2022: Calendar of War

January

As 2022 rolled in, there was only one topic of conversation in the Ukrainian capital. 

Everyone says war is going to happen, and I laugh because the war is already here. Foreign editors keep asking, “Are you available, we have an assignment?” Others say, “Could you recommend a fixer for a Pulitzer-winning reporter who is flying to Kyiv?” Some just ask about flights into the city. Their questions make me chuckle as I think, “What else could happen here?” 

But I buy extra tourniquets in advance anyway.

February

Less than 24 hours before the Russian invasion, Kochetova drove across Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, which, together with neighboring Luhansk, makes up the Donbas region. 

Ukrainian government troops have been fighting in the region since 2014 — when Moscow annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind the breakaway forces. 

She woke up to news of the invasion in the city of Kostyantynivka. 

I wake up with 40 missed calls on my phone. I haven’t heard a thing. 

For some reason, I always sleep like a baby in the Donbas. Mom said they are in the basement.

I’m driving like crazy with my friend and producer Dima across the Donetsk region.

He needs to join his volunteer military unit. 

We hug on the 11th floor of the Kramatorsk Hotel. 

He left me three packs of cigarettes. “I know you don’t smoke, but at war everyone smokes. Take it just in case,” he says.

Later I’ll agree with him. Everyone – who survives – smokes.  

March

In early March, Kochetova traveled to Irpin, a suburb on the outskirts of northwest Kyiv. Captured by Russian forces shortly after the invasion, it became a symbol of Ukrainian resilience before it was retaken toward the end of the month.    

This city has no fear. It has muscles, a backbone and teeth. But no fear.

Kyiv looks ghostly but brave.

We rush into Irpin with colleagues, it’s still half occupied by Russians. Ukrainian soldiers at the last checkpoint keep saying – be aware of civilian cars, don’t rush the last crossroad, bodies of killed civilians could be mined, don’t touch, don’t get close.

Fights are happening on the other side of town. High speed. Dead flowers. Frozen hands of civilians in the park and endless shelling. We will leave Irpin. In 15 minutes. The car carrying journalist Brent Renaud was attacked and he was shot in the head.

In Buena Vista, the weird bar that never sleeps and sells alcohol to foreign reporters despite a ban on alcohol, the most silent day started.

I wish I could wake up, but I can’t.

April

When Ukrainian forces regained control of Bucha five weeks after Russian soldiers occupied the small town on the outskirts of Kyiv, the images that emerged shocked the world.   

Bodies in civilian clothes lay on blood-stained pavements, some with their hands tied behind their backs. Fresh graves lay in people’s backyards. Houses were ruined or damaged and cars mangled.

But Kochetova wanted to focus on something else. 

Photos of tortured civilians in Bucha are appearing all over the world, but I wish to tell the stories only of those who are alive.

Maria, who said she was in her 80s, started to hug me immediately when we met. 

“Julia. Same as my granddaughter, same name, Julia,” she said. 

Apologizing for her dirty jacket she explained that she had “been sleeping in that for a month.” 

On the other side of the road at the school building that had until recently been converted into a Russian base they call her Granny.

“We’re going to win,” they said. 

She started to cry. 

“What if they come back,” she said. “I was 4 when World War II happened, but what’s happening now …” 

There are broken doors at the apartments on her floor and blue roses on her curtains. Nearby there are broken bones in the grave next to the church. 

Maria can’t call her relatives. Russian soldiers took the SIM cards from residents' phones.    

She tries to give me her ring inscribed with the words “bless you and keep you,” an important benediction in the Orthodox Church. 

But I can’t take it. Instead I leave her warm gloves and promise to find her Julia.

Later, I found her relatives who recognized her pictures, and she was reunited with her son.

May

With Western military aid flowing into Ukraine and Russian troops bogged down by low morale and logistical challenges, Ukrainian forces began to gain ground near the heavily bombed city of Kharkiv in the country’s northeast.  

The bodies of a dozen Russian soldiers lie in the shallow pit around a foot deep. 

I skip the funerals of friends and colleagues, but I watch the dead Russians as they’re placed into body bags. 

I have nowhere to go anyway. This is my homeland.    

Volunteers search their pockets for documents, details and evidence that might help to identify them. Some find rubles and Ukrainian candles.  

A military ID reveals one of the dead was born in 2001. 

“Same as me,” says one of the volunteers next to the body bags. 

The beautiful sunlight does not help.   

June

Four months after the war began, Kochetova attended a ceremony at President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office to honor her old friend from journalism school, Maksym Medynskyi, who died after re-enlisting in the Ukrainian military. 

There she watched his wife, Tetyana Medynska, accept the Order of Merit on his behalf. 

It’s the official ceremony – formal and a bit staged. 

To lead a country at war is to look into the eyes of relatives of fallen soldiers. 

I greet Maksym’s wife, Tetyana, but hide my eyes.

Maks and I studied journalism together years ago. He was the first one who jumped up to stop a fire in our dormitory. 

Later, he joined infantry troops on the frontline. 

Then he re-enlisted in the military in February. 

He was killed near Izium in the Kharkiv region.

I wish I could tell him how proud of him I am.

July

The strike landed on a maternity unit less than 100 feet from her parents’ home in the central city of Vinnytsya. 

As I call my mom, the seconds seem like hours. 

“Explosions in Vinnytsya,” the news alert on my phone says.

We turn the car and drive.

“They hit near the maternity hospital,” the alert says. “Four rockets.”

That’s next door. I go pale. 

I know what missiles do, the scale of the casualties, the destruction they wreak. I know of the bodies, the wounds, the missing limbs. 

I know too much — a career hazard. 

Everyone’s asking if my parents are OK. 

After what seems like an eternity, Mom picks up the phone. They’re safe.   

She tells me she grabbed the neighbors’ kids and ran into the basement. 

Less than a week later I’m watching a Panzerhaubitze 2000 tank at work. I hate artillery fire, it’s pure death. 

I spot a sunflower crushed under its tracks. 

No way it can blossom now, but can I?

August

With Ukrainian forces making gains in and around the city of Kharkiv, the country’s blue and yellow flag started to reappear in and around the city. Farther south in Avdiivka, battles continued to rage.  

Scorched earth. As the shell lands nearby, bits of earth fly into my face. 

My friend tells me my hair has grown.    

We haven't seen each other since the winter, or rather, we haven't seen each other since the war.

We’re somewhere near the frontline, although it’s hardly defined and routinely changes. 

Waving a yellow and blue flag in Vesele, a village in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the teenager tells us it is his “checkpoint.” 

“I need this flag because half of my village are orcs,” he adds, using Ukrainian slang for Russian troops and those sympathetic to Moscow. 

September

The site containing hundreds of graves was discovered in a forest close to Izyum after a rapid counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces retook the northeastern city in mid-September. 

As authorities began recovering bodies from the mass burial site, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it would help show the world “what the Russian occupation has led to.”

Open graves, body parts, Izium forest silent. I’m silent. 

The smell is nauseating and inescapable as rows of graves are uncovered, and it becomes clear that some of these people were tortured before they died. 

Another contained a small family.

Another sign says, “17 bodies ZSU,” making it clear they were members of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Standing nearby, two foreign journalists make small talk.

 "I have been waiting for accreditation for more than a week.” one says. “Just arrived. But there should be an exhumation tomorrow too, there are still bodies here, right?”

I want to scream. Instead I stand there in silent fury.

October

Having suffered repeated setbacks on the battlefield, Russia began targeting civilian infrastructure across Ukraine with Iranian made drones. Carrying explosives with a distinctive buzz, they terrorized Kyiv and other cities across the country.     

My boyfriend and I are woken by explosions. 

First, a second, then a third.

I think it's a bit weird to kiss his back afterward.

I jump into my jeans. 

How gross it is to have to walk down your street wearing a bulletproof vest.

I fall down. What a weird noise. Now I know how these drones sound.

There is no air in the chest, only smoke. 

These days everyone smokes: doctors, policemen, firefighters. 

There is always smoke in my lungs.

The woman is hiding behind a soldier’s leg at the underground parking lot, a few feet from where the strike hit.

As long as we hug like this in shelters, we cannot be defeated. 

November

It was a humiliating setback for Russian President Vladimir Putin as his forces withdrew from the southern city Kherson. Residents hugged and kissed the arriving Ukrainian troops in rapturous scenes. 

But when the celebrations died down, the devastation became clear and booby traps lay in wait for soldiers and civilians.   

The day after Kherson's liberation, painful stories start to come out. 

There is a woman's body in the yard, surrounded by yellow leaves. 

Children beg soldiers for badges. Part of a damaged TV tower lies in the park.

In a basement, where Russians were torturing people with electricity, there is black sticky fungus, bottles of bloody urine and inscriptions on the walls. 

“God give me strength,” one reads. 

A drawing of a tiny house reminds me of home.

I can hardly breathe. 

December

With Christmas approaching, the missile strikes on Kyiv keep coming, forcing residents to take shelter underground. 

People, kids and dogs have crowded into the University metro station in Kyiv. 

The younger ones with laptops share their mobile internet and continue to work. 

There is little fear among the hundreds and hundreds of people but no phone signal.

The city seems to have strengthened its resolve. 

At the start of the war people were confused, crying and desperately lonely. 

Now they seem to have found their fight. 

As air raid sirens wail nearby, the Volodymyr cathedral is surrounded by people in uniform. They are burying a soldier. 

We are alive and ready to fight.      

January

The missile strike on the apartment block in Dnipro that left 40 dead and dozens more injured came as many were observing the traditional Old New Year and Orthodox New Year. 

Widely condemned internationally, it came amid a wider barrage of Russian cruise missiles across Ukraine.

"Purgatory, it's purgatory," my friend Anton says. 

He looks at the rubble and then at me as I stare at the thread that has sewn up his face wound. I carefully ask how his relatives are. “All good, no worries,” he replies.

Questions like this to a survivor can be like pulling a thread from a wound.

It feels like I am inside a hurricane – volunteers, firefighters, journalists, rescuers, territorial defense, politicians, dog walkers, the smell of soup, the smell of death, the smell of construction debris, the smell of tea, the smell of those who survived. 

Next to the shell of this building in Dnipro there is a consensus among my colleagues — victory seems a long way away.  

A young guy in uniform carries dusty toys found on the first floor. He holds them like a child. 

“I wanna go to a playground.”

“It's dirty there, debris landed there, dear,” the woman tries to explain to her son.

Half an hour later, volunteers start sweeping the playground.

All over the yard – memorial flowers begin to be laid.

Holes where windows once stood are covered with plastic and glowing.

You say "purgatory," but why does it hurt so much?