wonders? Even his notion of time seems to be turned upside down.
Forcing herself to go out into the streets, she multiplies the encounters, heartbreaking or inspiring, takes note of the buildings, neighborhoods and villages destroyed by the Russian forces. A feeling of general disbelief sticks to his skin. Monday, March 7, at 12e day of the war: “Wherever I look, I see war, it is a global, total form of life, which swallows up everything. »
Evgenia Belorusets’ photographs inform her diary which, in turn, provides them with context. A delivery man who brings meals to the elderly or sick. A group of veterinarians who stayed in kyiv to save the animals. A passer-by looking at the ruins of a bombed-out building.
On Tuesday, March 8, noting that the city of 3 million inhabitants seems to be settling into a certain normality, a journalist asks him how we notice the presence of the war. In his eyes, a “catastrophe of this dimension cannot really be described, we can only stop it”.
Even accumulating objective evidence of its existence, war, says Evgenia Belorusets, continues to be inconceivable. “Each day spent in the heart of the war is like a dangerous disease that must be cured as soon as possible. »
After having hesitated for a long time to do so, she resolved, in April, to show on a train bound for Warsaw.
“What is happening right now in Ukraine, sums up Evgenia Belorusets, what we are all going through, will determine our existence forever. But not just ours. You have to find the courage to stop the aggressor. The world will never forgive itself for its crimes. »