The author is a Ukrainian analyst. He focuses on the impact of misinformation on freedom of opinion in Europe.
In Slovakia, youth is normal.
It is normal to see the fog during the summer morning. As a result of temperature changes, it extends above the fields, over the roofs of towns and villages, the rivers, including the double crosses of churches. In this fog is something calm and still – something that allows you to stop, breathe and think about the future.
Local young men and women wake up to a world in which their plans for this day are not subject to anxiety. They argue about politics, go to festivals, study, travel abroad, make decisions, make mistakes, fall in love – just as they should do it at the age of twenty.
The fog is different in Kiev.
It has a burning flavor in his mouth. Because it’s not morning moisture – it’s smoke.
Kiev is covered with smoke, fire, wounds, broken glass and torn lining of shopping centers. With a hole instead of a ceiling and emptiness inside the four walls, which were once called home. Home is no longer a place of protection, a place where you can hide from the world, because your home has been on the front page of the Western press for the fourth consecutive year. They explore you as under a magnifying glass. Your underwear, in which you ran to the street, reconstructing the bathroom and a car dotted with debris – all that you like or not, will end up on newspaper headlines, instagram stories or in retweet dismaying European ministers.
Deprivation
This is the youth on the fly.
Generation 18-25 years in Ukraine has no illusions. The youngest were 15 years old when Russia came up with missiles and fear. Their adolescence was about sirens, losses, queues, evacuations. They did not pass the ritual of the transition – they were thrown into it. Some people have their first date between flights. Someone had the first job at the Volunteer Headquarters. For some, the first experience of living without parents is temporary accommodation after losing home. Their youth is not like a film. It is more like a documentary film called Survive.
Life under constant attacks forms other physiology and psyche.
The body lives in a combat alert mode. The brain does not have enough sleep, the body does not rest. Approximately 80 percent of young Ukrainians live with chronic fatigue, anxiety and sleep problems that have been so normalized that they are no longer perceived as a symptom. It is not just a side effect of war – it is a deliberate enemy strategy.
Russia not only attacks objects, but is trying to destroy the sense of time and reality. At night drones not only kill, but also get rid of sleep. They destroy the rhythm. They are supposed to evoke the feeling of infinite “now” without light, without peace, without the future. It is a psychological war but fails. Let’s not go crazy. We won’t collapse. We will learn to adapt. And despite everything, we remain people.
Chronicle of survival
Our life is now an illustration of the word “war”. And you still think that you have to get somehow sleeping clothes, because in an emergency you will not even have to cover your shame. And at least that the rocket didn’t catch me in the toilet, because it is a shame.
During the attack we are ashamed to sleep naked and go to the toilet.
Each of us leads our own survival chronicle every day. Not because of adventure or experiences, but because we simply have to. They read us as statistics. They photograph us like ruins.
But even if the house is broken, there will be someone who will bring you coffee from a thermos. Someone who pulls out your child’s favorite toys from the debris. Someone to hug your frightened pet. And someone who whispers to you: “We will restore everything.”
This is not a “lost generation”. It is a generation that has been stolen by the right to light youth. But she decided to stick to. To continue to love. To learn. Forgive. And not disappear.
Kiev is not just a city. It’s a heart that is still beating.
