A generation of young Ukrainians grew up with war being the only way of life they know. Darka Harnyk copes by moving in and out of the country
Darka Harnyk. Photo: Barbora Chaloupková
By Barbora Chaloupková
I wanted to talk about Ukraine, and Darka Harnyk knew just the place: Streecha, she suggested without hesitation. Located in a basement on Seventh Street, right across the Saint George Ukrainian Catholic Church, the restaurant became a touchstone for Ukrainians living in New York. Portraits of Taras Shevchenko, a renowned Ukrainian poet, hang above long tables with typical Eastern European plastic tablecloths. The menu is short, consisting of borscht soup and several different types of vareniki dumplings. Streecha is a no-nonsense place, and so is Darka, a 24-year-old Ukrainian, who lives between two worlds: Ukraine and New York.
We each order borscht, and one potato vareniki to share. The soup is hot enough so that we can shake off the cold from the surprisingly chilly day outside. It’s the last Sunday of October, two weeks before the US presidential elections; in a few hours, Donald Trump is about to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden. “I feel mostly paralyzed. Drink way too much,” Darka says. She’s contemplating jumping on a bus and doing some last-minute canvassing in Pennsylvania in a bid to convince some of the tens of thousands of people of East European origin living there that Donald Trump would be a catastrophe for Ukraine.
The full-scale war entered its third year in February. For Darka’s generation, which has been growing up in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan revolution and the subsequent Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine, war is the only way of life they know. “I don’t think I can learn how to live a different life. I’m 24 years old, and feel so old,” Darka says.
Pizza Fridays
More than 6 million Ukrainians left the country since February 2022, mostly women, children, and young people. Millions of others stayed and joined the defense efforts in a myriad of different ways. Darka has moved back and forth. When the war started, she was living in the US but chose to return to Ukraine. This summer, she moved to New York and enrolled in a one-year program at Columbia University. It was a conscious choice made in response to how she saw people around her changing under the weight of never-ending fighting.
“There is nothing besides the war now. You get just enough adrenalin from the bombing that keeps you moving around. But after some time, you turn into a vegetable. Your whole energy is used only for war, you can’t even talk about anything else, it annoys you,” Darka says. “I made a promise to myself that when I would feel like turning into a vegetable, I’d leave for some time.”
Tiny, with long, soft curls of blond hair pushed back by a wide black headband, Darka has an airy presence. Once she starts speaking, the airiness is gone. “Oh, fuck yes,” she says when asked if she remembers the moment the war in 2022 started. She was video calling her mother who, at 5 am Ukrainian time, was drinking wine, smoking a cigarette, and refusing to leave Kyiv. Russian paratroopers were landing at the airport near her apartment.
Darka swears a lot, “fuck” being her word of choice. When describing her upbringing, the swearing is accompanied by a resigned shoulder shrug. She was born into a family with a strong tradition of resisting tyrants, whoever they happened to be. “My great-grandmother fought both the Nazis and Russians, more often Russians,” Darka says. Her grandmother almost died when protesting on the cold streets of Kyiv during the 2014 Maidan revolution, demanding Ukraine turn West. The protests didn’t turn out as her family had hoped. “That was a fucking disappointment,” Darka says, bitterly. “I learned things don’t change overnight.”
One thing Ukrainians repeat often is that the war did not start in February 2022. It started in 2014. “Ever since, people just became progressively more and more sad,” Darka says. She grew protective of her family, an instinct that is reflective not only of wartime reality. Living in New York, she’s back to family video calls – on Fridays, she calls her mother and grandmother. “They’re drinking overnight and make me order them pizza from New York. Do I do it? Of course, I do.”
Men are mostly missing from the family picture. “It’s tragic, but they just die. Every generation has only one kid, a woman. We would try to save our men,” Darka says, explaining why her mother refused to officially marry her father, who is now the only living man in the family. However tempting it might be to harbor supernatural beliefs, the women stay away from higher powers. “We don’t believe in God, we believe in Ukraine,” Darka says, smiling.
It’s a hard-earned belief. Her mother, a passionate environmentalist, was involved in the founding of many of Ukraine’s natural parks. Before she turned 18, Darka visited every region in eastern Ukraine. “My favorite is Dzharylhach,” she says, referring to a small island to the west of the Crimean peninsula with flat, long sand beaches that have for centuries remained mostly untouched. “The animals were not even afraid of people when we came, crazy. It is now occupied and the Russians do trophy hunting there,” she says, breathing heavily. “Usually, I want revenge. Here, I just want protection, no matter what,” Darka adds, spreading her hands wide like she is hugging someone, maybe the hunted animals.
In between
Only because Darka’s mother loves universities and education did she forgive her daughter for leaving Ukraine and moving to New York. The rest of her family wasn’t so kind; many of her relatives blamed her for leaving in the middle of the war. For Darka, it was a question of survival. “I would lose myself if I stayed,” she says. She would also lose herself if she didn’t plan to come back. With that, life in between two worlds started. The Russian army usually bombs Ukrainian cities most heavily in the early morning hours. It’s bedtime for New York, but oftentimes, Darka would not make it to the bed. “I start getting the news and can’t sleep. Summer was the worst, I did not sleep for two, three days in a row. I was a dead body,” she says.
It is a paradox of the war that she experienced more stress as she moved far away from Ukraine. At home in Kyiv, the uncertainty of immediate survival disciplined Darka’s mind. Adrenaline got her through the day. In New York, the opposite is true: she’s safe but jumpy and restless. “Everything seems scarier when you’re not there,” Darka says. “But people who stay are broken inside in a way you don’t see.”