How I've spent the onset of invasion

1 January, 2025 Recollection of thoughts and pictures from the beginning of 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in and around Kyiv area.

History is written by those who write stuff down

~Blue, Overly Sarcastic Productions

I’ve been long asked by some of my friends to write this essay. Now seems the perfect time to since the memories are still somewhat fresh, yet the epoch being described is clearly long gone. With it I wish to conserve what I experienced during the first months of the invasion. It’s a narrow personal perspective, but might be useful as a self reminder or a yet another small puzzle piece for people willing to get a sense of the events from multiple sources. The photos below are my own and the narrative serves as a more emotional commentary to a photoreport I made for an obscure forum which someone made video of.

Fig1. – Early February view from the edge of Bucha towards Hostomel airport. In just two weeks the most crucial events would unfold exactly in this area.

Like many Ukrainians I felt that some military action was about to happen, but I clearly have misjudged the scale and the audacity of what would unfold. In fact, I was eager to join my friend on a business trip to Mariupol during the 20ies of Febrary. Hopefully the trip have was cancelled due to unrelated reasons. On the night to 24th I had trouble falling asleep. I stayed up so late that I somehow managed to see Putin’s address just as it was going live. As he finished his speech the first explosions started going off. I knew the trap has closed its doors on me. I was not really scared at that point, what I felt was great anger. Just as I seemed to get my bearings in life back after an intense depression all of the personal planning was vaporised. The least wanted thing was to run and hide. Having judged I would find a good cause to join after the initial dust settles, I wrote an email to my employer explaining that I would not be able to work anymore, turned off the phone notifications and went sleeping like nothing happened.

Fig2. – Accurate representation of the invasion morning (taken about a year prior).

The morning was expectedly chaotic. Terrified neighbours were scrambling to leave, everyone was panicking and confused. Well not me though. I had the most relaxed coffee. I’m no soldier, I was not really preparing for the war like many did, nor my health would really allow me to be more than a liability honestly. But having lived for a very long time in a permanent mental breakdown I found myself oddly functional and in an environment that was in sync with myself. I have a bit of fireman personality as well as I’ve been known to be a relentless driver. I correctly guessed the gas station network would quickly collapse and there would be a need for transport in the city. Having an electric car meant I could be just the person for the role. I waited for the roads to clear up a bit and went to my parents to get my car back which I’ve lent them.

Fig3. – Gas stations under assault. Everyone is getting out. I'm getting in. Helping getting fuel was a very common requests from people that had their cars stranded.

The fuel situation went exactly as expected. Unable to cope with the demand spike, the stations grew day-long queues with no guarantee one would even get anything tanked at all by the time of their turn. The stations were quick to introduce rationing as well, but the effect was slow. The shortage would last for months and I was among very few people who could drive full time. The once bustling city quickly turned into a concrete desert. Remnants of normality bled into the extraordinary and one could encounter a lone trolleybus on its usual route carefully maneuvering around tanks and artillery. It took some effort to ignore traffic lights on otherwise empty roads. Staying in the city had a distinct flavour of defiance and the streetlight operators were quick to encourage it. It would seem a lunacy to think Ukraine could withstand the invasion, but the mood was to give Russia and death overall a middle finger and call its bluff rather than falling on the knees. Even as a civilian I wanted to stand my ground.

Fig4. – Paranormal Kyiv driving experience negating traffic rules and not seeing car parked upon another car in the very center.

Fig5. – Multiple flavours of sending the warship to hui.

So what have I been doing with a car that can drive at the time when no money could get the vast majority on the road? I became a free word of the mouth taxi service. One of the few taxis in operation actually. Thanks to the generousity of EcoFactor who made car charging free for a time I could drive all day long. And there was a ton of work to to. Then contemporary joke about the curfew being introduced so that volounteers can get some rest had a lot of truth to it. People needed supplies, other needed help transporting pets, but the vast majority of requests was from people desperately trying to get out of the city via evacuation trains. What would be at best an excuse to drive in peacetime suddenly became a rewarding job, one that had a numerically tiny yet very real impact. I had a very well paying job even by the Western standards, I could have easily slipped through the cracks abroad, I could even have donated that money to ones who stayed behind to do the actual driving. Yet I wanted to be in the driver’s seat, both literally and metaphortically speaking. I wanted my share of danger.

Fig6. – Taxi duties within just a couple of kilometers from active combat.

I always thought the ability to navigate well alone would make me a good cabbie. However under the circumstances it was the least important thing. Keeping a list of orders and negotiating with the passengers turned out to be a much harder ordeal than I thought it would be. Forced to triage my time between actually driving and being on the phone I quickly realized that I needed to delegate the communication work. My friends stepped in and we had a rolling spreadsheet of requests which saved me from drowining in calls. The passengers themselves were often petrified with fear and had to be constantly comforted. Compared to them in that state I was the adult in the room. Or at least I had to be one. At times I could probably be counted as a mobile therapist. Driving turned out to be a much more social job than I ever could have expected. Nevertheless with each person exiting the car in relief I had a bit of validation towards what I was doing. The people tried to pay for the service, but I both had some savings and was not expecting to live for very long so I silently provided them with acceptance of their gratitude, but ended up donating or tipping the entirety of the money. Once I was paid 100€ for a 10 km trip which would probably look good on my CV if I was to switch jobs.

Fig7. – The victims of the night. Supposed to be the enemy infiltrator groups, but at least some of them probably were misidentified.

One of the suprising threats for a person like me was the overall confusion. The Russian propaganda made sure to inject viral stories of countless agents operating within the city so naturally people got overly suspicious. All around the city crushed cars appeared after each night. There was no telling which ones of them were used by the enemy and which were careless or unlucky locals. Since I was just a dude with a car and I come from Crimea and my car plates scream that I do, I often had to tell my entire biography to soldiers and overall rely on communication skills to ease any tension.

Fig8. – Could easily have been me, but I decided to drive on another street and narrowly missed the hit.

Fig9. – The trails of a defensive surface to air missile launch and the result of the Russian missile hit.

Even though I wasn’t on the battlefield per se, I was keenly aware that my luck can eventually run out. A stray rocket, a sleeper cell agent or just an overly nervous soldier at a checkpoint could easily spell disaster. With mobility as my only armour I took a little solace in thinking that in being on the move I smear the fatal probability thin over a large area and gain at least some agency in my fate. Facing the wall and being shot in the back of the head seemed like an inevitability if the defense was to fall. And a supposed nuclear strike would likely not be escapable either. Thus the goal wasn’t really to surive. It was to get the best possible return on the little while left. I was still cautious, but the feeling of danger started being a much more relative thing. Sometimes the soldiers would not allow me past a certain point without a bulletproof vest. Other times I got cleared to places for which the siege wasn’t even officially lifted yet and I was driving literally beside active artillery batteries. I remember one time as I was waiting for the passengers to pack we had a little chat with a soldier on a blockpost. He pointed at the flurry of bright fiery projectiles on the distance, but could not tell which side that was. And so we stood with him and watched in a wicked admiration, knowing that we had little control over what was happening.

Fig10. – Supermarket queues during the first days. Basic produce quickly disappeared and the only eggs I managed to find were the quail ones and way outside of Kyiv.

Fig11. – Musafir was one of the first restaurants to open. They were also making meals for the defenders and the elderly so I very often left 200-300% tips as donations.

As selfish it sounds the one critical thing I missed were options to eat out. I had even less time than I usually do for cooking and my body was constantly operating at the limit without much rest. As soon as the bravest of restaurants and cafés were ready to open I was there at a moment’s notice, often the only patron for the day. Other times, the visitors would be the millitary, other volounteers, all the people made of a similar clay. It gave off a very strong fraternity sentiment, a connection you don’t usually experience in such establishments.

Fig12. – Neighbour's cat who I was tasked with feeding as my only company at home.

Eventually the Russians realized they could not make any progress around Kyiv and were forced to retreat. The northern front collapsed overnight. What seemed to be an existential looming danger dispersed into thin air. Just as this was happening the first trees started to bloom. I remember standing in the garden utterly confused about what has just transpired. Somehow I was still alive. The time as a concept slowly started making sense again. There was future to live in and that thought was incredibly alien. I was not ready for it at all.

Fig13. – The Special Military Operation failed to stop the spring.

In the next post I will tell what I was doing after the army retreated from the city.