My trip to Kyiv didn’t go as planned. I’d intended to watch the U.S. election unfold, expecting a close race that would end with the selection of America’s first female president-elect. Instead, America will get its first president found liable of rape. As if that weren’t enough, the journey itself was a gruelling 24-hour odyssey—two planes, a train, and a 13-hour FlixBus ride.

The purpose of my visit was twofold. First, I’d been invited to the Ukrainian Central European Forum 2024. Second— slightly disturbingly—I was chasing an “adventure” in a war-torn country. There’s a pathetic irony to it, knowing full well I’d be staying in the city centre, near embassies and diplomatic buildings—places spared the brunt of Russian drone strikes, which mostly hit the outskirts.

I arrived in Kyiv’s centre at 5:10 a.m., just minutes after the curfew lifted. The streets were deserted, the temperature biting at 5°C. With my Airbnb unavailable until 11 a.m., I took refuge in the nearest metro station, Plats Sportu. The depth of the station was staggering; the descent took 1 minute and 46 seconds. Built at the dusk of the Soviet era to be used also as a nuclear shelter, its original purpose now echoes grimly as it shields citizens from modern Russian aggression. What struck me was how Western Ukraine is becoming. On the way down, I passed 26 ads in total (one every four seconds): a third calling for war donations or conscription, a third pushing Coca-Cola’s Christmas cheer, and a third selling Visa cards—a capitalist trifecta eerily reminiscent of George W. Bush’s post-9/11 “Get down to Disney World”.

The conference wasn’t until the next day, leaving me free to explore Kyiv. Near Maidan Nezalezhnosti—the most televised spot in Ukraine, perhaps all of Eastern Europe—a haunting sight greeted me: tens of thousands of Ukrainian flags. No matter how many times I walked past, I always saw someone stopping to pay their respects. The second most common flag was EU’s — European integration, it turns out is an idea some people are willing to die for.

The previous night's air raid alarm had left every McDonald’s in the city shuttered. It was a bitterly ironic reminder that the so-called “Golden Arches Theory” of peace—claiming no two countries with McDonald’s have ever gone to war—was always a farce. One need only look to the Kargil War between India and Pakistan for an earlier counterexample, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine drives the point home.

Though Kyiv is far from the front lines as of November 2024, the war rages on, engrained into the city’s fabric. There’s no immediate existential threat to the capital, yet reminders are everywhere—soldiers missing limbs, sandbags piled near many windows, and air raid alarms cutting through the quiet. The most haunting part, after speaking with locals, is how ordinary (for them) these sights have become. Like the unhoused population in New York City, these markers of war are no longer people or warnings—they’ve become furniture, part of the background.

My 40-hour day, punctuated only by brief naps, ends in a bar I found after seeing an online ad for a concert. Both of us are too tired to talk about the war; we talk about music instead. The conversation flows so easily that he forgets to place my food order. After reminding him of it (knowing that curfew is less than an hour away) he goes to the kitchen, revealing a military helmet on the cabinet behind him. It said: Born to Kill, a reference to Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. I’m too stunned to ask for permission to photograph it.

The next day, the forum begins. It’s held in Hotel Ukraine, framing a direct view of the Independence Monument—a towering symbol raised in 1991 to mark Ukraine’s separation from the collapsing Soviet Union. The hotel markets itself as having "the best hotel shelter in the world," a grim selling point that feels both surreal and practical in equal measure. On every floor and stairwell, arrows on sheets of paper point the way to the shelter, a stark reminder of the ever-present reality outside. Next to them, faded pandemic-era signs urging social distancing hang like relics from another crisis. I jokingly ask a man in the elevator if both warnings are equally outdated. “Hopefully they stay that way,” he replies with a weary smile. He later turned out to be an MP from the Ukrainian Parliament.

The forum went smoothly, though its timing (less than 48 hours after US Election Night), meant Trump was the dominant subject of conversation. What surprised me most was the seemingly positive attitude many Ukrainian government officials and NGO representatives expressed toward him. This stood in sharp contrast to their German, Polish, Slovakian or Dutch counterparts, who were far more anxious.

Their reasoning was pragmatic, if painful: with the current Biden administration’s approach, led by figures like Blinken and Sullivan, Ukraine would likely be forced into a war of attrition and fall within the next 12 to 18 months, without having the strategic capabilities to strike targets deep inside Russia. The consensus was that Trump would be transactional, so Ukraine must embrace transactionality.

One of the key topics raised was Trump’s proposal to end the war within 24 hours of taking office—a vision met with unanimous scepticism among the people I spoke to. An ex-high-ranking diplomat added a sharp historical parallel during their talk, noting that the conference was taking place in the very room where, in 2014 during Euromaidan, the Ukrainian government signed an international agreement that failed to align with the will of the people. “After that, it wasn’t the protesters who stepped aside—it was the government that changed.” The undertone was, this could happen to Zelenskyy too.

I couldn’t verify whether it was indeed the same location, but the symbolism was striking nonetheless. Like many such events, the forum concluded with a somewhat lavish dinner—fitting for Ukraine’s most iconic hotel. Still, I was more happy about the McDonald’s I visited afterwards. For the first time, the breaks between air alarms were long enough to justify reopening.

The last scene I witnessed in Ukraine unfolded at the Polish-Ukrainian border. It was a gruelling process—over five hours and three separate passport controls. Security was as strict as any European airport, a reflection of the heightened vigilance surrounding the smuggling of weapons from Ukraine into the EU. In stark contrast, it struck me how easy it seemed to smuggle goods into Ukraine from the Schengen Zone. I reckon if I’d wanted to, I could have brought a kilo of marijuana from Amsterdam without much trouble.

During the final check, an altercation broke out between an elderly woman and a border guard. What began as a quiet conversation escalated into shouting, ending with the woman in tears. The roughly 30 of us waiting at the crossing stood in silence as she was escorted out of the building. Only then were we cleared and could return to the bus. I can only guess what the conversation was about. It was one of the rare times in my life that I felt grateful not to understand another language.