Russian Missiles, American Chips
On the morning of Aug. 19, 2023, Olha Holynska boarded a train in Kyiv with her 6-year-old daughter, Sofiya, to travel to Chernihiv, an ancient city in northern Ukraine. Almost 18 months had passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the war in the east continued to rage, but Chernihiv hadn’t seen any fighting for more than a year. The city and its 300,000 residents had been living in relative peace.
Holynska, 37, had friends and relatives in the city, known for its golden-dome churches and flower-filled parks. It was a hot, sunny day, and Chernihiv was busy with people out to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, an Orthodox holiday when worshippers take baskets of apples and honey to churches to be consecrated. Holynska, who works for Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, had arranged to meet her friend Yulia and her 3-year-old twin girls.
The train arrived at 11:04 a.m., and Holynska and Sofiya piled into Yulia’s car. Sofiya was a bundle of energy, wanting to go places, do things. A month earlier, while visiting the town of Lviv, she’d gotten up in front of a crowd in the main square to sing, solo, the Ukrainian national anthem. A fan of the Ukrainian version of MasterChef, she liked to be filmed cooking. One of her favorite rituals was going to a cafe and ordering a cappuccino for her mother and foamed milk with marshmallows for herself. In Chernihiv, the girls ran into a park near the town square and climbed onto an empty wooden stage, a frequent venue for children’s performances. At 11:19 a.m., an air raid siren sounded, warning that there might be incoming drones or missiles.