Life goes on in Kyiv as the fighting continues
In Kyiv all seems well, but only on the surface, as fighting continues
The conflict between Ukraine and Russia is not a phoney war.
The blood still being shed in eastern Ukraine is real. So are the recent machinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin near and inside Ukraine and along a 2,000- kilometre front that stretches from Estonia to Bulgaria. The pugnacious Russian leader has been relentless as he tries to gull and hammer what he calls the Near Abroad into submitting to Moscow’s will.
Yet visiting Kyiv is a surreal experience. The rubble where the revolution largely took place in Maidan Square has finally been cleared away and the area is now so clean it is difficult to get much of a sense Ukraine is still at war, let alone that it may be facing a threat to its existence.
Do people in Kyiv really care about the war in the east or the fate of civilians or troops on the front lines? Most Ukrainians would be deeply insulted by the question. But the nearly universal unofficial maxim in Kyiv these days could be: out of sight, out of mind.
The priority of almost everyone in the capital over what was a gloriously sunny long holiday weekend was to relax and/ or have fun.
The city’s gilded youth and Mafia overlords glided past in their smart Bentleys and German luxury sedans and sports cars. Cafés, restaurants, night clubs and parks downtown were packed. Khreshchatyk Street, the broad main thoroughfare leading to Maidan, was closed to traffic as thousands of people, including many young men who clearly did not have to serve in the military, strolled by.
To look at this crowd was to conclude Ukrainians do not have a care in the world.
There were still a few traces of the revolution and its ill- starred aftermath. There was a small open- air photo gallery depicting the conflict in the east. A group of soldiers’ mothers was taking donations for the war effort. A half- dozen strapping men in army fatigues and maroon berets were walking around purposefully.
The Ukrainian government seems to be of two minds about the conflict. During business hours, it is the main preoccupation of politicians shouting for Western attention — and money — for their cause.
But getting someone — anyone — to answer the telephone at the security or defence ministry during the holiday weekend was difficult if not impossible because they were shuttered.
One of the ironies of the current situation is that time and time again people in Kyiv who do not appear to have suffered at all said they were tired of the war. They also said no matter how things looked on the surface, many had been personally touched by the war because they had neighbours or kin fighting in the east or living amid the ruins there.
Time and again, people explained they or their friends had given a lot of what little money they had to support the war effort. Their contributions had bought medicines and provided the troops with equipment such as night- vision goggles, which they gleefully noted had been purchased in Russia.
Still, the atmosphere in Russia is rather different. Putin has had his countrymen on a 24/ 7 rhetorical war footing for many months. He and his aides have raged constantly about how their Motherland is threatened with encirclement by the West and Washington was using Ukraine as a proxy to attack Russia.
Paradoxically, despite the seeming reverie and apparent lack of concern in Kyiv’s inhabitants over the fate of their compatriots in the east, Putin’s actions have unquestionably strengthened Ukraine’s national identity. Blue and yellow flags fly everywhere in the capital and unlike a few years ago, almost everyone loudly proclaims their love for their country.
The war has also bitten deeply into most pocketbooks. A car importer says his business is down 60 per cent from last year and even more compared to 2013. Because of the collapse of Ukraine’s currency, cars that once cost 160,000 hryvnya now cost 440,000 hryvnya.
A woman who works with a children’s publishing house producing books in Ukrainian and Russian says before Russia annexed Crimea last March, she earned $ 1,000 US a month. Today, it’s only $ 250 because sales to Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have evaporated.
The International Monetary Fund reckons Ukraine’s gross domestic product will shrink by nine per cent this year, while inflation will go up 46 per cent. It has agreed to provide $ 17.5 billion US in emergency funding, but the bailout will only happen with this big caveat: The agency must be convinced the country is serious about economic reform and combating endemic corruption.
There was a perverse logic to how people in Kyiv defended themselves when asked whether they were truly fully committed to the war. A common theme was that “with so much uncertainty we have concluded that we must live for today.”