"I want to tell you a bit about what it’s like to grow up in a country at war"

 

I was 14 when Russia first invaded Ukraine and took Crimea. I was 22 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Now I’m 26. That's 12 years of war — about half my life. And I've been thinking lately about how that has shaped me — how it’s given me habits that I don't even notice anymore, until I say them out loud and realize they sound… a bit strange. I remember being in school, drawing pictures to send to soldiers on the front line. We had first aid lessons. We practiced what to do if a missile strike started while we were in class. That was just school. After that came university. Normal college life, mostly — except it wasn't, quite. Our university set up a spot where students could come and weave camouflage nets for the front-line positions. People just showed up after classes and helped. Then February 2022 happened, with the full-scale Russian invasion and Kyiv under attack. I remember those first weeks in Kyiv — just feeling stuck. I stayed in the city with my cat for two weeks. Public transport wasn’t working. Taxis were almost impossible to catch. Leaving didn’t really feel like an option.

When I finally did leave, it was on an evacuation train to Lviv. There were kids sleeping on the floor. People crying. At some point, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere because of a missile threat. Later that year, Russia started attacking energy infrastructure. There was no electricity, and no phone signal to contact my family for almost two days after the first big attack. Slowly, life changes. And you change and adapt with it. Now I have habits that feel completely normal to me — until I describe them to someone outside Ukraine and watch their face. I always keep a power bank charged. I check the electricity outages schedule before getting into an elevator. I wash my hair in the evenings — even when I'm exhausted — because I don't know if there'll be water in the morning. Before going to sleep, I check if there's a risk of a big overnight attack. I keep a tourniquet next to my bed, because most attacks happen at night and you don't always have time to reach a shelter. That is just how life works now. At some point, I stopped adapting and started asking what I could do to help. That's how I ended up at the Kyiv Independent. And honestly, it’s the place where I feel the most… grounded, I think. Because of the nature of work. And because of the people. Yes, because of our team, but also because of our community. I remember hearing about one of our members riding his motorbike all the way from Western Europe to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine to donate the motorbike to the military. I kept thinking about that for days. About what it means to care that much about something happening far away from your own life. Because when you see that people care this much, it does something to you. It makes you want to keep going. It makes all of this feel a bit less heavy. And if you're reading this, you're already part of that in some way — because the secret to our independent reporting is our community. People who choose to care — who show up, who pay attention, who decide that Ukraine's story deserves to be told freely and fearlessly. Right now, we're on a quest to find 4,000 new members. Not just as a number — but as proof that independent journalism from Ukraine can thrive, when readers choose to back it. So, I'm inviting you to join our community today and help us get closer to that goal.

Thank you for reading my story. Yana Zhuryk is the membership growth manager at the Kyiv Independent