‘The war has become the background of life’ — Andrey Kurkov on Ukraine two years on
I had a strange dream recently. A younger me was standing on the street in Soviet Kyiv with my classmate, Leonid Shterenberg, who, due to the antisemitism of that time, later took a more Ukrainian-sounding family name. In my dream, Leonid is busy with something. He has a shovel and I’m standing next to him on a dry road, but I feel water filling my boots. I take them off, pour out the water and put them on again. My feet remain dry and yet, time and time again, water appears in my boots.
For two years after serving in the Soviet army, I kept wearing my military footwear. Perhaps I thought it was fashionable, or perhaps it was some kind of psychological inertia — I was still in the army’s grip, although already at home and living as a free person, as far as that was possible in 1980s Kyiv.
This dream brought to mind others I have had recently — all startlingly graphic and all imprinted in great detail on my daytime memory. They may not be about the current war, but I am sure it is because of this that I remember these dreams. My sleep is different now — unstable, anxious and intermittent. I seem to be listening to the silence, and if I hear an air raid signal I get up easily. I go into the hallway and sit down on our small upholstered bench. I look at the clock to decide whether I should put some bedding down on the floor, or wash my face and make coffee.
I am not alone in experiencing powerful dreams these days. Even if our bodies have not been captured by the enemy, our minds have been. “In a recent dream, I ended up in a filtration camp in occupied territory,” my friend Oksana Tsyupa told me. Oksana was not exposed to Russia’s gruesome methods of uncovering pro-Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories, but she is from Irpin, one of the towns on the edge of Kyiv that were controlled and ravaged by Russians at the beginning of the war. She escaped just in time, along the road that a day later became a killing field.
Journalists from all around the world are pouring into Ukraine. From Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main street, from cafés and pubs, they will report on the second anniversary of the full-scale Russian aggression on February 24. It is a good reason to remind the world about Ukraine. The cheerful and dynamic journalists interview passers-by. Their respondents answer slowly, perhaps reluctantly. They seem tired — tired of uncertainty, tired of the vacillating support from our European and American partners. But perhaps it is our partners who are tired. Perhaps it is they who are imposing their fatigue on Ukraine. Are they trying to wear away Ukraine’s appetite for a just outcome — for the freeing of all territories occupied by Russia?
We have always known that victory for Ukraine depends on western aid, but during the past few months, with funds blocked in the US and a lack of unity in Europe, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain our hope in this support.
Ukrainians may be responding to journalists less optimistically than they did a year ago, but there is no pessimism either. The time has come for realism — an understanding that this war will last for a long time, that we must learn to live with it. The effort to keep on “keeping on” that has been a form of resistance for civilians since the all-out invasion now requires a little more energy. For those Ukrainians who are not at the front, the war has become the background of life, and the daily air raid alerts are noted alongside the weather forecast.
Almost all Ukrainians have an app on their phones that alerts them to the possibility of missile or drone attacks. The air raids are a regular variable in plans for the day, with hours spent in bomb shelters or in the corridors of apartments and offices.
The end of February means the end of winter. Spring will be early this year — at least, that is the prediction made by Timko, our national groundhog, who lives in a research facility of Karazin Kharkiv National University. Timko was woken as usual on February 2 but he remained sleepy and showed no interest in studying his own shadow, the process by which he “predicts” spring’s arrival. I am afraid he barely slept during the winter, with Russian ballistic missiles and drones raining down on Kharkiv. Ukrainian Groundhog Day was nonetheless shown on national television, which means Timko’s forecast is official. The two dozen people who came to the weather centre for the event clapped joyfully and smiled at the employee who held the sleepy groundhog in her arms and interpreted Timko’s reaction. For a moment, those present could put the war aside and think about the spring.
In Ukraine, spring begins in earnest with the return of the white storks — the country’s ornithological symbol. They fly to north Africa in the autumn and in the spring they return to Ukrainian villages, to their nests on telegraph poles, on the chimneys of abandoned houses or on the branches of tall, dried-up trees. The nests on telegraph poles are often less stable and the electrical cables pose a threat. This year, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, DTEK, has launched the Lelechenki project, which aims to strengthen any nests at risk. Villagers who notice an unstable nest can call a team of electricians who will move it to a metal platform higher above the live cables. Time is of the essence. The nests must be moved before the storks return. So, while some Ukrainian electricians are restoring power lines destroyed by Russian missiles, others are shoring up the habitats of the country’s storks.
Refusing to hide in bomb shelters, or to put their lives on hold until the end of the war, Ukraine’s farmers continue preparing their fields and allotments for the sowing season. Of course, those who were mobilised into the army can only dream of returning to their former life. They may come back on short leave — barely enough time to see family and friends. Those with light or moderate injuries can spend a little more time at home after treatment, and may even be able to arrange a temporary return to their prewar activities.
One of Ukraine’s top sommeliers, Ivan Perchekliy, a Ukrainian with Bulgarian roots, volunteered for the front in April 2022. After only a short period of training, his Brigade, number 241, was sent to the front near the now destroyed city of Bakhmut in the Donbas. He was stationed there for many months, fighting alongside his comrades. During a battle last year, a shell exploded next to him and a fragment hit him in the face. He was sent to the hospital and, following treatment, was given a temporary barracks position in Kyiv. In two months, he will return to the front line but, while in Kyiv, Perchekliy has been catching up on his duties as vice-president of the Ukrainian Sommelier Association.
The association is busier than ever. Many members have been mobilised, but the industry is trying to stay afloat and supervise export contracts. One of the association’s main tasks is the promotion of Ukrainian wine, the quality of which soared in the 10 years before the all-out aggression. “At the beginning of the war, we sent a container of the best Ukrainian wine to Great Britain,” Perchekliy told me. “The British are doing their best to help — ‘If you want to support Ukraine, drink Ukrainian wine!’ was our British partners’ favourite phrase. We are now arranging a second container for the UK and preparing for the participation of Ukrainian winemakers in international exhibitions.”
Perchekliy and I sat for more than an hour in the Boulangerie café on the corner of Olesia Honchara Street and Yaroslaviv Val, in Kyiv’s historic centre. We drank sea buckthorn tea and talked about wine and the war. We did not talk about the looted and wrecked wineries in the Kherson region or the destroyed vineyards. I was interested in how the Ukrainian Sommelier Association achieved the suspension of its Russian counterpart from the international association, and how Ukrainian sommeliers prevented Russian sommeliers from participating in tasting competitions under the Russian flag.
“After the war, I will pay more attention to small craft wineries, especially those in Transcarpathia!” Perchekliy said with an enthusiastic grin. “There is a lot of interesting, good wine there! If you’re in Berehove, be sure to visit Krisztián Sass. He’s definitely one of the future stars of our winemaking industry.”
I am very fond of Transcarpathia, but I know little about its wine. My wife Elizabeth and I spent the first four months of the all-out war as “internally displaced persons” in this westernmost region of Ukraine. And we visited Berehove to see other IDP friends. The town’s population is largely ethnic Hungarian and you see and hear Hungarian on the streets.
The next time I go to Transcarpathia, I will make a stop in the city of Vinnytsia on the way and visit a recently opened bookstore called Heroes. Up to a dozen new bookshops have opened in Kyiv during the past year, and soon the largest bookshop in Ukraine will open its doors on Kyiv’s main street. The capital’s bookshops follow a pattern. You can enjoy a coffee while leafing through a book before buying it or putting it back on the shelf. The story of the new bookshop in Vinnytsia is more unusual, although you can drink good coffee there too.
Vinnytsia journalist and poet Mykola Rachok dreamt of opening a bookshop. Before the war, he worked as editor of the cultural magazine Kunsht and also edited an internet site for vintage car enthusiasts. When the war began, he immediately went to the front as a volunteer and, in July 2022, he died in the Donbas during a battle against Wagner forces. His parents and sister decided to open a bookstore in his memory. None of them had any experience in the book trade, or any other business for that matter. They had to learn everything as they went along.
To give the bookshop the best possible chance of survival, the family decided to buy premises rather than rent them. The money received by Mykola’s parents in compensation after his death was not enough to buy a property; they had to sell their apartment as well. Then they designed and renovated the premises and, at the end of January this year, Heroes opened. Customers are happy to have the shop’s logo stamped on the inside cover of the books they buy. It shows Mykola in silhouette, wearing a military helmet and sitting on a pile of books, holding a volume in his hands.
The memory of fallen Ukrainian soldiers is a painful topic. The government has said that it will give no statistics on casualties until the end of the war, but foreign intelligence sources estimate that at least 70,000 have been killed. In cemeteries throughout the country, Ukrainian flags fly over soldiers’ graves. In some cemeteries, such as the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, the sight of so many flags fluttering in the wind is appalling.
Some victims’ families are keeping the ashes of their loved ones at home for now. They are waiting for the proposed National Military Memorial Cemetery to open so that they can bury the ashes there. The creation of this national cemetery has been dragging on for years. Parliament passed the National War Memorial Cemetery Act, but could not decide where the cemetery should be: near Kyiv or further from the city? Now that a location in Kyiv region has been chosen, the design of the memorial must be agreed on. The plans will take time to develop and approve, but since the law forbids the reinterment in the national cemetery of ashes previously buried elsewhere, the families of some fallen soldiers are choosing to wait to bury their remains. They are waiting to bury their hero loved ones in a fitting place — a cemetery that does not yet exist.
The mournful music of military funerals does not drown out the daily music of life in big cities. Dozens of new rock groups and solo artists have appeared and are making a name for themselves in bars, pubs, concert halls and even military hospitals. I recently heard the song “Be Patient, Cossack” performed by a young singer and was surprised to learn that the lyrics had been written by world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk. It turns out that Usyk, who is Crimean born and bred and grew up speaking only Russian, and who previously publicly defended the Russian Orthodox Church, is now writing patriotic poems in Ukrainian.
At the same time, Kyiv’s well-known percussion school, Checkpoint Drum School, is busier than ever, with more than 100 students. It closed on February 24 2022, but reopened that April and has been operating continuously since then.
“It is a rather interesting moment to study the behaviour of people who want to learn percussion,” says Yuri Riabchuk, the school’s founder and director. “The fact that we don’t know what awaits us tomorrow plays an important role here. Playing the drums is something many people have always wanted to do, but put off. They understand that it could be now or never, and they go for it.”
The school is located in the basement of a five-storey residential building. The neighbours don’t complain about the noise from the drum school. Hundreds of people spent long hours huddling in the underground premises, surrounded by drum kits and other musical equipment, and listening to explosions from Russian missiles and Ukrainian air defence gunfire.
Riabchuk is trying to organise a free “rehabilitation through percussion” course for war veterans. The organisation Veteran Hub helped him make contact with potential participants, but even after a powerful advertising campaign through veterans’ groups and on social media, not a single war veteran came to Checkpoint Drum School for the course. I assume that veterans are often reluctant to think about their mental health.
I would like to hope that the second attempt at this musical project will be more successful. We all believe we are OK, and this could be the greatest weakness both for former soldiers and ordinary civilians. The fact is, we are all traumatised by this war and the trauma will remain a feature of our society for a long time to come.
Andrey Kurkov’s new novel ‘The Silver Bone’ will be published next month
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