DALLAS — As Russian forces encircle and threaten the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, and despite the near constant blare of air sirens, life on the streets can be surprisingly quiet and uninterrupted for residents.
“The air raid sirens will be going, and they won’t stop whatever it is they’re doing,” said photojournalist Madeleine Kelly. “They’re not sad. They’re just kind of persistent and going about their daily life and making sure that whatever they can keep consistent, they keep consistent.”
Kelly said even some coffee shops have started to open back up. But she said everything closes at 4 p.m. to give everyone four hours to make it home before a mandatory 8 p.m. curfew. A strict curfew, she says, that could easily get you shot if you break it.
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The 24-year-old first arrived in Kyiv on March 2. She’s been living in a friend’s apartment ever since. Kelly is getting her Masters in International War Studies, and as part of that, she’s documented everything from democracy protests in Hong Kong to the Black Lives Matter movement to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. She told WFAA there is something different, though, about the war in Ukraine.
“There’s a lot of black and white morality behind this one. And I think that’s kind of what a lot of us on the ground have found is that it’s easy, in a very particular sense, to be able to be here and talk about it, especially on the Ukrainian side,” she said.
Kelly said most of the mothers and children have evacuated. In fact, she said she’s only seen four kids in the three weeks she’s been there. But everyone else has decided to stay and fight, young and old, women and men, anyone and everyone, an estimated two million people or so.
Kelly said the mood on the streets is one of resilience, not dread. And she thinks the Russians will have a terrible time trying to take Kyiv because of that attitude. The average citizen, she says, is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure the city doesn’t fall under Russian control.
“Everyone here, even the grandmas, even the small little ladies, the old men, people with canes, the young families that have chosen to stay, everyone that I know has gotten ready,” Kelly told WFAA. “There's Molotovs pretty much all throughout this city. There's Molotovs hidden. No one is going to give up this city.”
And Kelly still has a job to do. Curfew ends at 7 a.m. and she goes in search of stories to tell and document. And there are plenty of those as there is no shortage of bravery in Kyiv, no deficit of heroism.
One of her recent stories involved a group of artists who once put on a Ukrainian version of Burning Man. But they now embody the spirit of resistance we’ve heard so much about.
“Ever since the war broke out, they actually live underground in a bunker. And they build hedgehogs, the little anti-tank traps there. We call them hedgehogs. They build hedgehogs. They build stoves for frontline soldiers to keep warm and cook food. They build bulletproof vests. They've kind of taken over an entire area and just have started building military equipment,” said Kelly.
Kelly said many of them didn’t even know how to weld before the war, and they’re learning this new skill while building anti-tank traps. That’s a routine part of life now in the Ukrainian capital, where residents haven’t necessarily found a new normal, but a new way to fill their day.
But Kelly also said loss can be difficult and draining and that it’s hard to see someone’s entire life destroyed in less than a second.
“I think when we get to these sites and it's very easy to kind of see the outside of the building and say ‘oh my God that's horrible. How could that happen?’” she mused. “But there have been a couple of times when we've been able to get inside the buildings, and we've been able to go inside individual apartments and we’re able to see that they had food in their fridge, and that this is a child’s bedroom. And then there was one, the living room was just destroyed, but somehow the family photos stayed on the wall through the explosion.”
