“I couldn’t even imagine that war could be like this…”: Ethnographer Kateryna Lytvyn’s Story About Life At Ground Zero And Ethnography In A “War Field”

‒ Kateryna, more than a year has passed since the start of the full-scale invasion, but on the first anniversary, the emotions and memories of that spring return afresh to all Ukrainians. As far as I know, you have been under occupation since the first day of the war. Could you recall your spring of 2022?

During the occupation, I started keeping a diary. On March 1st, 2022, I made an entry in it: “This is not the spring we were expecting…”. On the 23rd of February, my colleagues and I held the Ukrainian Forum of Tour Guides in Chernihiv. I came to work wearing new shoes, buying tulips in the morning and, despite some anxiety, setting myself up for everything to be fine. After returning from work, I suggested to my son that he pack his emergency suitcase in the morning, even though I did not fully believe it would be necessary.

On the morning of the 24th of February, Chernihiv was already different. I could hear my neighbours actively packing. There was an oppressive atmosphere around, and people seemed to have turned into ants. I realised that they were not just going to work [they were evacuating – J.B.], but I did not want to believe that the war had really started.

“War cannot be understood, it must be felt”

After my son woke up and was about to have breakfast, we heard the sirens and the first explosion. We lived near the military airport, which was one of the first places to come under enemy fire. The hardest thing was to tell my child that the worst had begun. It was only after the second explosion that I managed to squeeze it out: “My sweetheart, it’s the war…”. The first thing I did was call my colleagues because at that time they needed to think about the safety of their families, not about their work. My son and I packed backpacks with only enough clothes for a few days. It was hard to believe that this war was going to last much longer than that. I took socks, jeans, underwear for two of us, a few T-shirts, blouses, sweaters and toothbrushes. Angelar [Kateryna’s son – S.M.] decided to put a loaf of bread, left over from dinner, in his backpack. I was surprised and thought: “Do we really need a loaf of bread?” My son also put a couple of tins of canned food and a packet of rice in his backpack. There were long queues at ATMs and shops. I decided to go to the village of Novyi Bilous to the house of our family friend, N.

Later, I realised that many people made a mistake when deciding on this rural area to escape to and left Chernihiv. I thought it would be safer in a cellar outside the city. But I miscalculated ,because the village of Novyi Bilous turned out to be at the zero line – between the blockade of Chernihiv and the Gomel road, from where the enemy troops began their offensive.

When I arrived in the village on the afternoon of the 24th of February, I started taping the windows, not fully understanding why. Angelar went to bed. When the last few windows remained to be taped, missiles started flying. Their route was clear: Gomel highway near Chernihiv. And Novyi Bilous became, in fact, a “grey zone” over which everything was flying, as Novyi Bilous is twelve kilometres from Chernihiv. At that time, the sirens from the city were still very audible. When the explosions started to become constant, I woke up my son, and we went to the basement for the first time. The worst thing was not knowing what was exploding and where, and in general, what was happening.

I couldn’t even imagine that war could be like this… My grandfather, my mother’s father, went through World War Two. When I was a child I played with his medals, not realising why he would always put on his military uniform with medals on the 9th of May. As an adult, when I asked my grandfather to tell me about the war, he said only one thing: “War cannot be understood, it must be felt.” During the thirty-six days of the occupation, I often recalled those words from my grandfather, Vasyl. There were seven of us in the cellar in Novy Bilous [neighbours often came to stay at night or during mortar attacks – S.M.], but everyone understood and felt the war in their own way: an eighty-two-year-old man with a hearing impairment had his own vision of the war, and his fifty-year-old daughter had hers. At first, the neighbours ran to our basement across the street, and then, for convenience, we made a gate in the mesh, through which, in case of bombing, they could run straight into the basement.

“Mum, a missile!”

On the same day, the 24th of February, my brother called me from Moscow. For some reason, he was quite outraged that I was speaking to him in Ukrainian. We started a doomed conversation about his opinion that “NATO troops had initiated this war”, which ended with the phrase: “And in the end, it’s cool!” In other words, he found it “cool” that missiles were flying over the heads of his sister and nephew. Since then, my brother’s number has been on my phone’s blocked list. Immediately after that conversation, Angelar called out to me: “Mum, a missile!” It was the first rocket in his life, flying to Chernihiv. The hardest thing for me as a mother was the realisation that this was a situation where I might not be able to protect my son.

‒ How old is Angelar?

He was fourteen at the time and turned fifteen in the summer of 2022.

We spent the first night in an unequipped cellar. We managed to bring some chairs, insulation, cardboard boxes and, I think, a blanket from the barn. I slept sitting up, although it was hardly a night of sleep, because there was so much noise everywhere that it seemed unrealistic to fall asleep. Even going to the toilet was scary. In the evening, I gave my son some bread and butter, forcing him to eat. I was not hungry at all.

I thought a lot about values then. Many of the aspects that [for me] were part of the concept of “bad” before the war took on a new hue. My life really fit into one backpack, and my wardrobe, as it turned out, was full of unnecessary things.

You won’t believe it, but from the first days of the invasion, I started talking to my mother, who had died long before the war. She came to me in my dreams during the entire thirty-six days of occupation. I constantly begged her to protect me and Angelar. During this entire time, I never cried in front of my son, never voiced the thought that we might die. I tried to plan each new day, even though all those days were the same for me. Our life, full of traveling and activities, turned into “life in one yard”. Then I learned to bless my son with my eyes [by performing the sign of the cross – J.B.] and in my thoughts. It gave me confidence that a higher power would protect him.

On the 25th of February, we lost power, and the phone signal became very poor. We didn’t want to talk to anyone, we just wanted to survive. On Sunday, a missile landed in a neighbouring meadow, three hundred metres from our house. It exploded after we got to the cellar; we barely managed to get down there. The rocket hit the gas distribution section, and we no longer had gas. After that, we lived on the street, because it was scary to be in the house. It was scary because planes were flying over the house all the time. There were many planes in the sky. And if we talk about the fears of war, these planes were my biggest fear, because they were dropping missiles and bombs. You see a plane flying very low, you see it dropping missiles, but you don’t know where those missiles will fall. Then I would hide in a corner of the cellar, curl up in a foetal position, and pray for us not to be hit. Later, we realised that the planes had defined schedules, and we began to adjust to them.

I brewed coffee on the fire until it ran out. But the enemy planes often took even these moments away from me, because their flights were scheduled precisely when the water was boiling. So, we were forced to change the time we made coffee, which was at least a little reminder of peaceful times.

We have a grill in the yard and a fireplace with a stove in the house. When it was more-or-less calm, we tried to make coffee and some food in the house, because it was faster, and the house would become warm. At such moments, it was even possible for us to warm up a little. February and March 2022 were very cold. We used the same stove to heat water and to wash ourselves. Although it was hard to frame this process as hygienic. Washing in the cellar, where it was the warmest, where people can run for cover at any time, is a rather extreme activity [smiles]. Therefore, I had to wash separate parts of my body one by one so that I could quickly get dressed if necessary.

For almost forty days, I slept in a T-shirt, two sweaters, a vest, a Transcarpathian wool coat, and a headscarf, with a hat and hood on top. I didn’t just sleep in these clothes, I lived in them for almost forty days. And I didn’t really wash my hair for thirty-two days, although I combed it twice [smiles]. At one point, I thought I could take off my headscarf and my hair would come off with it. On the 20th of March 2022, I finally washed my hair. It was on the street. I still remember those unrealistic emotions when the wind dries your hair. Then I felt a sense of invincibility and faith that everything would be fine.

Angelar once said that I had changed a lot, that I had become older. During the occupation, I became older not only externally, but I have also aged internally. I lost twelve kilograms during that spring, but it became much harder for me morally and psychologically.

“It was at that moment that I hated the Russians the most because my child in the twenty-first century had to cry over bread”

‒ How did you eat during the occupation?

We had practically no supplies: two cans of tinned food brought from Chernihiv, rice, cereals, and vegetables. When the power went out, the village held a sale, that is, they sold everything that could not be preserved in fridges. We had money, so we bought as much as we could: cereals, for example, buckwheat (though it was already eighty hryvnias), rice, cocoa (only after the de-occupation did I realise how tasteless it was). But most importantly, we bought a lot of fish. It was mostly mackerel, which we salted for example, and scraps of redfish. We packed the fish in jars and put it outside, where it was quite cold. I even joked at the time that after the war I wouldn’t be able to eat red fish at all. We even cooked soups with that fish. We realised that we needed to completely reshape our diet to survive until spring would come because, with the appearance of fresh nettle, for example, we could then compensate for some vitamin deficiencies.

Our neighbours, who frequently hid in the same cellar with us, were also very supportive. They threw cabbage, carrots, and beetroots over the fence for us. Before the war, we used to buy all this stuff at the market. The neighbour across the street invited us to buy eggs from her, which we immediately agreed to. Out of the first dozen, we fried one egg for three of us [the third was a friend of Kateryna’s family, N. – S.M.]. We calculated that we could eat one egg for three people every other day, so we could last a little longer. The diet was as simple as possible.

In addition, the neighbours gave us a three-litre jar of currant jam, which I had hated since childhood. But in these new conditions, I learned how to make currant tea. If you pour half a tablespoon of jam with boiling water, you can make a good breakfast.

After about an hour and a half to two hours [of preparation] we could eat a salad. I had never peeled carrots, beetroot, radishes, and cabbage so carefully before. We also saved old apples, adding only half of an apple to the salad and saving the other half for later. A drop of olive oil and the salad was ready [smiles]. If we could, we ate lunch, if not, we didn’t. When there was heavy shelling, we didn’t think about food at all. Sometimes you would light the stove, and then there would be shelling – whether you wanted to eat or not, it didn’t matter, because you had to put the stove out. Sometimes you would cook buckwheat or rice for lunch, and in the evening, we hardly ate at all. At first, fish was a great help, and when it was gone, an egg saved us.

Sometime in late March, Jehovah’s Witnesses – I don’t know how they managed to get to Novyi Bilous! – brought fast food buns to the village, so we took a whole box. A bun for tea was really heavenly.

At the end of March, bread was also brought to the village; it was only once during the entire occupation. I realised that it was bread that I had been craving since the start of the full-scale invasion. In peacetime, I practically didn’t eat it, but during the occupation… Our number was 138 in the queue for bread. We could hardly have had enough. But at the last moment, the woman who was distributing the bread offered us a shapeless crumpled loaf that cost about one hundred hryvnias. We put that loaf on the table at home and took turns sniffing it. It was an unforgettable aroma… [smiles through tears]. I gave one edge of the bread to Angelar, and the other to N., and I just enjoyed the smell, because I realised that it was unlikely that we would have it again soon. We cut the rest of the loaf into croutons, laid them out by the window, and Angelar was given the task of turning them over every day. Those croutons were a great addition to an egg.

We had a holiday every other day when a whole egg was added to a third of a fried crouton. The main task was to chew for a long time, not thirty-three times, but sixty or seventy, because when you chew it for a long time, you feel full faster. When Angelar first held that loaf in his hand, tears came to his eyes. It was at that moment that I hated the Russians the most because my child in the twenty-first century had to cry over bread.

For some time, I arranged the basement as much as possible, because we had no idea how long the occupation would last. We brought warm blankets down from the house, which we had to dry every morning and bring down again in the evening. It was very important to bring blankets just before sleep, otherwise everything would cool down very quickly. At first, I wrapped Angelar in a cocoon, taking off only his shoes. We realised that if you don’t turn around, you can keep warm under the blanket for longer.

“…I was saved by my son, who closed the door to the corridor in time because that piece of missile could have flown into the kitchen…”

On the 16th of March 2022, a neighbour gave us a bottle of oil. We had already planted seedlings, dug up the gardens, and made new beds. To distract myself, I tried to keep busy all the time, even laying rugs in the barn, and all that was left to do was hang curtains in the cellar [smiles]. There was already a table there, food, canned food that people gave me, salads. And next to the bottle of wine, I put the oil that my neighbour had brought. We never locked the door to the main room so that we could quickly escape in case of shelling. That day I was cooking dinner in the kitchen; I was washing fish. Angelar was warming himself by the fireplace, and suddenly he felt cold, so he closed the front door. I was a little outraged at the time, but he reassured me that everything would be fine. Soon after, I felt our house shaking. N. shouted: “Get down!” Angelar quickly covered his head with his hands. Holding the bowl of fish in my hands, I had the time to think: “God, how little I have lived!” Then there was a small explosion and N. commanded: “Quickly, to the basement!” When we opened the door, the wooden upholstery in the corridor was torn up, the door was pierced and there was a lot of smoke. As soon as we got into the cellar, there was a second explosion. Later, we found out that a missile fragment had hit our house and smashed everything. The cord from the fridge was lying severed; the plug was still in the socket. But the most interesting thing was the smell of alcohol. It turned out that the bottle of wine had been torn to pieces, but the oil had survived, only the cap had been cut off the bottle like a knife. Then I said that we would survive, because if we were to die, God would take the oil as a symbol of life, and He had taken the wine. In fact, it was my son who saved me by closing the door to the corridor in time, because the fragment could have flown into the kitchen where I was cooking fish.

We had another mystical case. In my family, the number eight has always been dangerous. My grandparents died on the 8th of December three years apart, and the dates of my parents’ deaths also add up to eight. There were a lot of those eights, and my mother, when she was alive, used to say that our family should be afraid of the number eight.

From the 7th to the 8th of March, we decided to bring a bucket of coal into the cellar to keep warm and fall asleep. On the morning of the 8th of March, N. wanted to go to the toilet and felt that it was difficult for him to get up. It became clear that we were all very sick from the smoke. N. barely got out of the basement, breathed a little, and came back to us. He had to pull Angelar out, who was also sick, but still conscious. I was already unconscious at that moment. It seemed to me that I was flying and seeing myself from the side. N. was able to sit me down, and the air seemed to go out of my lungs. He eventually pulled me out into the fresh air. Later on, Angelar also started to lose consciousness, but eventually he was fine. The sky was very scary then, with rockets flying everywhere, but I didn’t care, as if I had lost my sense of reality. That was the first time we went to sleep in the house. And it was then that I realised that I shouldn’t be afraid of the number eight because it gave me a second life.

“Then I made a promise to myself that I would not open my war diary until the Victory”

The war changed my Angelar a lot. He became attentive, organised, careful in his movements, balanced, without unnecessary questions. But just like me, he started to be afraid to go out on his own. During the shelling, he was the first to throw me into the cellar and close the door himself, and he was also the first to come out after the bombing. During the thirty-six days of occupation, he stretched out and lost a lot of weight. Even now, he sometimes puts his hand on my shoulder and says: “Katik [a family habit of calling his mother by her first name – S.M.], you are so small, you are so small.” Angelar learned to saw and chop wood. He read a lot, he had to read all of Steven King. Then he got an English book from the 1970s from the attic and ended up with a four-volume set of Lesya Ukrainka. We didn’t have any gadgets. I often played with Angelar, spelling words with the last letter. He has loved this game since he was three or four years old.

My mother was constantly warning me in my dreams about possible danger, and I tried not to ignore it. And then one day in a dream she gave me wildflowers. When I told my neighbour about this dream, she said that in the summer we would be able to walk in our fields. My mum’s birthday is on the 4th of April. After this dream, for some reason, I was convinced that I had to hold on until the 4th of April.

On the 29th of March, there was heavy shelling, and then we heard on the radio, which our eighty-two-year-old neighbour had, that the Russians were leaving the Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kyiv regions. We could not believe it for a week. We regularly heard sounds of military cars, but N. assured us that the occupiers were deliberately creating the appearance of movement, although they had already left. “I told you that we had to hold out until the 4th of April, but few people believed me,” I thought at the time.

On the 8th of April, we rode our bikes to Chernihiv for the first time. It was my father’s birthday, so I remember this date well. On the way, we saw burnt-out cars and military equipment, and huge craters in the asphalt. It was scary to pull off to the side because they were talking about mining. The hardest thing was to look at the disfigured and destroyed houses that used to be so beautifully decorated before the war. There was a lot of glass everywhere. Our apartment seemed small and grey without heating and light, even wild…

On the 16th of April, we went to work. It was only recently, almost a year after all those events, that I started putting on headphones and listening to something. Before that, I was always listening to the city, to its sound, as if trying to get to know it again.

‒ At the beginning of the interview, you mentioned your diary from the occupation period. Could you please tell us how you got the urge to write down your thoughts?

I started keeping a diary on the 1st of March 2022. Until then, I just couldn’t figure out what to do with my thoughts and experiences. I didn’t want to take pictures, because, for some reason, photographs seemed to be a bad omen. We have a picture of the cellar that was equipped for the new conditions and a picture of the shrapnel that had almost killed me (Angelar had secretly taken it), and there was also a picture of us standing near the cellar on the second day of the war. The last photo drowned in the river with the phone.

I felt the need to talk out my emotions, but you can’t talk to a child about everything. Then I found our branded tourist notebook “Chernihiv – City of Legends” with a wooden base, found a pen, and just started writing. At first, I wrote down my feelings that I had had since the 24th of February, because they were still fresh. I did not describe military events or facts because I didn’t need to. To record those difficult emotions for my future self, that was my goal.

I wrote about my fears, recorded dreams, conversations, and my psychological condition. The pages of the diary contain our diet, feedback from what we read, the peculiarities of our everyday life, and our emotional state. The last entry was made on the 10th of April. In fact, everything was already over, but I continued to write for several days more. At some point, I felt it was time to put an end to it. Then I made a promise to myself that I would not open my war diary until after the Victory. I even wrote that after the Victory I would buy the most delicious wine, drink it, and read this diary.

“From Novyi Bilous, Russians shelled Chernihiv with Grad rockets”

‒ How did the enemy’s forces behave?

From the 24th of February to the 1st of April, the village was “ground zero” or, as they say, a “no man’s land”. From Novyi Bilous, the Russians shelled Chernihiv with Grad rockets. But our people did not shoot back because they understood that there were many civilians there. Many houses were burned down, but more often [they were damaged] from the fall of missiles’ fragments. When the occupiers retreated, they deliberately shelled the village, targeting residential buildings. We buried all the documents then. There is a garden bed under which we buried them deep in the ground. It was around the fourth or fifth day when the occupiers started walking and driving around the village.

We had a dog living with us during the occupation who always went down to the cellar before the shelling. We clearly knew that we had to follow him. One day, the occupiers passed by our fence with machine guns in their hands. They were not in military uniforms but in red jackets. There were five of them. At that same moment, we were having lunch. Our table was visible through our gate. It seemed to me that my heart stopped then. Everyone was frozen at the same time. The dog was lying under the table. I was very afraid that the dog might bark and draw the Russians’ attention to us. But when I looked under the table, I saw him put his face on the ground and cover his nose with his paws. He clearly felt the danger. After standing there for some time, which seemed like an eternity to me at the time, the invaders left. As we found out later, they were going around looking for food, money, and vodka. By the way, we also hid a supply of expensive drinks [smiles].

Russians painted their “Z” symbols everywhere. They created their terrorist defence from local drug addicts and alcoholics who would go around the village for money or a dose and draw glowing “zetas”.

‒ Were there any deaths in Novyi Bilous during the shelling?

No, no one was killed, only a guard from a poultry farm was wounded. He was driving away from the farm in his car and was shot in the arm with a machine gun. There were some who died, but they died naturally.

‒ Where and how were they buried?

Everyone was buried in the village cemetery. There were no cases of burials in yards in Novyi Bilous. Everyone was buried in the cemetery but under shelling. The coffins were ordered from a local craftsman, but no one covered them with cloth; they were just ordinary wooden coffins. A neighbour told me that the dead were not even washed, as it has always been, but simply had their clothes changed, put in the coffin, and were buried. They also tried to hold a wake, but for a limited number of people. They drank a hundred grams of wine, ate potatoes, and that was it.

There is a functioning Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Novyi Bilous, but the priest ran away when the war began, so there was nobody to perform the funeral service for the dead. Oddly enough, the diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate published an order on its website to dismiss priests who left their parishes during the occupation of Chernihiv’s region settlements and the blockade of Chernihiv. And the priest from Novobilousivka was dismissed. Now he is not in the village. As far as I know, he returned to his home in the Khmelnytsky region. Currently, a temporarily-appointed priest is coming to the village on Saturday for vespers and Sunday services.

Many priests of the Chernihiv region, who represent the Moscow Patriarchate, do not understand the full extent of the problem. They consider themselves representatives of the “right church”, although it is fair to say that not all of them fled. Some continued to perform services and funerals, and give communion to people. Some began to switch to the Ukrainian language and even preach sermons in Ukrainian.

From the very beginning, the clergy of the Kyiv Patriarchate have been actively volunteering and helping the local population with everything they need. The clergy of the “Moscow churches” usually refuse to perform funeral services for the dead. However, a flag of gratitude from the Territorial Defence Forces recently appeared within the walls of the Trinity Cathedral, which belongs to the Moscow Patriarchate, and a funeral service for a Territorial Defence Forces soldier was held. Perhaps this was made possible through certain personal arrangements.

‒ What helped Chernihiv not to surrender?

It seems to me that when the city began to change rapidly for the better, taking on new meanings and new colour seven years ago, people truly began to love it. When we faced the threat of losing what we loved at the beginning of the war, “belonging to Chernihiv” worked, and people united. Both those who hid in time and those who left in time did a great job. Saving their families, many people simply evacuated from the city to make it easier for the military and volunteers to do their jobs. Our volunteers are really fearless angels who evacuated people and delivered food under fire. And neighbourly mutual assistance in times of war is a great phenomenon in general. People shared the last of their possessions, realising that tomorrow they may have nothing. Special tribute, of course, goes to Chernihiv museum workers who stayed during the bombing and dismantled collections to save our historical and cultural monuments. In the art museum, a young employee even stayed alive to save the paintings. Many of my friends today say that they had no idea how much they love Chernihiv. So, perhaps, it was this love that helped us survive.

“I felt responsible for the safety of each member of our team who came to the Chernihiv “war field” during a year to record evidence of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the war in my home”

‒ What mission do you think historians and ethnographers should fulfil today?

Today we have a unique opportunity to preserve the history of the present as we live it. Our task is not to bury everything in the archives for fifty years, but to talk about everyday military life and the realities of war. Particular attention should be paid to the school curriculum and the historical education of children. The most important thing is to promote Ukrainian in everything: from the language to contemporary fashion brands. I remember when I went to graduate school, I was speaking Russian everywhere and in everything. This was my environment, my mother taught Russian language and literature at school, so the reasons are quite clear [why I spoke it]. But since the full-scale invasion, I have not switched back to the language of the occupier either at home or in the workplace.

‒ And finally, I can’t help but ask about the oral history project [1] that you initiated and organised. Could you please share with us how you came up with the idea of recording eyewitness accounts of Russian crimes in the Chernihiv region, almost immediately after the Russian occupation?

Immediately after the de-occupation of Novyi Bilous, holding my diary of memories in my hands, I realised that, over time, my memory would displace the emotions and feelings I had experienced and had left on the paper. But this diary would preserve them in their original shape. I remembered the words of my Ph.D. supervisor Olena Boryak, who, after my mother’s death, said: “Time heals, child. Time heals”. I didn’t believe her then. But today, having lived eight years without my mother and three years without my father, I understand that time does not heal, but rapidly distances us from events, leaving a new imprint on memories and feelings. I understood that something similar would happen to the memories of Chernihiv residents (and Ukrainians in general) about the war. My friends and colleagues supported me in this, agreeing to go to the “battlefield” almost immediately after the de-blockade of Chernihiv and the de-occupation of the region to hear everything that the respondents were ready to talk about at that time. The first fieldwork trip took place on the 14th of May 2022. Amidst the constant sirens, I was terribly afraid for the female researchers who were the first to take such a rather difficult and risky step. I felt responsible for the safety of each member of our research team who went to the Chernihiv “war field” for over a year to record evidence of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the war in my home.

For the residents of the most affected neighbourhoods of Chernihiv and the de-occupied villages, the opportunity to speak out was a kind of relief. They spoke and cried; cried, but spoke. Of course, I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the memories we will record in a year will be different, rethought, digested, experienced, and put on the shelves. I think that the new stories will be devoid of the emotionality that was present when we mentioned the tank in the garden, which prevented us from tilling the soil and planting vegetables two weeks ago. The stories about the destroyed house and the almost forty days of living in the cellar will probably be less emotional and somewhat mythologised.

Interview conducted by Svitlana Makhovska

The publication uses photographs from the private archive of Kateryna Lytvyn

This publication is also available in Ukrainian.