In the midst of the escalation of the Russian air attacks on Kyiv, a video recorded a couple of days ago in the Ukrainian capital in which young people are seen doing something as routine as ordering a hamburger has resonated strongly on social networks. "If they can go to McDonalds, it's not a war", has been one of the most repeated comments, together with "at least our money is well spent".
The brutal abnormality of war is perhaps best understood by watching another video shot in the Ukrainian capital on Monday at noon, showing children running in terror for a shelter (or the nearest subway) after air alerts sounded, or another in which a happy military couple is seen who spent the first minutes of their marriage in a basement in Kyiv.
It may also help to read the report from the night before last, the 17th massive drone strike this month in the Ukrainian capital. Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses knocked down 29 of the 31 detected but, canceled or not, and even more so if it is missiles, the remains of the devices are equally capable of causing damage. The night, like so many other recent ones in Kyiv, resulted in severe damage to twelve blocks of flats, eleven injured and one dead, a 33-year-old woman who had come out to her balcony to see how they shoot down the drones.
In a war in Europe in the year 2023, if you are not at the front, you can actually go from having dinner at McDonalds to running to a shelter when you hear sirens in the street or receive an alert on your mobile with the voice of Mark Hamill, the actor who brought Luke Skywalker to life in Star Wars. “Attention: Air raid alert. Go to the nearest shelter. Don't neglect yourself. Your overconfidence is your weakness”, warns an app that reports attacks in real time and that Ukrainians handle with the same ease as Google Maps.
But there are many months of war and, sometimes, as Tamara and Mila told me, they choose to stay in bed, because waking up in the middle of the night and spending hours awake is exhausting, and after all, the next day you have to work. Others are resigned to sleeping in the car if the alert catches them in the underground parking lot of your block, as happened recently to Stanislav, especially if no one is waiting for you at home because your family has taken refuge abroad in a safe country. . And, if the next morning you find remains of a missile in the garden, call the army and get in line to pick up the rubble.
Today, even far from the fighting, living in or visiting Ukraine means going from absolute normality to being hit suddenly, without warning, by brutal flashes of war violence. It means having dinner in Chernihiv in a scandalous Georgian restaurant and being ecstatic with the poetry of flavors of its dishes as if we were in a fashionable place in New York and not 60 kilometers from Belarus or Russia, only two hours later to run down to the shelter from the hotel because the alarms have gone off because there is a massive attack by drones and you do not trust that they are only passing through to Kyiv.
The arrival of spring has filled the streets of the Ukrainian capital with life. At first glance, it would seem that the picture looks a lot like that of any other European city, but in Kyiv one goes from looking up to see a giant advertisement for the new iPhone or a luxury department store to, moments later, standing before a tribute to the heroes of the Euromaidan or to those who have fallen in combat since 2022, who are everywhere. And the same struggle to avoid being run over by a scooter as to avoid the metal barriers that are still spread over many streets, ready to be used.
Today, living in or visiting Ukraine, even far from the fighting, means coming across soldiers at every step (shopping, eating ice cream), as well as countless people with war wounds. It means that restaurants close at ten and bars and cocktail bars at eleven, with an hour to spare to get home before curfew. It means seeing Ukrainians take photos, smiling, in front of destroyed Russian military material, like the one on display in the Plaza de San Miguel. One of those families wanted to take a photo with the foreign reporter. Her daughter has known nothing but war: she was born in a Lugansk hospital in 2014 during the Russian siege. Now they live in Kharkiv and are still there because they can't bear the idea of being separated. “We trust in the future, in a peaceful future” they told me.
The author of the McDonald's video, with 10 million views, was Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and former Minister of Economic Development. Posting it, he intended to refute Russian propaganda that says the country is at a standstill or that there are no young people, in the same way that he posts photos that show the adaptability of Ukrainians, as soon as the alert ends ("May the force be with you ", announces the app) go back to their chores. Yesterday, his students ordered food from McDonalds. “During war people eat even though missiles are falling outside and food is delivered during attacks,” he tweeted. "It's called resilience and the will to live."
