TestimonialsOlga, back in Paris after a stay in Vienna, still deals with anxiety and celebrates the Eid festival with her companion. In kyiv, Sasha holds job interviews and celebrates her 33rd birthday as cheerfully as possible. For the tenth week in a row, they agreed to share their daily life.
Olga and Sasha are two Ukrainian sisters. The first is 34 years old and is a wine merchant in Paris, where she has lived for seven years. The second, aged 32, lives in kyiv. At the start of the war, she moved into an apartment building with her mother, her partner, Viktor, her dog and her friend Y. Now Sasha lives in a small apartment, alone with her dog, in the same residence as Y The two sisters have agreed, since the beginning of the conflict, to keep their logbook to M. Olga, back in Paris after a stay in Vienna, still deals with anxiety and celebrates the Eid festival with her companion. In kyiv, Sasha holds job interviews and celebrates her 33rd birthday as cheerfully as possible.
Olga and Sasha’s diary, over the weeks
On February 24, 2022, the lives of Olga, 34, and Sasha, 32, turned into war. The eldest lives this tragedy from France, the youngest is stranded in kyiv, Ukraine, taking refuge in an underground car park. They agreed to tell their daily life.
Tuesday April 26
Olga: I am in Vienna to see I., my childhood friend. She still has to move with her two children. The owner of the apartment she has been renting since they arrived from Ukraine a month and a half ago has returned. I. found another, three times smaller. Not much choice, she was in a hurry. So we went back and forth, with the little 8 month old in the stroller full of bags. I. says she can afford to rent. With her husband, who remained in Kyiv [Kiev, M respecte le choix orthographique d’Olga et de Sasha], they work in finance. She prefers that people who do not have the means benefit from aid.
I walked around while she was with the kids at the doctor’s. I walked through the old quarter, saw the cathedral. There was a big flag with marked “Stop War”. Seriously ? “Stop Putin and his war”, this is the correct wording. Many Europeans are afraid to say it, I have the impression. Inside the cathedral there were walls full of yellow and blue papers covered with messages in Ukrainian. It hurts me so much to know that there are so many uprooted Ukrainians. Then I went to a terrace overlooking a very pretty park for a drink. I tasted an excellent Riesling. But I no longer find peace within me.
Sasha: Chernobyl sad anniversary. We are thirty-six years after the greatest catastrophe of the“peaceful atom” – is that what we say? The biggest lie of the Soviet government, which caused premature deaths, illnesses for a whole generation. When I was little, every year was a day of remembrance. We studied the facts, the evidence. To find out what human errors had been made. We always laughed with Olga saying that abroad we only knew Ukraine through Chernobyl. Now, that is no longer the case.
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