Why I choose to raise a family in a frontline Ukrainian city under Russian bombardment – Iryna Rushetskaya
Iryna Rushetskaya explains how war and ordinary human life can exist simultaneously
I live in Sumy, a city in north-eastern Ukraine, close to the Russian border and now frighteningly close to the front line. It is a beautiful, green city built along the River Psel. I was born here and have lived here for almost all my life. I know its streets, its cafés, its doctors, its schools, the places where you swim in summer and the people you call when something needs fixing.
It is home. It is also a place where war has gradually become part of the infrastructure of ordinary life.
Schools are being duplicated underground. When there is no air-raid alert, children can study upstairs; when there is danger, lessons continue below ground. Hospitals have protected areas.
When I recently gave birth to my second child, there was a fully equipped delivery room underground. Electricity is something we no longer assume will always be there. And yet somehow everything continues.
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Humour is necessary
The air-raid alarm can sound for much of the day. It is impossible to spend your entire life underground, so people learn to assess danger – not always wisely. We follow local Telegram channels that report what is flying towards us.
You learn to recognise drones by sound. You begin to understand whether something sounds close or far away. You know which warnings mean you should move quickly.
More recently, roads around Sumy have been covered with huge anti-drone nets to protect vehicles from first-person-view drones. This is horrifying.
Naturally, we joke that the nets are there to keep out mosquitoes. Humour is everywhere. I don't think you could live like this without it.
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My six-year-old son knows what a drone is
My son is six. When he was younger, words like ‘drone’ and ‘missile’ meant very little to him. He heard them but did not really understand. Now he does.
He knows there is a war. He knows Russia invaded Ukraine. He knows what a drone is and what a guided aerial bomb is. He knows what an air-raid warning means and what to do at school when one sounds. Children absorb the vocabulary of their environment remarkably quickly.
They also turn it into play. Children run around playgrounds pretending to be drones. My son might announce, “I’m a jet-powered drone!” They invent games involving missiles and explosions. To them, much of it is still a game.
I think children also learn how frightened they should be by watching their parents. My husband and I try to react calmly. My son sometimes dislikes seeing destroyed buildings and sometimes an explosion frightens him.
But I don't think a six-year-old can really comprehend the scale of what is happening around him. Perhaps that is a blessing.
The question we all ask
Why stay? This is the question everyone asks, including those of us who are still here. After every particularly bad wave of attacks, the question returns: Am I an idiot for keeping my children here?
Maybe the answer is yes. Among friends we sometimes joke about whether those of us who remain are the bravest or simply the least sensible. Courage or stupidity? It is an ongoing debate. I left Ukraine after the full-scale invasion began in 2022, spending a few months in Scotland.
The first reason I came back is simple: my husband is here. War has separated thousands of Ukrainian families. Women left with children while husbands remained in Ukraine, and families began living parallel lives across different countries.
But there is another reason which is harder to explain. Home is a kind of social capital. Here I have family and friends. I know the teachers, doctors and neighbours. I know where to take my child, whom to call, where to buy something, where to go for coffee, even who does my hair. These things sound trivial until you lose all of them at once.
Dancing amid the destruction
Before experiencing war myself, I never understood something I saw in films about the Second World War when cities like London were bombed. How could people dance, fall in love, celebrate birthdays and get married while other people were dying? Now I understand completely.
In Sumy, soldiers are buried. Civilians are killed. Buildings disappear. And somebody celebrates a birthday. A new restaurant opens. People have weddings. Friends meet for coffee and the conversation begins with the same joke: “So, is it time to leave yet, or not quite?”
War does not suspend ordinary human life. The two exist simultaneously, however surreal that feels.
For the first years, many of us lived with the idea that the war would end soon. We postponed things. “When the war ends, then we will do this,” we said.
Eventually you realise that nobody can tell you when “after the war” will arrive. So, people begin living again. My husband and I even decided to have another child. Our daughter is not yet two months old.
I am afraid
There are different visions of Sumy's future. Some people who left believe the city is finished: too close to Russia, too many damaged buildings. Others believe that when the war ends, reconstruction will bring investment and life back. I belong to the second group.
Sumy is more than 350 years old. It has survived other chapters of history. It is green and spacious, with a river running through it, nature is always close by.
I have lived elsewhere. And still, when I close my eyes and think of home, I see particular streets in Sumy. Of course I am afraid of what might happen. I am afraid for my children. Every escalation makes me reconsider the decisions we have made.
But I also hope that one day the alarms will stop. Until then, we have stopped waiting for our real lives to begin again. This is our real life. And we are living it.
Iryna Rushetskaya is a 35-year-old mother of two who works in the cosmetics industry. This is an abridged version of an article originally published by The Frontline feminist newsletter.
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