rom doctors to cocktail bar staff, the people of the Ukrainian capital tell how small, everyday acts have become their symbols of resistance
t Kyiv’s Beatnik Bar last spring, the mixologists wrestled with the question of whether they should even try reopening. Their families were mostly under Russian occupation in eastern, many of their friends were on the frontline. Was it really the right time to be worrying about making and selling high-end cocktails?
After nearly a year of war, it has also become emblematic of the country’s suffering, and its resilience, having endured every horror Russia has visited on its neighbour.– Bucha, Irpin and Borodyanka – Kyivites endured the reckless shelling turning homes into rubble across Ukraine, and the intimate brutality Russia’s soldiers bring when they arrive on foot, to torture and murder.
Kyiv’s mayor, former world champion boxer Vitali Klitschko, said last month that the city’s population – which sank to around one million when Russian soldiers were at its gates – had returned to prewar levels, of around 3.6 million, based on phone usage data. He spent the early months of the war in a western town, and begged his bosses to let him move to Kyiv. “There they don’t understand [our experience], and it’s hard to have something in common.”Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/The Observer
A maths teacher, she only decided to leave when it became clear in the early autumn that Russians might punish her for refusing to adopt their curriculum. She wants to go home, as soon as the war ends.
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