In a large square in central Kyiv, between luxury hotels and trendy cafes, stands in silence a collection of crushed weapons - tanks, APCs, propulsion cannons, air defense systems and electronic warfare systems - a monument of death in the heart of a large city that has only recently regained its pulse Life.
In some of the sooty vessels brought to the site to lift the morale of the population, shoes and the remains of the half-burnt uniforms of the Russian soldiers who were found dead were still scattered.
Around people rushing to work, cars surround the square.
Kyiv is still here, the Russians are no longer.
Exactly four months since Russia stunned the world and invaded Ukraine, the country of about 44 million people is adjusting to a war routine that is not clear when it will end.
Contrary to all initial estimates, the impromptu Ukrainian army has managed to stop Putin's war machine - but it is doubtful that it will be able to defeat it.
Although the war has disappeared from the headlines and many regions throughout Ukraine, it is still raging with great force in more remote corners of the country, threatening to return and wash it all away.
Remains of the sooty Russian vehicle on the streets of Kyiv, Photo: Tamiram Verg
But until that happens - if at all - Kyiv skillfully models a thin shell of a routine, interrupted from time to time by a sporadic alarm, a checkpoint of stern soldiers or a pile of sandbags in one of the street corners, which civilians pass by seemingly unaware of the war movie set. Their lives.
Malviv night train
We arrived in the Ukrainian capital by night train from Malviv, as part of a delegation from Club 2141 - an organization of former IDF company commanders, which since the outbreak of the war almost immediately mobilized to provide humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian people. The refugees and at the border crossings with Poland, this time they want to understand what the war looks like inside Ukraine.
"In the winter, which has been with the refugees for weeks on end in the endless queues at the border crossings," says Capt. (Res.) Nissim Tal, a battalion commander in combat engineering.
Tens of thousands of refugees stood in line at any given moment, in the cold below zero, for 7, 8 and sometimes even 10 hours.
We wrapped them in thermal blankets, provided them with food and hot drinks, and moved the elderly and the disabled in wheelchairs to the top of the queue - all in order to alleviate some of the inconceivable human suffering. "
A Ukrainian soldier beside a burned-out gas station on the outskirts of Kyiv,
In central Kyiv, the scars of war hardly adorn the buildings - if any neglect is evident it is a remnant of the communist era of the Soviet Union and not of the renewed Russian imperialism.
But as you advance to the outskirts of the city, the wounds on the skyline open: ruined buildings, burned gas stations, blown up bridges and of course many hundreds of tank obstacles spread out along the roads - still waiting for the Russian Armored Forces, if they dare to return one day.
Only when passing the distance by car do you realize how close the Russian army was to the center of the Ukrainian capital.
The chilling names from the new editions - Irpin, Bocha and other suburbs - are about as far from the beating heart of Kyiv as the distance from Herzliya or Raanana from the heart of Tel Aviv.
The bodies are no longer scattered in the streets and the supermarket in Bocha is full of all good things, but a huge queue of people outside the center for humanitarian aid reminds us that we are still in a war zone.
Mirrors from a horror movie
In Bocha, one of the most horrific massacres has taken place since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine: between 300 and 450 civilians were killed in cold blood by frustrated Russian soldiers a relatively short time before they withdrew from the region.
Despite this, a tour of what was until recently one of the fashionable suburbs of Kyiv reveals that the Russians, contrary to the picture portrayed in the media, did not sow indiscriminate destruction.
In the streets where the armored columns advanced, there was a great deal of destruction, but next to them stood manicured villas with no trace of scratches, which the war - quite literally - had just passed by.
Residents of Irpin try to rehabilitate the ruins // Photo: Nicholas Bendork
Rustik, the guide who accompanies us further from Lviv, takes us to a small industrial building at the end of a plaza on which the larval marks of the tanks and APCs are still visible. One would watch his friend being brutally abused, and then their captors would swap roles.At the end of the nightmare, the prisoners were taken to the building's small courtyard - where they were shot to death.
Today, only a few small bouquets of flowers quietly testify to the horror that took place just about two and a half months ago right where we stand.
But Rustic, who arrived in Bocha immediately after being liberated from the Russians, pulls out a video he shot in the yard showing bodies in a state of decay scattered on the ground in poses as if taken from a horror movie.
Into the ghost neighborhoods
We get in the car and take a short drive towards Irpin - another name that made headlines around the world just a few months ago, also in the context of death and destruction.
Indeed, in Irpin the destruction is more widespread: here one can already see entire neighborhoods where almost every building has been damaged or destroyed, and they have become ghostly areas.
Scattered here and there are smashed cars where hundreds of holes created by the shards of shells adorn what is left of them.
In one of the ruined apartments, on the basement floor, still stands a Christmas tree left behind by the fleeing occupants, and a large doll is trapped between the bars of the street-level window, like another victim of the war.
A ruined building in Irpin, Ukraine, Photo: Tamir Morag
We climb to the apartment on the first floor and feel that we are intruding on the privacy of its occupants, even though they have not been here for a long time and it is highly doubtful that they will ever return to it.
The floor is covered with debris and rubble, but the kitchen still has a table, one chair, a baking oven, several pots and cabinets - all exposed to the street in silence like a museum exhibit, as the window shattered from the top one of the explosions.
On a nearby building, on one of the ruined balconies, someone hung the yellow-blue flag of Ukraine.
We are about to leave the ghost neighborhood, and suddenly we hear voices from one of the buildings.
Two smiling faces of middle-aged men peek out the window at us and open up a conversation with us using Rustic, who serves as an interpreter.
"We came back here because we have no other place to go," Sergei and Sergei say, giggling as they give us their identical names.
Israeli Volunteer Organization 2141 in Ukraine // Photo: Peter Gizonterman, Tamir Morag
"This is our home, our place. But as long as Russia continues to exist on the map there will be no peace in Ukraine."
When asked what they think of Israel in the context of the war, the two answer that they are grateful for the humanitarian aid but are aware that Israel has many problems of its own.
The war is not over
In the evening, after we reach the hotel area, the alarm horns are suddenly activated.
The streets are crowded and practiced Kyiv residents continue to walk without addressing the noisy nuisance.
Ukrainian warning systems are less advanced than those in Israel, and alarms are sounded over a radius of tens of kilometers every time the Russians launch missiles or bombs into the area.
In about two hours, at nine o'clock in the evening, the restaurants and places of entertainment will be closed, and at 11 o'clock the city will go into a night curfew until six o'clock in the morning.
No one knows how to give a convincing answer as to why the curfew continues, and it seems that the Ukrainians are sticking to it mainly to preserve the sense of vigilance of the population and remind themselves that they are still at war.
Fresh graves of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war in Levib, Photo: Tamiram Verg
Yet even though Kiev has managed to drive away the Russian armored surge that shattered on its outskirts, and return to a certain kind of routine, the war in Ukraine continues in full force.
In fact, the fighting force has not diminished but is now concentrated entirely on one front in the southeast of the country, instead of five separate efforts led by the Russians at the beginning of the fighting.
In closed talks, Ukrainian officials admit that the number of casualties is very high and that the Russians are using tremendous firepower in the Luhansk and Donetsk districts, the like of which was not seen at the beginning of the war in the Kyiv region.
The numbers of losses they cite, not to mention, raise worrying question marks about their ability to endure over time.
Checkpoints against tanks in Maidan Square in Kiev, Photo: Tamir Morag
On the other hand, the entire nation is mobilized for its struggle for survival and there is no noticeable erosion in the national resilience of the Ukrainians.
The manpower reserves are very large and arms continue to flow from the West, even if not always at the pace that military commanders and statesmen would like to see.
In addition, the Russians continue to suffer from severe problems of motivation and manpower, and as far as is known also heavy losses.
In the evening, in the bar of the hotel where we gathered following the curfew, an officer from the delegation of Club 2141 estimates that the Ukrainian lines in the southeast of the country will hold up, even though the Russian attack is currently conducted with almost no brakes.
I stare at him a little skeptically, hoping I just heard a supervised appreciation rather than a wish.
Were we wrong?
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