NarrativeThe battle is raging in eastern Ukraine, but life goes on in kyiv, Lviv, Kamianets-Podilsky and Skala-Podilska. “Le Monde” contacted four Ukrainian women who bear witness to a seemingly calm daily life but shaken by the war and its consequences.
More than two months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, 27-year-old Daryna Sakal is still living in her apartment in Lviv. Located in the west, the city has so far been relatively untouched by Russian firepower. The buildings are, for the most part, still standing and the asphalt of the streets has only been torn off by the bombs in a few rare places.
Daryna has kept her job, and enjoys an internet connection, running water and sufficient heating in these spring days. However, despite these appearances, his daily life has been turned upside down. And his life, scattered in a multitude of very brief moments of normality, quickly overtaken by other moments, with a more bitter and permanent taste, of war.
This Tuesday afternoon at the end of April, Daryna’s features are drawn behind the screen of her computer, with which she testifies to the World in video call. Her long blond hair falls on either side of her face and the yellow sweater she wears emphasizes her crystalline complexion, which lack of sleep has made pallid. Her husband, Nazarii, had left for the east a few hours before, when only the moon lit the roads.
A high mountain guide, he has spent the last two months training to help defend the Donbass, a military objective now a priority for the Russian forces. Daryna knows that she will surely hear very little from him, that he will only be able to call her occasionally and only for him. “say if he is alive”. But, nearly a thousand kilometers from this front, her daily life continues. She gets up every morning, has her breakfast and goes to work. Daryna is a sports coach and gives private lessons online.
In Lviv, a daily life to the rhythm of sirens
As before, as for two years, she describes. Except that, from now on, it can be cut at any time by an alarm siren, warning of a risk of bombardment on the city. His clients “are aware and understand”, she then interrupts everything and goes to take refuge, for a few suspended minutes, in the corridors of her building. Sometimes, “just too tired of the situation and unable to move”, she does not join her neighbors on the landing. The most recent bomb to hit Lviv last week fell three kilometers from his building.
During the first two weeks of the war, Hanna Rzhevska, 47, spent her days waiting for the bombardments. She then lived in a modest apartment in Mykolaiv, which she shared with her two sons, Aleksey, 24, and Anton, 17. Books wedged against the panes of his windows – “It shouldn’t have been very effective, but I felt like I was a little more protected that way”, says Hanna – the family lived in her hallway. By then there was already no running water, and the constant sound of sirens and bombardments plunged Hanna into a trance.
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