Paris, June 27, 2024

Dear readers,

I woke up today reading a message from a different Olga, a girl I met when I was at a French university in Kyiv. She wrote that she was on her way to the town in the Donbas where her husband Pavlo was located. He joined the army. Before the Great War, he was a construction manager. She hasn't seen him for six months and ten days.

Here's what she told me: "Everywhere, flowers, fields of sunflowers and wheat are mixed with bomb craters. Everywhere, buildings whose windows were shattered by explosions and all of a sudden, a lush balcony with flower crowns, as if saying to the russians [Olga and Sasha chose not to capitalize "russian" and "russia"]: ''Fuck you!'' I literally fell in love with the Donbas. If I could take a photo, I would. But it's forbidden."

I saw Olga a few weeks ago in Paris after we hadn't seen each other for 15 years. She was in France to attend the christening of a mutual friend's child. I was very moved by our reunion. When she saw my baby, I could see in her eyes that she was very sad. She told me how difficult the last few months had been. "I'm going mad. My man has been on the front lines for almost three years. I'd so much like to have children." We kept in touch and when she returned to Ukraine, I called her to tell me their story.

On February 23, 2022, the night of the rachist attack [a contraction of "russian" and "fascist"], Olga wrote to a French friend: "We've decided we're not leaving Ukraine." But on February 25, they fled with Pavlo to Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv occupied for several weeks by the russians and where they committed war crimes. Because of his passion for fishing, her husband knew small trails which they used to escape.

All she had in her suitcase was a collection of articles by the activist writer Oksana Zabuzhko ("And Again I Get Into a Tank," untranslated), a pair of jeans, a sweater and some make-up. She never imagined the attack would last this long. She told me that her mom, who is such a kind woman, had, in the early days of the war, "everything needed to make Molotov cocktails." She and her husband took refuge for ten days in Berdychiv, 180 kilometers west of Kyiv. After a bomb exploded nearby, Pavlo insisted she go to France to stay with friends. He accompanied her to the border in their Renault. When they reached the last checkpoint, soldiers gave him a summons to join the army. He decided to join.

Since March 16, 2022, he has been a machine-gunner. He has been in Severodonetsk, south of Bakhmut, since April 8, but he kept it a secret from Olga for a long time. Since then, he hasn't been on rotation, apart from a few days' rest and a month's training in England. My friend arrived in France, in the Ardennes, in early March 2022. Her mental condition was so bad that she has no recollection of what happened during those weeks. All she remembers is that one day, her husband called to say goodbye and that she had to get on with her life. She answered jokingly that she had the right to remain his wife and wait for him. Miraculously, he survived the fighting in Severodonetsk.

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