Patryk Zakrzewski: You’ve been in Kyiv for a few days now. Before that, you spent several years in Mariupol, documenting everyday life in the Donbass frontline zone. This war is different, if only because of the scale.
Marek M. Berezowski: I started going to Mariupol in 2015, so I can't say what the mood was at the start of the war in 2014, what a shock it was. The first time I was there, in the winter of early 2015, there was concern that an assault on the city was being planned. There was clearly a military build-up and there was tension and fear among the residents. By the summer of the same year, the atmosphere was already calming down, life was back on its ‘normal’ track.
Strong emotions recurred in the stories of people who experienced the war, whose homes were shelled. Talking to people who stayed in the [Donetsk People's Republic] was even more depressing, because the reality there is much more depressing, even if people don’t explicitly realise it. Most of the young educated people left Donetsk, either at the beginning, or they just couldn't stand it there and left later. Another thing is that, to some extent, the human psyche began to get used to the war. In one place people were peacefully drinking coffee, and just fifteen minutes away you could be hit by a random bullet.
And now we have this feeling that this is not really happening. And from talking to people in Kyiv, everyone has the same feeling: shock. Several people told me that they expected the conflict in Donbass to escalate. But the fact that they would be shelling Kyiv? I haven't met a person here yet who says they expected it. People perceive reality like a dystopian film. And, in those who want to fight, this shock is mixed with rage.
For example, I met a boy who is a doctor by training, he was involved in Chinese medicine and taught kung fu to children. Now, he’s joined the territorial defence and walks around Kyiv with a Kalashnikov. His wife and children are in a shelter, they haven't left, and he wants to fight for their future. These are their motivations.
All of this is unreal. I may not know Kyiv very well, but I have been here many times before. The Kyiv I’ve known so far is a fascinating city: full of contrasts, both very European and post-Soviet at the same time, very hipsteresque. And now the reminiscences of my earlier travels come back to me, only that the places I knew are now either militarised or completely empty. The street I used to walk on from my hotel to the metro station is now full of armoured cars; the neighbourhood, which was full of pub gardens, is completely deserted. These places already mean something different.