‘Nothing can break these people’: Social media dispatches from Ukrainians

On Facebook and in group chats, people share what is happening to them in real time

Empty streets of Kyiv in wartime| (c) Mykhailo Palinchak / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved

 

3 March 2022

Ukraine has been shaken to the core by Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country. On social media and in private correspondence, Ukrainians talk about what is happening to them, to their families and the people around them.

openDemocracy selected several short Facebook posts and social media messages from Ukraine. We have translated them with little to no edits and without comments. We publish them here with permission.

Olga Bragina, Kyiv, 27 February

After spending the night in a bomb shelter, I woke up at 6 pm, took part in a Zoom meeting entitled ‘No war’ [titled in Ukrainian and Russian] and fell asleep again. [Then I awoke and] read that the oil storage facility in Vasylkiv had been blown up and that everybody should run to the bomb shelter, because everything that can fly in the air is flying towards Kyiv.

I decided not to wake up my parents. There were explosions during the night, three explosions, only five minutes apart at some point, but I still decided not to wake up anyone. I sat on the couch and read a postmodern French novel about managers without heads. My mother woke up in the morning, she was surprised it had been such a quiet night.