People take shelter in a Kyiv metro station after a Russian strike on Ukraine.
My friends departed Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Now, I question if we inhabit the same world.
Anger, guilt, shame: the war’s most profound, unseen wound is the chasm between those who left and those who remained.
Over years of collaborating with Western colleagues, I had come to accept their lack of full comprehension regarding the lived experience of war. They would request interviews with individuals in occupied Mariupol or express surprise that I couldn’t simply join online meetings at their convenience. I had long reconciled myself to this disconnect – they didn’t need to understand. However, this time, the query came from a fellow Ukrainian.
It was winter, the kind where every online meeting required meticulous scheduling around power outage timetables – and sometimes, as we had begun to darkly joke amongst ourselves, around shelling timetables. The request to reschedule came from a colleague who had relocated to Europe in 2022, and its impact on me was almost physical, precisely because it was she who voiced it. That innocent question should not have felt like an accusation, yet it did. For a considerable time, I struggled to grasp why.
We anticipated that war would bring suffering and division. Yet, there are ruptures that no one forewarned us about – quiet, gradual divisions that, for that very reason, prove the most devastating. One such rift exists not between Ukraine and the rest of the world, but internally, among Ukrainians themselves – a divide between those who departed and those who stayed. This is a subject almost no one discusses, but it is present, and its width increases with each passing month.
I would observe a friend’s social media post about an attack on Kyiv and realize that, for them, the narrative began when it appeared in their feed. For me, it had commenced much earlier – with the nighttime siren, the explosions, the corridor where we huddled with family, the anxious wait to learn who had not survived this time. At times, I would think, “Really, what hypocrisy – to share a post about my city under fire and then close the tab to continue with your pleasant day.” I knew this judgment was unfair, but the thought persisted.
I grasped something else the summer I managed to travel to another part of Europe and reunite with friends. We were seated on a terrace in one of those picturesque cities where life appears orderly and secure, discussing work and future plans. Suddenly, someone’s phone chimed – an air raid alert – and within seconds, everyone else’s followed suit. In Ukraine, these sirens are a constant presence on our phones, but here, in this serene setting, it sounded so incongruous that we all fell silent, as if the sound itself had been muted. Rita was the first to look at her phone and say, “Drones over Kyiv.”
A minute later, another alert sounded – a MiG had taken off, cruise missiles were launched, a ballistic threat. I receive these notifications daily, but in that moment, my heart sank, because in Kyiv, there is my family, the people I love. Fear for them overwhelmed me suddenly and completely. Then, I looked at my friends and saw on their faces the exact same expression – like an unexpected mirror. The same fear, the same helplessness of someone distant, unable to intervene. That was the first time I allowed myself to consider that perhaps they, too, were experiencing this war, just in a different manner. Through screens, through the powerlessness of watching from afar and feeling they had no right even to their own anxieties. It occurred to me that perhaps neither group was misinterpreting the war. Those who left and those who remained were simply no longer living within the same iteration of it.
I hear about their challenges – the bureaucratic hurdles, the solitude, the uncertainty of their refugee status. Simultaneously, I find myself thinking, “My goodness, how fortunate you are. Not that your difficulties aren’t genuine, but they exist within a sphere of safety.” And beneath that, a more subdued, less noble thought surfaces: “Is there anything I can do to help?” I never voice these sentiments aloud. Yet, the thoughts return, accompanied by the shame that they arise at all.
A colleague – also Ukrainian, also among those who had left the country after the full-scale invasion – was explaining her inability to complete her portion of a joint project due to depression. My initial reaction was unpleasant, and I recognized it as such: “Only I get to make excuses here. Are you truly lamenting your depression while we are under bombardment?” And then, the shame followed.
However, I was unprepared for what transpired next. “How long can people continue to use the war to make the rest of us feel guilty?” my colleague inquired.
Her remark lingered with me, not because it caused offense, but because it instilled fear. I had long since begun to feel embarrassed about frequently discussing the reality of my existence, worried it might sound like an attempt to induce guilt, like a competition for who was suffering the most. Hearing it from her, from someone also Ukrainian, also immersed in this conflict despite being in a safe country – it felt like a blow from within our own community.
When my mother returns to Kyiv, I think, “You are here, you are in the same world as me.” Then, “I am glad that someone I love has traveled from safety into a city that is regularly bombed. I am being self-absorbed.” And immediately, “God, I am such an egoist.” Then she departs again, as do all the others who have managed to visit Ukraine. They head back to Kraków, Berlin, Vilnius. I look at photographs from their impromptu weekends, their last-minute concerts, and it’s not just envy I feel. I feel anger. Every trip I undertake is akin to a military operation: no flights out of Ukraine, hours to the border, permits, logistical planning. Why is it so effortless for them? Why not for me? I understand the reasons. That is what exacerbates the situation.
We once resided in different cities but shared the same world. Now, my mother is in Bulgaria, Dasha is in Poland, Ira is in Germany, Katya is in Austria. The geography of our closeness has subtly shifted, so gradually that I didn’t perceive the change until it had already occurred. I do not miss life before the war; I miss the feeling that the people I cherish are living in the same reality as I am. Perhaps this is why my thoughts are so dominated by “I” and “they” – and so lacking in “we.” It is not because our love has diminished, or because anyone chose the wrong side of a border, but because war has a way of placing individuals within distinct versions of the same narrative.
And perhaps this is why I perpetually await the next gathering on a terrace. Not in Berlin, Warsaw, or Vienna. Here.
Diana Berg is a Ukrainian artist, writer, and cultural manager from Mariupol, and the founder of Platform TU, an independent cultural initiative now operating in exile following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
