The sun is at its zenith as shorn-headed boys somersault off the pier and splash thunderously into the spangled Dnieper River. Out they come and in they go again, jumping, tumbling, flopping, wallowing and laughing with the infinite abandon of youth. This scene, with all its qualities of an impressionist painting, is my most enduring memory of my journey up the Dnieper River from Odesa to Kyiv in the summer of 2018. It encapsulated for me a nation that appeared supremely at ease with itself, gratified with its peaceful, post-Soviet existence.
I’ve thought of those boys often since the war began, of the father and his young daughters drowsing on the wharf in their swimming costumes, of the women in bright polka-dotted dresses walking through the overgrown park at nearby St Catherine’s Cathedral in this riverside city of Kherson. It was one of many stops on the country’s major tributary, which arcs north-eastwards from the Black Sea through farmland quilted in sunflowers, scattered with pitch-roofed farmhouses and burnished occasionally with the domes of Eastern Orthodox churches.
The majesty of these cathedrals — some built by Russia’s advancing imperialists in the 18th century — was at odds with the expansive, unassuming people I met along the way: the woman dripping honey onto my wrist for a tasting at Odesa’s market; the old men waving from beneath candy-striped umbrellas propped in their tinnies as they fished along the river; the young man showing me how to use the Geiger counter during a tour of Chernobyl offered by his newly-established tour company.
'The concept of war was never far away: this region had once been the volatile borderlands between the Ukrainian Cossacks, Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks, and the history is rich in the local guides’ retelling.'
In Kremenchug, a woman welcomed me into her home for an afternoon tea of korovay (home-made bread), khrustyky (fried pastry with honey) and apples and pears from her flourishing vegetable garden. Spring flowers were blooming in pots hanging outside her back door, and all along the garden’s clipped borders; her daughter carried a pet rabbit in a basket, and a kitten lay snoozing on the floor. It’s a snapshot tucked safely into my memory.
But the concept of war was never far away: this region had once been the volatile borderlands between the Ukrainian Cossacks, Crimean Tatars and Ottoman Turks, and the history is rich in the local guides’ retelling. In Odesa, I explored the