SPECIAL REPORT: Kyiv, In Between Sirens

Video courtesy of Jamela Aisha Alindogan

 

“Your room is on the 11th floor, and the air raid shelter is on basement four. Welcome to Kyiv.”

The receptionist handed me the key cards with a polite smile.

I wheeled my luggage down the long, dimly lit corridor and stepped into an elevator that looked like it belonged in a Cold War film – small, steel-framed, yet still holding on to a kind of faded grandeur.

I squeezed in with my bags, and when the doors opened, I walked into a room that looked like it had been waiting for me.

Red carpets, immaculately clean. A carved wooden headboard that spoke of old-world elegance. And through the window- a view of Maidan Square, framed like a painting.

The tower stood tall and defiant in the soft dusk light.

I slumped into the chair. I let my weight settle. The journey to Kyiv had taken its toll.

We had arrived on an overnight train from Warsaw. Two transfers. Little sleep. I was traveling with colleagues from South Africa, India, and the Philippines. Journalists seasoned in war zones and accustomed to the rhythm of uncertainty.

The first leg was comfortable. Rain tapped against the windows. The scent of coffee lingered in the air. There was an odd sense of calm, of anticipation, even.

On the second train, we had bunk beds and crisp, freshly washed linens. Outside, Poland passed us by, there were forests, empty fields, rusted tracks.

It was May. But there were no signs of spring. Just gray skies, cold rain, and the weight of silence between train stops

I hadn’t been on an overseas assignment in more than two years.

And now, here I was, somewhere between the past and the next headline. Between Poland and Ukraine. A world away from home.

I arrived in Kyiv on the invitation of Internews Ukraine and the International Renaissance Foundation, for a gathering organized by a group of young Ukrainians who are fiercely intelligent, clear-eyed, and unwavering in their resolve.

They were part of a generation shaped by revolution and war, and yet remarkably composed in the face of both.

That afternoon, they took us on a city tour. The first stop was just steps from our hotel. What was once a rose garden had been transformed into a makeshift memorial. In place of petals were rows of tiny flags, wedged between photographs of soldiers who had died in the war. There are young faces immortalized and surrounded by the bustle of Kyiv’s streets.

Earlier that day, a high-level visit had drawn headlines across the continent.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Labour leader Keir Starmer, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Kyiv—a rare display of unity from four of Europe’s major capitals.

They met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in what was described as a “coalition of the willing,” a show of solidarity that many hoped would translate into something more tangible.

The wreath they laid still stood, just beyond the memorial, solemn, heavy with intention, but as with so much in Kyiv, it felt suspended in time.

If Ukrainians were worn down by the length and weight of the war, it didn’t show.

They moved with the steadiness of people who had long made peace with uncertainty. There was no bitterness, only a quiet kind  of defiance, of resilience laced with grace.

“What do you do when the air raid sirens go off?” I asked one of the directors of Internews Ukraine. He laughed and said, “We go fishing.”

It was half a joke, but like much of Ukrainian humor these days, it carried something deeper, resilience disguised as routine.

Later, our group was guided through the city by a striking, eloquent woman whose name I will withhold for her safety.

She spoke not only with clarity but with the calm of someone who had lived through the darkest hours and refused to be consumed by them. She took us through the Alley of the Heavenly Hundred, a tribute to the martyrs of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity; to the glass bridge overlooking the city; to St. Michael’s Cathedral—a church once destroyed by the Soviets and rebuilt after Ukraine’s independence.

It was a Sunday. Kyiv pulsed with life. Couples strolled hand-in-hand while children darted ahead of their parents.  If not for the war, it might have seemed like any other European capital.

That night, we returned to the hotel for dinner and quietly retired to our rooms. At 5:45 a.m., the sirens sounded. The sound was low and metallic like a voice from another era. It would be dramatic to say it woke me, but I was already up, restless and jetlagged, staring at the ceiling when it began.

My Filipino colleague and I made our way down the stairs to Basement Level 4, still in our pajamas, shoes hastily pulled on, clutching small bags. There was no panic. Only a quiet descent as if it were something we had always known how to do.

And I couldn’t help but think of how many Ukrainians had walked down similar staircases. Carrying not just backpacks and blankets, but their faith. The kind of faith that refuses to be buried.

What Freedom Really Means

Ukraine has never fit neatly into anyone’s script.  For centuries, it was pulled into the orbit of empires—Tsarist, Bolshevik, Soviet. Yet through it all, it refused to disappear.

Behind a reconstructed yellow arch in Kyiv stands what remains of the original Golden Gate, once the sacred entryway into a powerful medieval city. It was not just a wall-it was a symbol of civilization and resistance.

In September 1941, the city fell to Nazi forces. Much of it was blown apart by Soviet-planted explosives during their retreat. Kyiv remained under occupation for two long years before liberation in November 1943.

What war erased, Stalinist architecture attempted to reconstruct. Khreshchatyk, the city’s central boulevard, rose from the ashes.

Ukraine is not fighting to belong to the West. It is fighting not to be erased. Its people are not waiting to be saved. They are already saving themselves.

A young woman in Yahidne told me quietly, “We don’t just want to be liberated from something. We want to be free.” Her voice was steady, but the distinction she made carried weight. There is a difference and it is that difference that fuels this war.

In towns like Yahidne and Irpin, the cost of that pursuit is written across every landscape. Mothers with trembling hands show me photographs of their sons who never came home. Some of those photos they pinned to oak trees. Forests here have become shrines. There are fathers returning from the frontlines, taking visitors through the bunkers where they once hid. Many refuse to abandon these shelters, as if reclaiming them is a way of restoring dignity after months lived under siege.

In cafés across Kyiv, young men sit with soldier’s hands coarse and scarred though their faces still look like boys. Those who are not in uniform are often asked, silently or directly, why not.

In this war, nearly everyone has been made to answer the question: What have you done?

One military analyst described the transformation succinctly: “The army itself is going through a reckoning.” Ukraine’s armed forces are not just fighting a war, they are reshaping themselves from within.

What is emerging, according to several observers, is a new command culture, one defined not only by battlefield necessity but by generational change.

Young officers shaped by the revolutions of 2004 and 2014 are now leading units in some of the most contested regions of the country. Their leadership is less rigid, more adaptive, and increasingly collaborative, a departure from the Soviet legacy that long shaped Ukraine’s military institutions.

This evolution is not without tension, but it marks a turning point.

As one colonel put it, “We are learning to lead in a way that reflects the country we’re trying to build, not the one we inherited.”

In Bucha, a town brought to its knees during the early Russian offensive, a local man walked us through what used to be a school. More than 50 people had been trapped there for weeks. He spoke plainly, pointing to darkened corners. “That’s where an old man died. That’s where we carried bodies through the dark.” The walls remain marked with tallies. There are children’s drawings of balloons and sunflowers, stained mattresses, broken books, and tiny shoes scattered across the floors. Each item is now touched by war. The children are gone. So is the laughter. What was once a school has become something else entirely……a quiet memorial to survival.

We left Bucha with our hearts heavy.

Survival as Defiance 

In Mariupol, Maria  (not her real name) told us she once walked the streets in heels. Captured in April 2022, she spent nearly a year in Russian detention. Maria had joined the military the year before and was later taken prisoner. She was eventually traded back to Ukraine. When she speaks, her tone is even, almost clinical.

“They don’t follow the Geneva Convention. I spent a year with them. I know.” Her voice doesn’t shake as she describes the lack of food, the violence. “Turkey guaranteed we wouldn’t be harmed, but I was beaten. Most of the time, by men.”

On good days, she takes her motorbike and rides fast. “The adrenaline reminds me I’m still alive,” she says. After her release, she would sit at dinners with friends and find herself bewildered by what they discussed, concerns that felt impossibly distant from the life she had known.

For Ukraine’s veterans, survival is no longer just about staying alive. It is about reclaiming something far more difficult: a future.

“I didn’t hate them at first,” Maria said. “But then I saw what they did.”

Today, Maria works with veterans transitioning back into civilian life. Some open motorbike shops. Others find their way back slowly, piece by piece. None of them were called because they were ready. They were called because they were needed. Some were only eighteen. Others had already cycled through crisis centers before war arrived. This was not simply a patriotic march. It was conscription born out of necessity.

But the deeper wounds often come later. An estimated 20 percent of returning soldiers suffer from PTSD, though experts say that number likely underrepresents the scope of the crisis. Depression, addiction, and isolation are common. Many return to a society still struggling to understand them. Some lose themselves entirely. Others fight to be seen.

In Kyiv, the Veteran Hub is more than a facility, it is also a refuge. Run largely by veterans themselves, it offers a space where there’s no need to explain. Walk through the door, and someone understands.

Vlad, also a pseudonym, is a psychologist-turned-soldier who helped defend Mariupol before disappearing into a Russian prison. After his release, he founded the Bare Foundation, a grassroots initiative to help veterans who, like him, have returned from captivity carrying wounds that no X-ray can detect.

Some say they still hear artillery in their sleep. One man confided, “The army taught me discipline. But it also took my initiative.” Another returned home and felt displaced in his own body. “I came back, but I don’t feel home,” he said. “My soul stayed behind in the trenches.”

The psychological toll is immeasurable. Alongside the physical scars are deeper ones. There is shame, grief and detachment. And perhaps most devastating of all, a sense of being forgotten. “We’re either heroes or ghosts,” one veteran told me. “Nothing in between.”

For many, survival is no longer just an instinct. It is a declaration.

While in Irpin, war did not simply pause life. It almost incinerated it.

The devastation is visible in the skeletal remains of homes and in the scorched metal of once-moving cars. Along a roadside, one of these wrecks remains spray-painted with the names of children, turned into an impromptu memorial. A burnt car, transformed into a canvas of remembrance.

More than 40 percent of Irpin was destroyed in the early stages of the invasion. But rebuilding is well underway. Power lines have been restored, streetlights flicker on at night, and in certain neighborhoods, families are beginning to return.

Among the many international efforts supporting Ukraine’s recovery is a UK-funded programme aimed at managing chronic illnesses such as asthma – conditions that have become increasingly common among children who lived through the shelling. But this initiative is not only about physical health. It is part of a broader effort to reweave the social and civic fabric of a community that has endured rupture.

Schools are reopening, slowly and deliberately, their classrooms patched together brick by brick. Hospitals continue to operate despite limited equipment and a critical shortage of medical staff.

“We don’t need pity,” one mayor said. “We need skills. We need tools. We need hands that will build, not just applaud.”

But funding is inconsistent.  And across the country, towns like Irpin are competing for the same dwindling aid.

Beyond the trenches and tactical maps, the struggle unfolds in conference halls and courtrooms, in legal briefs and diplomatic standoffs. Here, Ukraine’s diplomats are not armed with rifles, but with documents of broken ceasefires, redrawn borders, and decades of eroded agreements.

At The Hague, lawyers and advocates whisper of precedents, of accountability mechanisms still unfinished.

The memory of the Budapest Memorandum looms large in many of these conversations. Signed in 1994 and later disregarded, it symbolizes a promise broken and a warning unheeded. For many Ukrainian officials, NATO membership is no longer a distant aspiration. It is now part of a broader call for a redefined global security framework: one that is enforceable and not merely aspirational.

“Security,” a negotiator told me, “should not be a handshake. It should be a contract. It should be real.”

But there is one more battleground.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine extended far beyond territorial ambitions. It came not only with tanks and missiles, but with stories that are deliberately shaped, relentlessly repeated, and strategically deployed. As one media analyst in Kyiv observed, “Russia seized the spotlight and took credit for the entire Soviet legacy.”

The battle for Ukraine has become as much about narrative as it is about ground. Inside the Ukraine Media Center, a quiet but determined resistance is underway. Journalists, historians, and volunteers are working tirelessly to reclaim memory and preserve facts in real time. Their goal is not simply to report the war, but to ensure that what is being erased, language, lineage, history, is remembered.

“Depopulation is our bigger war,” one economist explained. Since the invasion, more than five million Ukrainians have left the country. Many may never return. This has created not only labor shortages but profound demographic uncertainty.

The economy remains fragile, sustained largely by G7 financial assistance and domestic reforms.

Ukraine and Palestine: A Quiet Parallel

Inside Ukraine, comparisons to Palestine are rarely voiced in public. But they are quietly acknowledged. Diplomats, journalists, and survivors speak with caution, fully aware of the geopolitical sensitivities that surround such parallels. Still, some point to what they describe as familiar patterns.

“Same architects. Same mechanisms. Same silence,” one official told me, referring to what he viewed as overlapping strategies of erasure and denial. Yet most stop short of drawing explicit lines. “We are fighting our own war,” a senior diplomat said. “But yes, we understand theirs.”

The parallel is largely absent from formal statements, but it lingers in private conversations. Of all I witnessed in Ukraine, this was perhaps the most surprising, the restraint with which solidarity is held at arm’s length.

In a war so deeply anchored in the language of freedom, perhaps that ambiguity is something that must evolve. Freedom must be spoken alongside solidarity.=

The trip was brief, just over a week, but it left no shortage of profound impressions.

Kyiv, even at night, glows with defiance. Neon signs blink above shuttered shops. Apartment windows remain lit.

In the distance, an engine hums. You pause. You listen. You wait for the sirens, bracing for that familiar metallic howl.

But instead, something unexpected drifts through the air.

Karaoke.

A voice, clear, untrained and unbothered, sings into the night.

This is what life in Ukraine has become: moments of the ordinary stitched carefully around the edges of conflict.

This war, for all its geopolitics and military strategy, is ultimately about something more elemental.

It is about the right to exist with dignity.

(Jamela Aisha Alindogan is a former Al Jazeera English correspondent and is Founder and Executive Director of Sinagtala Center for Women and Children in Conflict Inc., an organization dedicated to supporting women and children in the most vulnerable communities in Mindanao).