“A bomb has to fall on my head before they let me go back to Italy.” She is 29 years old Federica Fiore, she is from Foggia and lives in Kiev, in the heart of the war. She never imagined waking up in the morning with the fear of dying, four years ago, when she moved for love. Today, however, she shows no signs of wanting to return to Italy. She has a job she likes, a partner, friends and two cats. She hopes to save enough to buy a house.”
How did you meet this boy who led you to move to Ukraine and what was the impact of living in a foreign country very different from Italy?”
«During university I attended the Erasmus Student Network. Here I met my partner. I moved two days after graduation to be near him. It was a great experience straight away, even if there are obvious cultural differences. People are much colder. People tend not to trust people they don’t know. I notice that in Italy they generally treat you well until you prove yourself to be a bad person. Here it’s the opposite, people treat you very coldly until you demonstrate that you can earn that trust.”
What were your reactions when the war broke out?
«It was a moment of detachment from reality. We knew that the conflict would begin but no one wanted to believe it. When I heard the planes flying very low I put myself on the ground with my arms over my head. I waited like this for hours. These are things that change you. Instead, the attitude of the Ukrainians was disarming for me, they already knew what they had to do. The Russians thought that keeping a population without water or electricity all winter might break their will or lead to internal revolt. Instead, young people organized themselves. And they collect the debris from the houses to facilitate reconstruction.”
What is it like to live in Ukraine today?
«Having the awareness of risking dying is one thing, having it 250 times in a year is another. Now I keep an eye on the various Telegram channels, but just to know what kind of death we must die. If I were to read that there was a hypersonic missile headed for Kiev, I wouldn’t have time to put on my shoes. So I resigned myself, I threw away my emergency backpack with everything I could need to escape to the bunkers, and this morning when I heard a bomb in the distance I put on a face mask. Our politicians say that Italians are tired of the war, but we are the ones who are tired. Very few people go to shelters. At some point you get exhausted staying down there and think it’s better to die in your bed and not in a cold, damp bunker. You should stop living and working, and then how do you eat?”.
Is the salary of Ukrainians proportionate to the cost of living, especially now with rising prices?
«It’s a problem that already existed before and got worse with the war. There is a large social gap and there are situations of extreme luxury that coexist with extreme poverty. We are talking about some pensions that do not exceed 100 euros, while the average salary is 500 euros per month. Food shopping is barely cheaper than in Italy. For example, I pay one euro and 50 cents for a dozen eggs here, and a cashier takes around 1,200 hryvnia which is 300 euros. Salaries are stuck at twenty years ago.”
Do you often go back to Italy and how is the trip?
«It’s destructive. I come back every six months, in total it takes me 26 to 30 hours. I usually take a train from Kiev to Warsaw, but there is someone who buys all the tickets and resells them at increased prices. Crossing the border is an odyssey because there they have to check that there are no people trying to leave the country illegally. And upon return they must check that whoever is returning to Ukraine is not some type of spy.”
Why did you decide to stay despite the danger?
«This sort of “golden ticket” that I have only because I was born on the right side of the world makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s not fair that I can leave everything I’ve built – my job, my boyfriend, my friends, my cats. I translate manuals for a Danish company that deals with dental instruments that has relocated here to Kiev and I’m always smart. A bomb has to fall on my head before they make me go back to Italy to a 9-5 job in an office. In four years here my salary has doubled and I can afford what I want. I did a calculation, my boyfriend and I save around 400 euros a month and we will be able to buy a house in 10 years. These are projections that would not be possible today either in Italy or in the rest of Europe.”
This article is one of the final project works created by the students of the eighth edition of the Rcs Academy Master’s “Writing and doing journalism today – The Corriere Method”
