The Arithmetic of Survival: Four Years On

Tomorrow marks exactly four years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Four years since I woke up in our apartment in the center of Kyiv to a sound that wasn’t news, and wasn’t politics. It was the distinct, heavy sound of your life abruptly ceasing to belong to you.

The timing was aggressively absurd. Two days earlier, I had just gotten married—a wedding that almost didn’t happen because it was only three days prior that I had finally tested clear of COVID.

The Logistics of Panic

The first hours of a war aren’t cinematic. There are no sweeping camera angles or swelling string sections. It is entirely mechanical. You inventory documents. Phones. Water. Fuel. Escape routes. And, crucially, a car we didn’t actually possess.

The hardest obstacle to getting west wasn’t a lack of bravery or some grand ideological clash. It was traffic.

Imagine your city gridlocked at rush hour, then scale that up until it’s an entire country trying to move in the exact same direction. It was a river of headlights and pure panic, inching forward while missiles flying overhead kindly reminded you that the universe does not care about your itinerary.

Fear does strange things to people. Friends left without us because they didn’t want to wait. Call it what it is: people chose themselves. I get it. But it still stings.

Twenty Minutes and One Backpack

When I finally managed to secure a vehicle, I messaged my four closest friends with an ultimatum that felt brutal, but strictly necessary:

“I am driving west. If you want to come, we have space. You have 20 minutes to decide.”

I added one rule: One backpack. That’s it.

Because if you allow it to become “just five more minutes” or “just one more bag,” the whole fragile operation collapses. At that point, you’re no longer making choices about luggage—you are making choices about who gets left behind.

At the border, the part I still can’t unsee wasn’t the panic, but the horrible calm. I watched fathers kissing their kids goodbye because they didn’t have the right exemption documents, and they knew it wasn’t even worth attempting to cross. They weren’t angry. There was no theatrical drama. Just the chilling composure of a man doing the grim mathematics in his head and realizing the answer is “no.”

Sandwiches and Shrapnel

When we finally crossed the border, I hadn’t eaten in two days and had barely drank a drop of water. A friend met us there—having driven halfway across Poland without any guarantee of when we’d actually arrive—and handed us sandwiches. Just normal, unremarkable sandwiches. I ate them so fast I gave myself brutal indigestion.

For the first time since the sky tore open over Kyiv, my nervous system stood down. I fell asleep in the passenger seat and snored the entire way to Katowice, my body aggressively trying to reclaim the last 48 hours of missing sleep in a single go.

Not long after, I went back.

The Gap Between Geopolitics and Reality

My first job back inside Ukraine was fixing for a Belgian news crew. We went straight into Bucha and Irpin just after they were liberated. The ground was still littered with unexploded ordnance. At one point, I tripped over a shoe. When I looked down, I realized it still had someone’s foot inside it.

That right there is the gap people continually try to bridge with empty slogans and sterile television hot takes. That is the sheer, unbridgeable distance between “geopolitics” and what a land war actually is.

Four years on, I am still here, doing what I can. I’m still hoping for the day things feel normal again, all while knowing perfectly well that “normal” doesn’t return neatly after you’ve lived through the first days of this.

So tomorrow, if you read one thing about Ukraine, let it be this:

Don’t forget Ukraine.

Not when it’s cold and dark and the headlines get repetitive. Not when there’s a shiny new crisis competing for your screen time. Not when people start treating the systematic destruction of a country like background noise.

Because for millions of Ukrainians, it isn’t background noise. It’s the sound you wake up to. And it’s the quiet border goodbye you never stop replaying.