Leaving Ukraine feels like abandonment

Even though that makes no sense.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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A million and a half hours into an air-raid alert.

You can support my Ukraine reporting at this GoFundMe. Thank you.

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WARSAW — On Sunday, I sheltered in a dim stairwell, listening to the thunder of missiles hitting Kyiv and, later, I visited an apartment complex that had been shattered in the early morning. I sweated in the 86-degree heat under my tactical vest and its heavy armored plates. I debated: Do I wear my heavy ballistic helmet? I have it, so I should, right? If the ceiling falls and I’m not wearing it, I’d feel stupid (if I lived), right? But I should go outside and report, shouldn’t I? I’m a reporter, right?

And why was there a housekeeper coming in and out of the apartment next to mine, gathering cleaning supplies, occasionally amiably chatting with me in Ukrainian — which I don’t speak — while I was trying to get behind two thick walls and away from windows?

Because the country of Ukraine is tired. She is exhausted, with ever-deepening dark circles under her war-weary eyes. To not continue on with daily life is not really an option at this point in oblasts that are not the eastern breakaway republics, which are being smashed to rubble and bones daily by the Russians. While it may not be the same as the horror of witnessing bodies being torn apart, the stress of not knowing about the safety of loved ones and that of yourself, it is a quiet tragedy of war, this kind of disruption and fear.

The stress of repeated air raid sirens — which echo off candy-colored churches domed with blinding, summer-sun gold, and through the streets — induces a constant state of high adrenaline, which only adds to the exhaustion once it wears off. The missile alerts also politely come through apps on our phones with a ladylike voice telling us, “Uhavu” (attention), because she’s about to announced that Russia has yet again fired at Ukraine and we need to take shelter. The problem with this being that many oblasts are alerted for hours, with Ukraine’s early warning systems not sophisticated enough to figure out which way the bombs are heading.

So each day, residents of cities and towns play “chicken” with their very lives.

On Sunday, I blundered out onto the street for a bit during the alert to document the oddity of people going about their days despite being under yet another missile threat. I walked downtown eyeing people enjoying their coffees and holding hands while strolling past a government building (aka a target). Then I heard two low but powerful rumbles of more artillery hitting their targets, which in this case was a kindergarten, for one. I went back to my stairwell, feeling both cowardly yet okay with doing my best not to die on assignment.

It’s not clear whether the Russians are indifferent to killing civilians, ordered to kill them, or actually using old intelligence and mistakenly blowing up schools and apartment buildings. They’re using highly outdated maps and low-level guidance systems, as in this 37-year-old map I was shown in a priest’s house northwest of Kyiv, near the massacres of Bucha and Irpin.

Regardless, people in places like Kyiv that have not seen heavy shelling in a while are pretty indifferent when it come to self-protection.

On Sunday, people kept laughing and drinking coffee, walking, driving, doing “normal” things, because it had been months since a missile hit Kyiv and these were adaptive behaviors to an insane situation. I too became complacent in just a few days of being in Ukraine. But once the city was targeted again on Sunday, I took the hours of air-raid alerts seriously, even if others didn’t.

So, with so much stress, why was it hard for me to leave Ukraine?

I’m still working on the answer to that, because it’s something that happens whenever I’ve spent time with refugees or people living though a war.

It may sound strange, but I didn’t want to leave the day after these fresh attacks in Kyiv. It’s always a disconnect, leaving a place where you’ve made friends and met people who have shared with you some of their deepest pain, like the mother and father I met whose two children — sons aged 15 and 3 — were shot and killed in the back of their car as the family tried to flee invading Russian forces.

Candy-cake cathedral with my fixer and driver.

I heard a lot of stories about flight while in Ukraine. Stories of trying to flee but being shot, stories of being forced to remain in now-occupied villages (as human shields, most likely), and stories of abduction, whether that has meant being forced into captivity on Ukrainian soil, or spirited away over the Russian border to who knows where.

I just know that I am lucky to be able to leave — to even have the choice — but it still feels low to leave behind everyone I’ve come to care about in a short few weeks. There’s something unreal about explosive and unnerving violence — whether it’s the kind we lived on Sept. 11, or that of an ever-shifting war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or the bombardment of a country that is not seen as one by an entirely different nation — that brings you close.

The military has always sounded to me like a place where such deep bonds can form. But I’ve never been in the military; I’ve only been a journalist. Still, I can tell you that leaving behind my fixer — a brilliant young guy who worked hard for me — and my driver, a pediatric neurosurgeon on his days not carting me around (and who belted out Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” with me in the car, despite his limited English), attachments happen quickly, and leaving feels like abandonment.

All I can do now is tell the stories we worked so hard to gather. The people of Ukraine, just as the people of Congo, or Syria, or Afghanistan, or wherever, deserve to be heard, at the very least. This is the only reason I feel okay leaving this time, and all the other times before that. (And, weirdly, I had Ukrainians hugging me and cheering at me when they discovered that I’m a journalist who had come to share their stories with international media outlets.)

I know journalism can’t stop a madman, but it can illuminate the atrocities being committed in his name, and, maybe more important, show people that we are listening.

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