In the aftermath of atrocity, Ukrainians struggle to clean up and carry on
Their determination to lead normal lives in a war zone is astonishing — but some scars run deep
It wasn't necessarily a premonition that kept Vitaliy Zakharchuk awake in the predawn hush of his rented fifth floor flat in Kryvyi Rih. To him, it felt more like a deep-seated, nagging restlessness.
The mine administrator, recently relocated from Kyiv to central Ukraine, woke up at three o'clock Tuesday morning for no apparent reason and couldn't get back to sleep. He couldn't figure out why.
Around the same time, behind a row of thick, old trees in the building directly opposite, Nikita Zakharchenko was also having trouble sleeping in his third floor apartment. The family cat was meowing loudly and insistently — for no apparent reason.
Shortly before half past three, an enormous explosion and a blinding flash of light shattered the early morning stillness. It was followed in rapid succession by other explosions that were later attributed to punctured car fuel tanks rupturing in front of the building.
The balcony and kitchen windows of Zakharchuk's studio apartment blew right off their frames — one came crashing down on him in his bed. Once he realized that, apart from a few bumps and scratches, he was mostly unhurt, Zakharchuk heard the cries of his next-door neighbour, a young woman in her 20s.
The blast broke his clock. It stopped precisely at 3:28 am.
"I feel like an angel was flying over me. I feel very lucky," said Zakharchuk, 68.
That "angel" probably was mother nature. A line of old trees separated his building from the site of the blast, creating a thick screen that likely absorbed some of the shockwave.
Across a burning parking lot and an adjacent child's playground, Zakharchenko, 23, was scrambling out of bed with his 22-year-old wife.
Barefoot and stepping on broken glass, he bundled her and their one-year-old son and fled the smoke-filled apartment.
"I woke up with the first explosion [but] there were others as I carried my kid out," he said.
Both of his feet suffered mild cuts. Later, as he sat in the back of an ambulance being treated by paramedics, he said he didn't remember precisely when he was injured. His wife ended up with cuts on her face; their son was unharmed.
The Russian missile that exploded on the ground in front of Zakharchenko's building, and the fires that followed, killed 11 of his neighbours. Two of them were friends — a young couple around the same age as he and his wife whose first floor apartment was directly in front of the blast.
"They were very nice people," Zakharchenko said.
Picking up the pieces
On Tuesday, both Zakharchenko and Zakharchuk reflected on how commonplace such attacks have become in the roughly 16 months since Russia's all-out invasion began — and how easily they are forgotten after one or two days of intense international media coverage.
Picking up the pieces and carrying on is something Ukrainians have gotten unnervingly good at, even in the most horrific circumstances.
There is, however, a climate of unease in Ukraine — a sense that the world is losing interest. It is the anxious, silent (and sometimes not-so-silent) subtext of many conversations foreigners have with ordinary Ukrainians, many of whom are only too eager to share their stories and personal experiences.
But even as Ukrainians worry about westerners becoming numb to their misery, they demonstrated Tuesday — outside the charred hulk of the Kryvyi Rih apartment building — how accustomed they have become to living with war.
With extraordinary speed and efficiency, hundreds of people were assembled, organized and deployed to help clear debris and bodies.
With some trees nearest the apartment building still smouldering, front end loaders — their scoops piled high with jagged scraps of windows, doors and furniture — were hauling everything to predetermined collection points. Before midday, sidewalks and parking lots were being broomed and brushed with an almost religious vigor.
It all took place within a few short hours of the explosion.
Watching the Ukrainian civil response, you couldn't help but wonder how many times these people had done it in the past and whether it had become routine for them.
Erasing the physical traces of the war's violence seems at times to be almost a national obsession. Outside of Kyiv, where many terrible battles have taken place, there are some buildings that still bear scars. But many local residents point with pride at how the reconstruction of other buildings, roads and bridges has been swiftly carried out.
For Zakharchuk, there are moments from Tuesday that are not so easily tidied up or forgotten.
What lingers in his mind is the sobbing of that young woman, his wounded neighbour, who fell battered and bloody into his arms moments after the blast and begged him not to let her go.
The deep, nagging restlessness that woke him up Tuesday will linger, he said.
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