Dispatch From Ukraine: ‘Let’s Go. Let’s Not Go.’

Nikolaus Sires lives in Dnipro, Ukraine. Originally from New Orleans, he bought an apartment in Dnipro, where he lives with his Ukrainian fiancée, four months ago, because he found the people nice and the area peaceful. Then, in the middle of the night on March 3, he woke to news that the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia was under attack.

“The Russian troops apparently just started shelling and mortaring a nuclear power plant, basically. Shooting at it; there’s video,” he said. “We thought the nuclear power plant might be blown up that night.” 

Sires spoke to Reason‘s Nancy Rommelmann by phone while she was on the ground in Warsaw, Poland, on March 5. She is on her way to Lviv by train to Przemysl at the time of publication. Sires talked about being in Ukraine at the start of the war and what it’s like to wonder if a nuclear power plant within an hour’s drive might be melting down.

What follows is a transcript of his words, edited for length, clarity, and style.

“We wake up and just see people saying, ‘Hey, they’re attacking nuclear power plants.’ That’s what’s on the news at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. That’s only 80 kilometers away; time to finish packing the bags. We stayed put because we’re under curfew from 8:00 p.m to 6:00 a.m. You can’t on the streets. I mean, they could consider you a saboteur or something and shoot you. We didn’t have the option to leave, so we had to sit there and wait to see what happened.

“At this point we don’t know if a bomb is going to fly this way. And it’s becoming normal. I’m starting to see how Ukrainians get used to eight years of war and act like nothing’s happening. Air raid sirens all day, telephone alerts. ‘Hey alarm, go to the shelter!’ And it’s like, is it real this time? I mean, it’s a nightmare. My fiancée’s in another room trying to relax. Her mother [and daughter] live five kilometers away. Her mother doesn’t want to leave. This is her home. ‘Ukraine’s my home. Why should I leave?’ I mean, until they’re dropping bombs in her neighborhood…maybe she’ll change her mind when it’s too late. That’s how I see it. I keep telling my woman, ‘Hey, you need to talk to your mom and say, “Do you want us all to die? Because you want to stay here?'” Nobody wants to leave mom behind. I understand that. I couldn’t leave my mom behind, but it comes to the point you want to gag them and throw them in a car, to say, ‘You’re going, let’s go.’ The longer we wait, the more problems there are.

“There’s been an eight-year war but [for many Ukrainians] it’s almost like somebody in Montana saying, ‘I don’t see a problem on the Mexican border,’ because they’re not close to it. Maybe there’s a problem in the Donbas region, but if you’re not there, you don’t hear the shelling. You don’t know there’s something going on because you don’t see it so it’s easy to disconnect from it. And I think a lot of Ukrainians that live away from the conflict can easily