Kyiv is so beautiful
Not a surprise Putin has his eyes on it, although the mood on the streets is anything but imminent Russia invasion.
When I lived in Moscow in the early 2000s, it was a totally normal thing to fly off to Kiev (as we called it back then) or Odessa for a weekend. Young people went to famous summer parties in Crimea. You just hopped on a plane and flew to Ukraine. Ukrainians hopped on planes and came to Moscow. It was totally normal. I have no idea why I never managed to visit Ukraine back then; I guess Sochi was just a little bit more accessible?
I decided yesterday it was time to finally come here and see Kyiv for myself. Better late than never. I bought tickets and booked a hotel without letting myself have time for second thoughts. I had no clue what to expect. At the airport, I wondered, will anyone else even show up for the flight? It was surprisingly full.
At the gate, an elderly woman, modestly dressed but in proper winter boots, sat next to me. She was talking on the phone, explaining to her son (in Russian) that she couldn’t process her tax free receipts because they wouldn’t accept €10 cash for payment. When she hung up, I asked if she wanted my help. She almost started to cry, and said she was so happy to hear her mother tongue, although then promptly commented on my funny English accent and my Moscow “a”s.
We marched off to the tax free, sorted her out, I paid with my card, she gave me cash, and ran back to the gate. By the time our flight was ready for boarding, I had heard all about her son (musician, graduate student in Austria, having a very hard time finding a decent-paying job to cover the expensive rent — 17,000 Hryvnia, she explained). I learned her son had studied music in Germany before that, had a girlfriend in Moscow, and nearly got deported flying to Russia from Vienna on a Ukrainian passport (Russian border control took him into an interview room, interrogated him, and told him never to try that again). She works at a school and had covid last March. It was nasty but she didn’t have to be hospitalised. She is vaccinated, twice, with the Chinese vaccine (CoronaVac - Sinovac), but isn’t totally sold on vaccines. Now that Omicron is here, she argues we all need to accept it’s just a cold and move on. By the time we’d boarded the plane, we’d exchanged phone numbers, and I received thank you texts from both her and her son when I arrived in Kyiv.
As the plane began its descent into the airport, there was a young mom sitting behind me with a one year old. She was speaking Russian with the baby, showing her “look, it’s our beautiful Kiev! Look, there is Maidan, and the stadium!” but when the little girl started wailing as we lost altitude, the mom switched to German, and the baby stopped crying. When we landed, they called Austrian dad, and he wished them a nice visit. It was all so…normal. All day long I kept seeing normal and thinking about Russian tanks on Twitter…normal…Russian tanks…I can’t get my head around it.
Kyiv airport is tiny and not at all busy right now. I did take one look around and imagine how easily Russian forces could seize it should they want to do that. I did see planes from Qatar, Turkey, France, and Air Baltic. A quick glance at vaccine papers, and even quicker friendly breeze through passport control (NOTHING like crossing a Russian border).
Buying a SIM card took less than a minute (€10 for unlimited internet for a week), and Bolt works here. My driver had a Central Asian name, didn’t talk at all (fairly standard cultural norm if passenger is a woman and driver’s Russian isn’t great), and the ride cost so little it made me uncomfortable but I tipped generously. As you drive in, you first pass a series of luxury car dealers. The Bentley shop was gigantic. A billboard advertising a cottage development “Palo Alto” of all names. A Belarusian Oil Company gas station. Then you reach classic post-Soviet suburbs. Giant apartment towers, horrible looking mini-malls that sprout up like ugly, mis-shaped mushrooms at intersections along the highway. The new apartment towers even have little cages built on the outside of each floor to house the A/C units which will soon hang out of every flat. Central A/C hasn’t happened, but at least they have no trouble keeping themselves cool in summer (looking at you, Austria).
The roads aren’t great but they aren’t terrible. The city is big and spread out, with new areas right next to plenty of other neighbourhoods still in need of a face lift. The contrasts are all on display for anyone with an open eye.
After leaving my things at the hotel, I set off to see as much of Kyiv as I could before it turned dark. I only walked a few blocks before I stumbled upon a pedestrian street filled with affordable little cafes and restaurants and many families and young people out for a Sunday walk. Street musicians were performing, and I almost teared up when I heard an old Russian rock song from the 90s. I stopped, turned around, put money in the box, and listened. I get really emotional when I am surrounded by Russian speakers because that is how much I miss it, this whole part of the world. I expected to hear more Ukrainian on the streets, but to be honest 90% of all conversations I overheard were in Russian. I was only spoken to in Ukrainian when I bought a take-away coffee: tiny little to go coffee kiosks are on literally every corner.
This surprised me as I had just watched a wonderful new Ukrainian film, Stop Zemlia (I found it on Apple TV), set in Kyiv and the entire dialogue was in Ukrainian, so I just assumed young people speak it amongst themselves. The reality is perhaps more complicated. I heard almost exclusively Russian today. Language and identity are two different things. Just because someone is speaking Russian doesn’t mean they want to be part of Russia, something I think western media often get very wrong.
Ukrainian flags are everywhere, there is a fair amount of minor propaganda (posters, patriotic videos on Ukrainian history on the Metro), but nothing alarming. All very harmless. Even the police look harmless. I kept thinking to myself, wow, it is really so not like Russia. A totally different vibe. Less tense, more open. At least at first glance. The young people are so cool and being a late Sunday afternoon / early evening, they were everywhere and they looked so natural and so happy.
I thought of my own teens and it made me sad they don’t experience life like that in Austria. They tell me there are rich kids who drink their parents expensive wines on weekends and smoke cigars, and there are “Emos” who hang out in Karlsplatz and do drugs. They say there is no in between. That makes me sad, but I digress — back to Kyiv.
The churches are stunning and beautifully painted in all imaginable shades of Easter egg pastels. I heard music everywhere — rock and roll, church bells, a choir performing spontaneously in a busy underground passageway near Maiden as I was exchanging money, a woman playing solo on a set of electric drums which lit up in the dark, a group of several dozen teens all singing a cappella on Khreschatyk (Kyiv’s Tverskaya or Nevsky). As the teens were singing, a dark grey Lamborghini raced down the street, revving its engine, and everyone stopped for a second to stare.
Getting a bit cold, I explored TsUM, a gorgeous, enormous department store with a shoe department that would put Selfridges to shame. Economies with a higher than usual dose of corruption and illicit trade always have the best shopping. I recalled the incredible new mall we visited in Belgrade last summer. TsUM’s top floor was a cinema and below that a food court. It was busy and buzzing on a Sunday early evening. Everything felt more low key, less intense than Moscow. People looked happy. They looked like they were enjoying themselves.
I kept walking circling by many more malls, markets, underground passageways until I reached what looked like more new offices, gyms, and upscale restaurants. I chose Georgian, and ordered my favourite spicy meat soup and Khachapuri with the egg floating on top. The restaurant was pretty busy for a Sunday evening, lots of families and friends having a relaxed weekend meal together. Everything felt so ordinary. Nothing was giving off impending doom vibes. Maybe someone should tell DC?
I would make a terrible journalist because I cannot bring myself to go up to strangers and ask them if they think there will be a war or not. Like, who does that? I just can’t. But what I can do is listen, and observe, and at the moment, things feel very calm and ordinary, at least on the outside.
Macron is coming here this week and that’s great. Scholz has promised to do so next week and he better make good on that. In fact, everyone needs to come to Kyiv and make it as awkward as possible for Russia to just plow through and expect to be welcomed with open arms (it will not be). Schallenberg is also due here this week, along with his Slovak and Czech counterparts. Feels critical that EU keep sending senior officials here to show solidarity. Moscow will not drop bombs (if we are going to talk like Twitter has been talking lately) on foreign leaders.
So those are my first impressions. Hopefully it provides a little balance to the “Putin is about to invade any second now” vibe on Twitter lately. Btw a great piece in Russian on why any Russian attempt to do just that would face a huge uphill battle:
“No one in Ukraine will greet the Russian army with bread, salt and flowers.”
Here is a little thread of the photos and videos I took today. If anyone has must see/do in Kyiv tips, please share! Thanks so much and thanks for reading. This week’s posts will be in the evenings because I hope to spend my days exploring this incredible place!
This is so interesting, thank you for writing. Does it feel a bit like Russia in the end on 1990-2000?