What It’s Like to Live in Ukraine, 4 Years Since Russia’s Invasion

After four years of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, I am writing from Kyiv, during the coldest winter of my life. Inside my apartment, the temperature barely reaches 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Outside, it’s -5. The forecast says it could drop to -20. I sleep in thermal underwear, layered under an insulated tracksuit, wearing a winter hat. Recently, I added gloves. Electricity can disappear for three or more days. Heat and water, too.  Compared to many, I am lucky. I have a gas stove. I am also 37-years-old and I have all my limbs. I can walk up the stairs to my home without an elevator and carry heavy bottles of water. I can even find a yoga studio where I can shower and wash my hair. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for the elderly, for people with disabilities, for veterans without limbs (who need electricity to charge their prosthetics), or for those who have lost their homes and simply have nowhere to go.  Russian attacks have destroyed 80% of our energy and heat infrastructure. This year, Russia has worked to keep Ukraine cold, presumably in an attempt to turn us against each other. Instead, neighbors cook borscht for the entire building. At the Kyiv Sea, someone pulls out a DJ controller and throws a party for the whole district. And when people see a veteran post on Threads that he needs to charge his prosthetic, they raise money for a power station for him. Freezing, but free. That’s how I would describe the mood in Kyiv. We are tired, but we are not broken. And our perseverance can be measured in days.  Two years ago, I wrote about the first 730 days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Now, it has been approximately 1,460 days since that same morning when my life changed completely. On Jan. 13, 2026, I marked the date on my calendar. It is the day Ukraine had officially been resisting longer than the Soviet Union fought Nazi Germany during World War II, the largest and bloodiest conflict of the 20th century. A common meme shared among soldiers: I’ve been fighting longer than my grandfather did. “Ukrainians have a particular sense of humor,” my foreign friends often tell me. In Kyiv, there’s a new joke now: “If the Russian missiles and drones didn’t kill you today, watch out for the dangling icicles.” A lot has changed since my last essay. Iryna Tsybukh, a public activist, a Hospitaller combat medic, and my friend, was killed on May 29, 2024, on the front line near Kharkiv, just days before her 26th birthday. Around then, I was in New York, preparing a benefit reading of the documentary theater piece I created, Diary of War, which Iryna contributed to. American veterans were performing Diary of War to raise funds for Iryna’s medical battalion, Hospitallers. It was unbearable—organizing an event in honor of my friend in New York while our friends were burying her in Kyiv. Iryna changed how we say goodbye to those killed in action. In her will, she asked that mourners at her funeral sing Ukrainian songs; that we do not bring flowers, but donate to Hospitallers. Instead of Soviet-style monuments, Iryna asked for living remembrance.  Now, every day at 9 a.m., people in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities stop to honor those killed by Russia. Yurii Tsybukh, Iryna’s younger brother, recently raised and donated more than $3,000 to continue a university scholarship in her name. And I created the playlist for Iryna’s funeral, a collection of Ukrainian songs that were a soundtrack to her young life: a funeral playlist for my friend. Every person in Ukraine has their own diary of war, and every object does too—from my playlist to the box of Roshen chocolates I bought for a friend. After I purchased them from a store in Kyiv, the chocolates gained a new meaning and value—Russia destroyed the factory. It can feel impossible to feel—to measure—it all. Remembrance. Grief. Survival. The fight for identity. Burying friends. Searching for love. Living in complete uncertainty, with a very short planning horizon. Over the past four years, Ukrainians have learned not just to endure shocks, but to grow from them. We have all had to become masters of kintsugi in our own lives. We have learned how to glue everything back together by morning, to replace windows blown out by drones, to find alternative ways to heat our homes, to invent new ways to keep fighting. War is a total loss of control over your own life. So I hold on to what I can still influence: telling the truth. Faced with propaganda and indifference, I try to share with the world what cannot be understood without living through it. I hope that someone is listening. The full-scale war has required all Ukrainians to make sacrifices that we had not imagined. But the Russians were wrong, the cold cannot break us. We turn to each other for warmth. We look to each other for light in the dark.  We are still here. Even if you no longer see us on the front pages of newspapers. But what we cannot endure is isolation. When the world forgets us, we feel profoundly alone, in the vastness of primal cold and endless darkness. No freezing winter, without heat or electricity, can compare to that.