Editor’s Note:
The Counteroffensive team will continue to report from Kyiv, but we support any member of their team that wants to go back to their hometowns to be with their families.
We also offered to take any member of the team to Warsaw for a week, at least until this blows over. They all refused to leave their country. I hope this shows, in some small sense, the grit, determination and courage of the small team I’m privileged to lead.
The sun floods the room like a Christmas postcard: snow-covered trees, silence, a fairy tale.
But it ends at the windowpane.
I stand in the middle of the room in two sweaters and a robe, clutching a cup of hot tea as if it could save me. The thermometer indoors reads +9°C (48°F). It’s the third day without heat, and every hour the cold settles deeper into the walls.
In my arms is my six-month-old son, Ustym. I hold him tighter than I should, trying to give him my warmth. And suddenly it hits me: I don’t know how to protect him from the cold.
I can endure it. He can’t.
I cry quietly so he won’t hear. The tears on my sleeve are warmer than the air in the room.
I pack to leave the city.
After paywall:
What the biggest shock was for Myroslava during the freezing temperatures;
What Myroslava and Nastia recalled as they were leaving the capital;
Why Nastia felt ashamed.
