One thousand seconds. The time that elapses between peaceful sleep and the blurry rush to the air raid shelter, perhaps a bag in hand with some food and water. If time permits, a good book in the other hand. And in the middle of those 17 minutes, the transition from unconscious dreams to the platitudes and smiles of the shelter is marked by the raucous call of a mobile phone. ‘Attention! Air Raid Alert! Proceed to the nearest shelter!’
One thousand seconds is the interlude between a joyous hopeful life and the grief in the news of a loved one or a friend lost at the front or in another barbaric aerial bombardment. In one thousand seconds a life is upended.
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Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand minutes. The time that slips away between the rising of the Sun and the blackness of night, a day in which jobs must be done, family helped, and the chores of living must be accomplished. Bread to be bought, coffee to be drunk with friends, dumplings to be prepared, perhaps an exam to be taken, a letter to be written.
Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand hours. The time in which the battlefront mutates and shifts like a writhing serpent, like an amoeba prodding and exploring here and there. The time in which international commitments and exchanges come and go, in which uncertain alliances and friendships transform, in which threats and counter-threats emerge and dissipate.
In these 42 days, the world itself can be recast, and centres of power and prestige briefly take prominence with announcements and declarations. Sometimes they work in Ukraine’s favour, sometimes they do not.
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Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand days. The time in which an invasion is started and in which a nation’s future is at stake. The time since Feb. 24, 2022, when a nation’s leader, offered the chance to leave the capital, pointed out that he needed ammunition, not a ride, a statement of mettle that will resonate across the ages. Tanks and armoured vehicles lined up in queues to take Kyiv, airports fell and were regained. Around the city’s periphery, evidence of carnage and brutality.
The city was to be hobbled and brought into mastery in three days. But one thousand days later, the city, under the ravages of drones and missiles, continues its life. An air raid alert on a sunny afternoon elicits a contemptuous rebuff. People walk with confidence, their stride unflinching, their steely eyes undeterred from a purpose. A city under siege.
Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand months. Projecting back one thousand months, we find ourselves in 1941, another time of darkness through which Kyiv prevailed. The capital of a republic buried within an empire might well have been resigned to insignificance. Whatever reluctance it may have had to be part of the Marxist experiment, Kyiv stood as the proud, productive centre of intellectual and administrative activity, not only of the whole Soviet empire, but in the inescapable significance of Ukraine itself.
Ukraine’s rich black soil and its natural resources attracted swarms of the Nazi foe, like flies to meat, to encircle the city. By the end of the Battle of Kyiv, the city was subjugated, an outpost of the Nazi Reich. Over 600,000 Soviet soldiers had been ensnared. Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, his brutal weapon of state terror, dynamited the buildings along Khreshchatyk Street, the seat of the occupying Nazi powers. The city centre was obliterated.
Used as a pretext for slaughter, the SS began to round up Kyiv’s Jewish population. In a mere two days in September 1941, 33,731 men, women and children were herded in small groups to the Babyn Yar ravine northwest of the city and shot in the head by soldiers of the infamous Einsatzgruppe, their bodies dumped in mass graves. Alongside them, communists, gypsies and any other people undesirable to the Aryan plan were murdered. Over 100,000 souls left this world at Babyn Yar.
Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand years. Traveling back into the medieval, the year 1024, we find the city 42 years into its tenure as the capital of Kyivan Rus, a position it would retain for another 216 years until 1240. It’s a bustling city under the leadership of Yaroslav the Wise. This first Slavic state was at the maximum extent of its commercial and political power, stretching northwards into modern day Scandinavia.
Kyiv was a vibrant hub at the southern end of the state, the city enjoyed a place at the cross-roads of early Old Norse and Slavic cultures, with an admixture of Islamic, Christian, Jewish and other religions. Goods flowed in and out from east and west, from north and south. It was in this time that Kyiv found its feet and established many of its rich traditions, the cultural and religious variegation and tapestry which perfuses the city today.
Eventually, internal rivalries, the decline of the Byzantine empire, its major trading partner, would weaken the Kyivan Rus until the Mongol invasion of the 13th century put an end to its glory. Kyiv would fall into obscurity as a provincial capital lying on the edges of powerful empires, but it always kept its head held high, the focus of attention in early modern Ukrainian culture and the capital of nascent Ukrainian states before its re-emergence as a modern city.
The rise and fall of empires, like the tides, have buffeted Kyiv from all sides for over a thousand years, swelling, sometimes consuming, eventually receding into the pages of history.
Yet Kyiv stands.
One thousand hopes. Kyiv remains an inspiration for its resilience and courage. In 1989, as the Soviet empire began to crumble and Kyiv braced itself for another transformation into a new era, the city of Edinburgh, capital of Scotland, reached out its arms and embraced Kyiv as a twin city.
Two cities with ancient universities, two cities forged in quite different historical circumstances and yet with similar aspirations and influences. Centres of trade, centres of intellectual enlightenment, centres of picturesque and religiously inspired architecture, centres of fierce self-confidence, and centres of tenacity and persistence in an unpredictable world. Kyiv and Edinburgh were a natural match.
It was almost instinctive that after the Second World War, some of those who sought to escape the post-war chaos in the East would migrate to Edinburgh and from this more modern furnace, a unique friendship has been forged and fused between our two capitals.
One thousand days into the Russo-Ukrainian war, we look with admiration to our twin city and understand that whatever the conclusion to this time, within the heart of Kyiv is an enduring spirit, a beat that has endured for more than a thousand years.
Everything has been thrown, and continues to be hurled, at the metropolis. Yet those who would doubt its strength and fortitude underestimate its history. Kyiv has seen much before and remains undaunted. One thousand hopes, one thousand plans, one thousand years ahead. How can we not love you, Kyiv?
Kyiv stands.
Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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