A Letter From Kyiv, Where Reality Is Being Papered Over

In Ukraine’s Capital, the COVID-Era Accentuates, and Hides, Big Divides

Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital and the seventh-most populous city in all of Europe, is governed by a strange combination of a Soviet and a post-Soviet mentality. Many have no trust in the government based on decades of communist misinformation, while others follow public instructions without question because that is what they have always done.

Originally from Alabama, a state with no shortage of divides, I have lived all over the world—four continents and counting. But I have never experienced a society so divided over the very nature of reality. As a …