On the second day of the war, in a smoke-wreathed living room in Kyiv, Ira Nirsha, a filmmaker and actress with a strawberry-blonde bob, sat at a table wishing she had learnt to use a gun before the Russians came. Her friends dashed around her. They had been drinking all day but couldn’t get drunk. Adrenaline burnt off the alcohol as if it were being boiled on a hob. A bottle of cognac stood nearly empty on the table next to an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
In the kitchen, Alina Gorlova, a director, was sorting through bags of supplies they had bought for soldiers on the front line – buckwheat and dumplings – plus six litres of vodka for themselves. Rita Burkovska, also an actress, was gathering up their empty wine bottles for petrol bombs. On the other side of the table, Maksym Nakonechnyi (aka Max), a filmmaker from Odesa who had brought me to the flat, was ringing around trying to find a place where people were making the incendiary devices.
“I’m regretting now that I didn’t do any training, that I didn’t buy a weapon,” Ira said. “If they invade fully it will be continuous terror. They’ll kill patriots, people who speak Ukrainian, people who post about defence, about war, about protests. They’ll rape us and kill us and
