KYIV -- Keeping law and order in a capital city at war is no mean feat.
As Ukraine’s armed forces continue their counteroffensive in the east against invading Russian troops, police officers Vlad, 30, and Bohdan, 29, undertake grueling 12-hour night shifts in Kyiv’s Svyatoshynskiy district, ensuring the safety of civilians during Ukraine’s most trying time. Their surnames are withheld for security reasons.
Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion, a third officer would have accompanied the duo in their patrol car, but many law enforcement workers joined the military or stand guard at checkpoints dotted around the capital. Understaffed and exhausted, Vlad and Bohdan are battling new problems caused by the war: spies, gun violence, and mental health crises.
“In my opinion, it’s more dangerous now than before the war,” Bohdan says. “When we attend a call, we don’t know if people are carrying weapons.”
In some cases, locals have kept weapons found in the de-occupied territories, particularly in Svyatoshynskiy, which sits on the western edge of Kyiv bordering the formerly occupied towns of Bucha and Irpin. Bohdan recalls an incident a month before when three men shot at another group after an exchange of insults. One of the shooters had discovered an assault rifle and kept it in his apartment, which the officers swiftly confiscated.
Certain crimes such as theft and carjacking have decreased due to Kyiv’s midnight curfew. But being cooped up in dense Soviet apartment blocks has led to an increase in domestic violence cases, the officers say.
Vlad and Bohdan visit the backyard of a Soviet-era high-rise housing estate. A family dispute escalates and violence ensues. The victim is drunk and wants to press charges.
A 10 p.m. call leads Vlad and Bohdan to a worn-out high-rise block where a middle-aged man with a bruised face claims his nephew beat him. As curious residents watch from their balconies, the two men calmly take the uncle’s statement, but he is so intoxicated he can barely write his name and aggressively rips up the statement.
After a failed second attempt, Vlad tells the uncle to go to the station the next day after he has sobered up.
“Take him to jail for 15 days. He’s always drunk,” a passing neighbor shouts.
In another call, a woman says she attempted to break up a fight between four men outside her apartment and was struck in the head during the scuffle. Paramedics are already on-site by the time Vlad and Bhodan arrive, and the woman is bleeding profusely through her bandage.
“Problems relating to alcohol make up 80 percent of the issues before curfew,” Vlad explains.
With the pressures of war, a drop in job opportunities, and air-raid sirens causing sleepless nights, alcohol has become a coping tool for many in Kyiv. In Vlad’s opinion, alcohol sales should be banned, as they were in the first months of the full-scale invasion, or stricter punishments implemented for public drunkenness, which he believes could help prevent violent crime.
Once the clock strikes midnight, the main task is catching curfew breakers. The officers laboriously patrol Svyatoshynskiy’s streets, stopping every car and taxi on the roads, although they offer a 20-minute grace period to ensure everyone has time to get back home. It’s prosaic work and not what Vlad and Bohdan had in mind when they signed up for the force seven years ago. But it's important work, they say, to deter spies and saboteurs.
At night, stray dogs and cats, but sometimes hedgehogs, populate the empty streets on the outskirts of Kyiv.
When Russian forces attempted to besiege Kyiv last year, the duo says they detained a man and handed him over to the secret services for taking photos of military infrastructure, suspecting him of working with the Russian invaders. During that time, when fears were rife, Vlad and Bohdan say the police earned more trust from civilians and worked together to crack down on espionage.
An hour into the curfew, an air-raid siren breaks through the still summer air, casting an apocalyptic pall over the deathly quiet capital. Two nights before, Russian drones had been shot down over the city during a four-hour long alarm, while 12 missiles were downed the previous week.
Police are prepared to be the first respondents on the scene of an attack, and Vlad and Bohdan say they have an unlucky streak of air strikes occurring during their night shifts.
The two men recall their first missile attack: a 16-story residential block that was hit in the early hours on March 16, 2022, killing four people. The apartments were wrapped in flames by the time they arrived, preventing the officers from entering. They could only keep people away from the burning building and provide aid to those who had escaped. Russian artillery pummeled the district in the early days of the invasion, throwing Vlad and Bohdan into new, unpredictable situations.
Despite the war and the curfew, classic traffic stops are pursued with the same sense of duty as before.
“We were forced to adapt very quickly,” Vlad said. “If there is a woman trapped under rubble shouting for help, you don’t think, you just start doing. You can't just stand and wait for an ambulance. You start helping where you can.”
Once an air-alarm starts, weary citizens prepare for the worst, while the police drive around isolated neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city, the streets littered with anti-tank obstacles, and blare a prerecorded message through a megaphone: “Warning. Air alarm. Save your life and go to a shelter."
The government implemented stricter safety measures following the death of a family in May who were unable to access a locked shelter. Officers must film themselves playing the warning as proof for their superiors.
The horrors of war have had a profound impact on the population, and the city tenses during air-raid sirens. A report from the Gradus Institute in the summer of 2022 found that 70 percent of Ukrainians feel stressed or nervous, leading to a mental-health crisis that bleeds out onto the streets of Kyiv.
Shortly before the end of the curfew, Vlad and Bohdan receive an unusual call. A man at a service station calls the police on himself, begging to be taken to jail. His crime, he claims, is being out past midnight.
“We were forced to adapt very quickly,” Vlad says. “If there is a woman trapped under rubble shouting for help, you don’t think, you just start doing. You can't just stand and wait for an ambulance. You start helping where you can.”
Pulling up to the empty station, Vlad and Bohdan find a large, middle-aged man drinking beer and carrying a bag with five hot dogs inside. Dirty bandages snake around his left arm and the fingers on his right, and it soon becomes clear that something isn’t right, despite his calm demeanor.
“'What can I do to go to prison? If you want, I can break a window on your car,” he says to the officers. “I don't have any documents on me. Let's go to the police station. You can hold me for 18 hours.”
It soon transpires that his desperation comes from not wanting to be sent back to the front line. His dark eyes fix intensely on the officers as he explains that he was evacuated from Bakhmut on June 6. He points to a photo on his phone from the evacuation. His face is glued into an expression of mortal fear.
Since being out during curfew doesn’t warrant arrest, there is little Vlad and Bohdan can do. This is a job for Kyiv's health-care workers.
“PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) will be the main problem after the war. It’s becoming more common and some of the guys even become violent. They’re not conscious of what they do,” Bohdan says.
Taboos around mental health stubbornly remain in Ukraine, although less so in the younger generations. First lady Olena Zelenska has become a vocal advocate, launching the National Program of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support that she says incorporates the “best global and domestic practices.”
Yet, for some, the bottle is an easier solution.
The emergency services are prepared to help the war-scarred population ease back into normal life, but it is a prodigious challenge and one that requires a nationwide effort from the police, health-care workers, and the civilians themselves.