Surviving after the invasion: Kyiv’s first recovery

After the invasion, it’s hard to say what feels more accurate — “we’ve somewhat recovered from the attack” or “we’ve somewhat gotten used to the attack.”

We’ve basically driven the russian scum out of Kyiv region. A few russian saboteurs still run through the tree lines, but they operate in small scattered groups and don’t pose the same threat as large formations. Even civilians shoot at them — which is no surprise, because local hunters know the terrain far better than invaders from Siberia.

Global support and self-organization

Two things inspire me:
1 — The whole civilized world supports Ukraine. From giants like Google and Microsoft to tiny startups I couldn’t possibly list them all. If you’re reading this — thank you.
2 — The astonishing scale of self-organization.
Countless people, many of them strangers to one another, unite for a single goal: to push the aggressor back. Many refugees — women and children from eastern Ukraine who fled the russians — need food and warmth. Someone fixes vehicles for the military, someone fuels them, someone brews coffee and tea (we need tons — it’s cold in March and there are many people), someone cooks, someone weaves camouflage nets and sews warm clothes.
It reminded me of Maidan in 2014 — strangers helping each other — but now it’s happening across the whole country.

IT community after the invasion

Beyond food, fuel and warm clothes, the war hit our profession too.
I saw the IT community react instantly: people helped preserve crucial archives, others spun up mirrors for websites so information wouldn’t disappear, and some patched critical plugins and themes for defense initiatives free of charge. This isn’t heroics — it’s people who know what to do and do it well.
One separate area is the occupiers’ propaganda resources. Saying there are many of them is an understatement, but… every time an enemy resource “accidentally” stopped working, someone would say “a cat walked across the keyboard.” It turns out Ukraine has a lot of cats.

The most armed city in the world

And one more interesting fact you probably won’t hear in the news.
Kyiv today is probably the most armed city on the planet, and two things explain it:

When the orcs approached, the Kyiv city council handed out weapons to volunteers and residents who wanted them — on the honest promise “bring them back after Victory.” Imagine huge trucks delivering Kalashnikovs and ammo, and people taking them.

Add to that the amount of trophy weapons left from destroyed orcs. No one knows exactly how much there is, but you’ve probably seen satellite images of those long columns of military hardware stretching for tens of kilometers.

And interestingly — in a multi-million city where every grown man has a gun (some have more than one) crime has dropped significantly. The police say robberies and similar crimes are much lower than in the same period last year.

After the invasion, we understood two things clearly: we are not alone, and we will never surrender.