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Kiev, February 2023. Air raid alarms are repeatedly called, and one year after the start of the war, people in the Ukrainian capital routinely go to the subway station – which serves as a shelter.
SPIEGEL crisis reporter Thore Schröder is in the country for the sixth time within a year.
He observes the changed situation in the city.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL:
»In the fall there were the first major Russian drone and rocket attacks on civilian infrastructure, and there were power outages, and the heating system was also affected.
In the winter, now, about a year after the start of the invasion, the people here have adjusted to a certain extent to these new conditions.
That means they live with the curfew, they live with the power outages, and they also live with the economic insecurity.”
Kyiv / June 2022
During the past year, the city felt like a completely normal European metropolis at times – albeit with a curfew back then.
One hundred days after the start of the war, Thore Schröder filmed the summery atmosphere on the streets and in the parks, a long-awaited calm reigned.
But this only lasted for a short time: Exactly two days later, on day 102 after the beginning of the war, he rushed to the scene of the next rocket attack.
Darnyzkij near Kiev / June 2022
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL:
"
We were there and experienced very nervous rescue and security forces there and also spoke to local residents who were also very nervous because they were basically torn out of this new normal."
SPIEGEL reporter Thore Schröder spent almost six months last year in Ukraine, in all corners of the country.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL
»I arrived here for the first time in the second week of March, back then to an almost depopulated city, and for weeks we heard the thunder of gunfire from the suburbs where there was fighting.
At the beginning of April we came to these suburbs, i.e. in Irpin, Bucha and Borodjanka, and we could see what the Russians had done in terms of death and destruction.«
In the spring, Schröder documented again and again the widespread destruction of the cities - like here near Chernihiv, north of Kiev.
A city that was strategically important to the Russian troops as they advanced.
During the four-week siege, the Russian army deliberately attacked the civilian population here.
Chernihiv / April 2022
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL
»We met people in their apartment blocks who were under fire.
We met survivors and we also visited the place where fugitives, where fugitives who had escaped over a footbridge, were then bombarded with cluster munitions.«
Everyday life in the war, in the middle of Europe.
Irpin / March 2022
Irpin, one of the suburbs of Kiev, became the scene of fierce fighting and a subsequent flight in March.
Photographer Johanna Maria Fritz was there when the last residents left their home on foot across the remains of the only bridge.
Irpin / February 2023
Thore Schröder is now returning to Irpin.
The destroyed bridge will be converted into a memorial, and a new connection will be created right next to it.
The SPIEGEL reporter inspects the reconstruction work in the suburb.
In this partially destroyed apartment building, people are already living again on the lower floors - but the upper floors are still a single construction site.
The construction workers show where bullets have hit.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL
»There's a bomb, there's a bomb, and there, and there – and back there too, right?
«
Almost eleven months after the Russian army left, the destruction is still omnipresent here: Some of the houses have burned down – and are riddled with shells.
Thore Schröder, DER SPIEGEL
“The city's chief architect told us a few days ago that a billion dollars is actually needed for the complete reconstruction of the city.
However, only a fraction of this is available to the administration here, and that is why the residents also need donations from private individuals and from many international foundations.
And this reconstruction is urgently needed.
Not only are the residents of the city returning, but more and more refugees are pushing here from the east and south of the country, i.e. from the areas where there is fighting or where the Russians are right now.«
The challenges are by no means only of a material nature.
After a year of state of emergency, the reporter in Ukraine encounters a conflicting mood.
Thore Schroeder, DER SPIEGEL
“I keep noticing a kind of purposeful optimism among the people here in the Ukraine.
And that's because defeat is not an option for them at all.
But at the same time there is a deep sense of insecurity, even to the point that you, as reporters, keep asking us when the war will end.
Of course we can't say that.
And people just want to know whether their fathers, their brothers or their husbands will still be drafted into military service, whether they can send their children to school or kindergarten and whether they will still have a job.
And then, above all, there is great exhaustion.
We especially felt that here in two major interviews recently.
We interviewed Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko and then President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
And they both seemed extremely exhausted.
You really can't afford to be exhausted in your offices."