Long-time readers will know that since shortly after the Russian invasion in February 2022, Persuasion has been following the war through the voice of one Ukrainian, Kateryna Kibarova. Kateryna’s accounts of the ongoing horrors—from the first days, to her return home to Bucha, to surviving the most recent summer amid constant bombardment—capture the seemingly never-ending nightmare facing civilians far from the frontlines.
Today, she writes about the prospect of yet another winter where daily essentials are in short supply, and what life is like in the deadly age of drone warfare.
Thank you for being part of our community, and for continuing to follow Kateryna’s story.
—David, Senior Advisor.
My dad in Zaporizhzhia says the birds that used to fly in the sky have been replaced by drones, chasing people and picking them off one by one. They’re very difficult to shoot down. They attack minibuses, cars. Drones and missiles are launched towards Kyiv from Bryansk, from Voronezh, from Belarus. Kharkiv is also under attack. Jet drones, the large ones, now carry explosives, and they also have cameras that allow them to strike precisely.
When the authorities find the wreckage of these drones, they can see from the parts that they were manufactured yesterday or the day before. As soon as Russia makes them, they launch them. It is the same story with the missiles. We have missile attacks every day. They hit Nova Poshta very hard, and they are destroying our very large hardware stores. They are targeting the huge hypermarkets covering hundreds of square meters. There is no single epicenter for the strikes anymore
Only one more-or-less-functioning shopping mall remains, and it’s small. Zaporizhzhia used to be a region of a million people; the city has one of the longest avenues in Europe. Now, when you drive down there, windows in all the buildings are blown out. Some districts of Zaporizhzhia are already considered uninhabitable. The city is gradually dying.
I recently had surgery at a private clinic. I was referred to a very good doctor for my knees. He didn’t even need the MRI report to understand what he saw. But I’ll tell you this: the surgery cost me around $1,500. We don’t have insurance-based healthcare. We don’t have a system where, say, you can get insurance if you’re retired. You’ll go to a regular hospital. What grandmother or retiree with a broken leg will be able to afford surgery in private clinics if their pensions are $100 a month?
When you’re in a state of high alert, your nervous system is constantly wound up. Once you’ve relaxed, you realize that you’re helpless. When you’re in stress every day, in survival mode, these quiet days are perceived by your body as something incomprehensible. There are attacks all the time, up to 15 alerts a day, lasting an hour or two. You sit down at your desk, start working, and then the air-raid siren goes off, you see that something is flying toward your district.
I haven’t even mentally prepared myself for this winter yet. Donald Trump keeps saying, “I’ll end the war in three days,” but nobody reacts anymore. Right now, people understand that their primary task is to survive the upcoming winter, to save themselves, their children, their homes. Not everyone will be able to heat their spaces. None of us are electricians or knowledgeable about generators or batteries. One moment they’re running, but the next it all burns out. People install solar panels, but if a drone hits them, that’s it, the whole system is ruined.
You need to think through every situation three steps ahead. For example: how to get to work? They close gas stations during air raids. One morning I woke up, went out, and saw that I needed to fill up the car. But I couldn’t because the gas stations were closed. If there is no hot water in the summer you can wash yourself outside, set up some kind of improvised shower. But what about in winter? You don’t plan your next vacation; you plan how to survive the next day.
There is already a noticeable food shortage in the stores. We’ve had this situation for about a month now. At first there were no vegetables or fruits at all. Thank God there are open-air markets, but grain products and everything else are severely affected. I stocked up on toilet paper, laundry detergent, grains, and everything else, because for the first time in five years I fear that famine may strike. I see that the stores, especially in the Kyiv region, are empty. My mom called me recently from Zaporizhzhia saying they too have nothing.
Businesses are in a dire state because, first of all, there’s a labor shortage—a large number of people have left Ukraine. And with constant air raid alerts, you have no customers. Then there are electricity issues and that means money must be spent on generators, on fuel. Transport has already become significantly more expensive in Kyiv. The metro used to cost eight hryvnias; now it’s 35.
I’ll put it this way: my state of mind at the beginning of the war was completely calm. There were enough air defense missiles and everything was shot down. Now, practically nothing is being shot down because there’s nothing to shoot them down with.
I happened to be at home during a recent attack. There were crazy explosions. I thought the house would be blown apart because everything was shaking. It was eight in the evening, people were coming home, and a large number of people died. In a nearby village, people were simply burned alive in their houses. Nearby, a car tire manufacturing warehouse was attacked. Everything was burning, everything was black.
I see mothers with children leaving Kyiv and going either abroad or to Western Ukraine. I don’t know whether it’s temporary, just for the winter, or forever. Children can’t go to school normally when they are in bomb shelters.
Some friends who went abroad on summer vacation came back with the determination to leave Ukraine. When you live constantly in this horror, and you travel into normal life where people can walk around at night—well, these friends decided that’s it, they’re leaving. It doesn’t matter what they’ll be doing. Here they are big shots, their jobs are good. There, they’ll just be doing cleaning work or something like that.
You only have one life. I won’t be 38 again. People leave, and now I kind of understand why. During the first and second year of the war, we were all hoping it would end soon. Now, I think the people who are leaving are making the right choice, because of the children. In the Obolon neighborhood a drone killed a two-year-old girl. I mean, it was just a regular Saturday. A mother and daughter were sitting in a café, they didn’t even hear the air raid siren go off. Many drones are equipped with shrapnel, they send out bursts of iron fragments.
So I don’t judge anyone for leaving. I think everyone’s choice right now is their own. Everyone must figure out for themselves how they want to move forward.
Kateryna Kibarova is a Ukrainian economist and resident of Bucha.
Translated from the Russian by Julia Sushytska and Alisa Slaughter. This transcript has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
About the Translators: Julia Sushytska was born in L’viv and is a Resident Associate Professor in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture at Occidental College. Alisa Slaughter is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Redlands. They co-edited and translated A Spy for an Unknown Country and Both Sides Face East: Durable Words.
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