This day two years ago (my war diary)

Hi, my dear friends!

Today I am continuing to post entries from my diary from two years ago.

How we lived, what we thought, what we felt... Today I read what I wrote then and it seems to me like a distant terrible dream that I hope will never happen again.

The morning was very turbulent. I woke up to explosions that rumbled much closer than the previous days. They were joined by machine-gun bursts. We learnt from the radio that there was still lively fighting near Kiev. Russian military equipment was located somewhere between us and Kiev. On the one hand this gave us hope for a relatively calm day (if, of course, you can call it calm when there are constant explosions), but on the other hand it was painful to realise that the Russian orcs were still on the outskirts of my beloved Kiev. I managed to get through to my friends in Irpin. The news was disturbing. They had been shelled during the night and a neighbouring house had been blown up. All claims by the Russian authorities that their troops are not shelling peaceful residential areas are complete lies. However, we did not expect anything else. Throughout its history, Ukraine has constantly faced the deceitfulness and perfidy of the Russian authorities.

There was very little fuel left in the petrol tank, so I took my bike and went to visit another friend of mine. She and her seven-year-old autistic daughter were all alone. I split in half the eggs our chickens had laid in the last two days and the biscuits my daughter and I had managed to buy yesterday.

There's a little lyrical digression. We have an unexpected addition to our family. Some time ago, perhaps last summer, I told you that a sheepdog came to us. That time everything ended well, on the second day the owners of the dog were found and she returned to her family. I called her Alice, but her real name was Nika. And yesterday Alice came to my gate again. I hoped that her owners were somewhere near, but it turned out not to be so. Naturally I couldn't leave her on the street. In the absence of the internet all I could do was to put a notice on my gate that a dog had been found. I really hope that her owners are looking for her and will turn up sooner or later. Although, of course, we can't rule out the possibility that they have evacuated. But judging by the way they searched for her last time, it's unlikely that they left her behind. Although they might not have been able to return home and Alice, after waiting for them for a while, went to my house, where she had taken shelter before.

So, I cycled, taking Alice with me. I hoped that on the way I might meet some people who would know something about the dog's owners. The ride itself did not enthuse me. To begin with, it was my friend's men's bike, which wasn't too suitable for my height. Secondly, I forgot my gloves (or rather, I didn't even think about them), and the weather today is pretty nasty and the grey sky generously showered me with wet, cold snow. Alice added pepper to my cycling adventure, constantly putting her arse under the front wheel and forcing me to do twists and turns completely unthinkable for my age and cycling skills. But still I managed to get to my friend's house without getting off the bike and without breaking my own nose or the balls I was carrying for her. In exchange, I learnt some additional news. I wouldn't say they were reassuring, but as they say, informed is armed. According to the local thero-defence at night, Rashist tanks tried to get into our village, but, having received pussies from the local thero-defence, were forced to get away. That was the good news. The bad news was that the next two villages along the route were worse prepared for an enemy attack, and the explosions that seemed so close to me were coming from there. I could get no information about Alice's hosts, though I coloured everything we met on our way.

As our prospects for electricity continue to be very dubious, my son-in-law and I had a petrol audit. We regretfully discovered that even using the generator for only an hour a day, we had used up a quarter of the tank in two days... At this rate, we risked being without a generator and, consequently, the ability to charge our gadgets in six days... We therefore decided not to connect electricity in the house, and to use the generator only to charge our gadgets.

Who would have thought that it would be our village that would be on one of the most intense battle lines. We are located west of Kiev near the Warsaw motorway and I was completely confident in our relative safety. But it turned out not to be so. In response to my son-in-law's question about where we were, his friend's response was "fucked." I think that says it all, because it's a word that pretty much sums up what's going on around us.

The bread arrived today. A small bus takes it round the village. One loaf a day. Huge queues. COVID? What COVID? Since the war started, it seems to have been forgotten.

Two fighter planes flew over my house so low it looked like they'd hit the roof. I think they were ours. I didn't have time to look at the identification marks, I was so dumbfounded. The situation is quite paradoxical. The better the defence of Kiev stands, the worse the situation around us. But we are prepared to endure, if only Kyiv would stand firm.