Christmas in Kyiv: “The Cold and Loneliness Scared Me—Not the Russian Missiles”

Roman may have been putting his best face forward when I saw him, but, remarkably, he sounded almost cheerful. He lived along with his enormous thick-furred cat, whom, he joked, provided warmth. The hut consisted of a toilet, a small corridor with a hot plate, and a room where the only furniture was a bed piled high with sleeping bags. He had no heat or electricity. I gave him a headlamp that I had bought in Paris; he received the small gift as though it were a pot of gold.   

We sat together in our coats, gloves, hats, and boots. Even so, the cold was searing, insufferable. Roman said he sometimes slept part of the day, to keep warm. His mother lived in a friend’s house nearby because her house had been destroyed as well. When she arrived with food for her son, she told me she had also lost her home and all of her belongings.

“Everything,” she asserted, motioning to her heavy parka, which was a hand-me-down from a neighbor. She pointed to her shoes, her hat, her gloves. Nothing was her own. “Good people gave me things to wear, but I have nothing left.”

Roman was still struggling with his wounds. The thick ice outside the hut made it almost impossible to walk without great effort. He and his mother were both homeless, relying on the kindness of others. Still they seemed grateful, full of determination and backbone. “Well,” she shrugged, “we are alive.”

I thought back to the winter of 1992–1993, when I was covering the Bosnian War. During the siege of Sarajevo, I believed I would never understand the concept of warmth again. All of us—citizens and journalists alike—slept in our clothes. It was too cold to change in the morning, and moving outside was a hazard, not because of the snipers and the shelling, but from the raw chill that seemed to freeze the lungs. The cold was painful but, worse, it made everyone depressed because it was impossible to operate—to move around, to do basic tasks. Life had ground to a standstill. And I thought of a journalist friend who had told me that the unheated Bosnian winters would go on to affect their health throughout their life. It is true. It’s as though once you endure that kind of deep freeze, your internal body temperature never fully recovers.    

I asked Roman how on earth he thought he would make it through the winter. “We are strong,” he answered. “We will win this war.” I understood. He would get by, as we had in Sarajevo, by grit, by sheer will—and by being part of a community of like-minded souls.

Later, back in Kyiv, I spoke again to Victoria Amelina. She echoed a similar sentiment. “When I don’t feel good enough to climb stairs,” she said, “I know I can stay with my friends. Winter teaches people to rely on each other. We won’t let each other freeze. And not only do humans help each other, so do animals. My dog is happy to keep me warm.”

Janine di Giovanni is executive director and cofounder of the Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, an NGO that documents and verifies Kremlin war crimes in Ukraine.