Dispatches from Ukraine: ‘It smelled of war,’ says young mother in Kyiv

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The last time I was in Kyiv, my grandmother brought me to her favorite crypt. It was one of those churches with lots of domes on its head, spindle knobs like golden garlic cloves. We crept, hushed, into the winding underground alleys below the church. We held red wax candles and they flashed against golden altars in dark corners where mummified monks had laid for centuries. The coffins had windows; decay fogged up the glass.

My grandmother had a scarf wrapped around her head and a permanent scowl etched by years of dogged survival: rations, factory work, running shoeless in the snow. She knelt at each coffin. “This is the monk you pray to for childbirth,” our guide advised me. When we emerged into the busy light of Kyiv, I was hungry, and my babushka sensed it. We left the underground world behind and walked into the sunshine of our city.

Kyiv’s underground now shelters far more than just monks. Fifteen-thousand residents shelter in train stations in Kyiv: playing cards, drinking tea, petting dogs, texting, sleeping, weeping, laughing, swearing, staring off into space. Kyiv’s Arslenka station, informally known as the deepest metro station in the world, was built during the Cold War as a bomb shelter, back when Russia and Ukraine were socialist republics in a shared federal union. Today, children’s movies play and maternity ward babies wiggle in that same station as cluster munitions incinerate apartment complexes overhead.

Yana Plotnitska is a blogger with a background in social media, communications, and photography. Her son, Ostap, is almost 2 years old. They’re on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. We spoke about their daily life, attempts to find shelter, and hopes for the future. This interview was conducted in Ukrainian via Telegram on March 10. It was translated by the author and lightly edited for clarity.

YANA PLOTNITSKA: The 15th day of the war in Ukraine is coming to an end. I still can’t believe it. It’s like a nightmare: There is a war in my country.

YANA PLOTNITSKA: Under other conditions, I would have mobilized a long time ago. [I] would have been in the capital and helped either informationally, or at least to the best of my ability. But I have a baby. He is 1 year and 9 months old. We gave him a beautiful Ukrainian name: Ostap. 

Otherwise, I would have been in Kyiv—but having a child, we could not take the risk. We came to the Zhytomyr region, to the village, because it seemed safe here, for the baby. My husband (not a military man at all, a musician!) returned to Kyiv to defend the state, and Ostap and I stayed here. At this point, the story could [have] a happy ending. But we were wrong about how secure any place can be.

Zhytomyr serves as both a military corridor, bringing supplies east, and a humanitarian corridor, bringing people west. “Powerful explosions” and daily bombardments have destroyed schools and homes since late March.

PLOTNITSKA: How is my day going now? I wake up and look anxiously at the phone: Is there any morning news from my husband? Then I read the news: How was the night in Kyiv? Did they bomb my house? Has the Russian army approached us now? I spend my days at home, until some detail triggers me, and suddenly I can’t remember how much I left at my old home: the baby’s first album? Our photos? His toys? And simply: home! And in the evening, hell begins.

For one, we miscalculated. We are in territory where planes are constantly flying. Russian planes are flying over us—I am currently writing this under their roar—and we cannot be sure whether they are flying further, or whether they [will] drop a bomb here.

Russia is known for attacking at night. These attacks under darkness sow confusion and fear, and inspire early curfews. Parking garages, root cellars, shops, bars—even a strip club—all serve as makeshift shelters. Other shelters, built during the Cold War era, are dangerous and decaying. Some shelters are locked; others are filled with debris and dirt. At any moment, “the walls can crack, fall down, and then you’re trapped.” 

PLOTNITSKA: I hug my son tightly and try to hold him close to me. Well, surely something will suddenly be dropped on us. If I hold him, at least he has some chance.

He wakes up from the rumble of the planes, and says that when “zhzhzhzh” [the sound of the military plane] comes, it will be “bah” [the sound of explosions]. Can you imagine that? A child who is not even 2 years old knows that when a plane flies [by], next will come “bah!”

After a particularly terrible night, we decided to go further to the west, where the Russians did not reach—[and] I hope they will not. Tomorrow, we will have a long road with many stops. Wish us luck!

***

If you ask Ukrainians about Donetsk, they’ll tell you that Russian agents staged attacks and blamed Ukrainians in order to instigate a war. If you ask Vladimir Putin, he’ll say that Ukrainians were committing “genocide” against Russians in Donetsk, so Russia had no choice but to intervene to “rescue Russians from the tyranny of a pro-western government in Kyiv.”

Investigations into highly-publicized explosions in Donetsk have pointed to Russia’s “staged use of cadavers and likely faked IED damage.” Life in the Russian-occupied “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk might sound like something out of an east Berlin noir: agents who monitor all communications for loyalty? Torturing dissidents in cellars? Humanitarian aid resold on the black market for 70% markup?

Mariupol, a nearby city in the Donbas region, has gained unfortunate fame as Russians resort to medieval siege tactics to seize the city, bombing maternity hospitals and filling mass graves in the process. If Russia seized Mariupol, it would end up with “full control of more than 80% of Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline—cutting-off its maritime trade and further isolating it from the world.”

PLOTNITSKA: We have been in an undeclared war for eight years; some have even stopped calling it a war. So we understood that a full-scale invasion was only a matter of time.

…

We understood that sooner or later, Putin would attack. I mean, he has already attacked: Russian troops have been waging war against civilians, and our army in Donbas, since 2014. But all this time he said that “They are not there.”

[Since 2014,] when[ever] we went somewhere, we took all [our] documents with us, because we didn’t know if we would return home. We didn’t know if there would be somewhere to return to. But somehow we continued to make plans for a happy future: We planned to buy a car, go on a trip.

And on the eve of the war, my husband asked me: “Where should I take you and our son, and when?” At that moment, I felt a strong need to support our army. And the next morning, we were awakened by a call: “Get ready, the war has begun.” We did not hear the explosions then, like most Kyivites. Sounds either did not reach our area, or we were very weak after COVID-19, and therefore we slept soundly.

Even so, we gathered [our belongings] quickly and ran, because we knew one thing: We must save our child from the Russian horde. When we came outside again [after hiding], I felt that the smell outside was completely different: it smelled of war. We said goodbye to [our] home indefinitely.

Just last week, my grandmother told me: “I was born in war, and I’ll die in war.” After her husband died, she built her home with her own hands. It had its own root cellar, an outhouse, rows of cabbage, potatoes, and beets, hand-knit white curtains. As I write this, half of my family’s hometown, Makariv, is rubble now, as are the neighbor’s homes, the local elementary school, and the bread factory down the road.  

PLOTNITSKA: I am convinced that the war with Russia will end in our victory. You know, Ukraine has fought so hard to be free that now, it will achieve just that. We are so united, the whole nation. I have never felt such power before. We will win because we are fighting for our land. For [our] language. For the Motherland. We have what [Russians] don’t have: a love for what we die for. Those who come to seize never defeat those who fight for the truth.

At the end of March, Russia withdrew troops from Kyiv in preparations in favor of a move east, towards Donbas and Luhansk. Is it a bait and switch tactic, an attempt to carve out wider separatist regions? Ukrainian intelligence has identified Russia’s hope is to create a “Korean scenario,” a divided Ukraine: “They now have three tasks: to surround our troops in Donbas, to completely occupy Mariupol and the south. If they lose Kherson [a city west of Mariupol], their entire Mariupol occupation will collapse. And that’s all. There will be no capture of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Odesa.”

PLOTNITSKA: We feel the whole world is so united around us. And we are insanely grateful for the words, actions, [and] material and physical help provided to us by the world community. But there is something else we would like to ask. We understand how difficult this decision is and how it should be weighed.

But, you know … when the Russians destroyed the maternity hospital in Mariupol, I thought about the world community and asked aloud, although I knew that [nobody could hear me]: “Please close the sky!” They bombed a maternity hospital. Just imagine! And they themselves said that they did it deliberately. Can you believe that? And we live in it.

I remembered how almost two years ago, I was in labor. I know what a stressful and difficult period it is for a woman to have a child, and here is a bomb. It seems that the Russians have nothing human left. Therefore, I can ask the world community now: Sign petitions, speak at rallies, but [also] ask to close the sky for us. We will cope on Earth—just ask them to close the sky.

Because now they are killing our children, and if we don’t stop them, where will they go next? I very much hope that the war will end soon. We will win and start working on rebuilding our beautiful cities and picturesque villages. I hope to be back [in Kyiv] soon.

I last spoke to Yana on March 21; she and Ostap have made it to a (temporarily) safe place. It’s unclear how safe this location will be in the days to come. Her husband—the musician—is still fighting for their country.

For more stories from Ukrainian people in their own words, check out other interviews in this series. If you’re looking for a way to help, Daily Kos has raised over $2 million for various organizations on the ground in Ukraine.

This story was produced through the Daily Kos Emerging Fellows (DKEF) Program. Read more about DKEF (and meet the author, and other Emerging Fellows) here.