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 33, lives in kyiv with her parents and grandmother. The two sisters have accepted, since the beginning of the conflict, to keep their logbook to M. This week, Olga and Sasha, gone to rest for a few days with her mother in the Carpathians, are deeply marked by the discovery of the massacres of civilians in Izium, a city taken over by the Ukrainian army.
Tuesday September 13
Olga: The day is hard for me. I feel that Ukraine is changing profoundly. The government changed many street names in Kyiv [Kiev, en ukrainien]. I’m very afraid of not recognizing anything anymore. To no longer recognize myself in what I will see. To stay away from these changes. Fear that we no longer understand each other with my people, of not feeling legitimate in my country. I want to be part of this change, but it’s not easy when I’m far away. I can no longer project myself in any area of my life. I started giving French lessons to A., a school friend of Sasha’s who we saw with Mom this summer. She is in Nice, where she has taken refuge. Her husband is in the Azov Battalion. He is on rotation in Kyiv this week. He was on the front line. He was very scared, and he is an experienced soldier. It’s his job. He told his wife that he couldn’t imagine what young people feel when they arrive at the front without having known anything else.
Sasha: Due to Russian bombardments on one of our hydroelectric power stations, there was a blackout in the northern and eastern regions. Buildings, hospitals, schools went days without electricity. Reprisals following the counter-offensive of our army. Today, the whole world can see the weakness of the “second army in the world”, the rachistes [contraction de « russe » et de « fasciste »] only have one weapon left: to terrorize civilians. Before winter arrives, we all think about the risks that await us. Should we buy candles, electric blankets, stoves or gas heaters? Friends who are in houses buy firewood, the price of which has tripled. I don’t buy anything. I live in the present my escapade in the Carpathians, where it is 10 degrees and where it rains all the time. I take advantage of the silence and the absence of social life.
Wednesday September 14
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