Last night, my Ukrainian friends Sergiy and Denis stayed up late in a bar in Kiev. This morning they woke up to the sound of sirens. The war had begun.
Sergiy, 38, who was born in eastern Ukraine and now lives in Kiev, at first sounded cheerful when I called him last night. “Life goes on,” he said, commenting on the lively soundscape. Then he became serious. “Putin must be thinking of his legacy and is on a mission to build back the USSR. Russian TV channels have been banned in Ukraine [since 2014], but we sometimes watch his speeches on YouTube.”
