I’m from Slovakia — a country that borders Ukraine, yet nearly half of its population believes in Russian propaganda. During the first winter of the full-scale war, I saw images in The New York Times of Kyiv in total darkness — no light, no electricity. It looked brutal. But also strangely peaceful.I had this odd thought: in a city that big, what happens to the stars when everything else goes dark?
So I took a camera and went to Kyiv. I didn’t go to make a war film nor to be brave or useful. I was just curious. No fixer or a press pass. I just booked a train, packed a small camera, and went.
Kyiv is normally a bright, busy city — full of movement, lit up at night like any other European capital.
But when Russia stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, that changed.
The city turned into a world of shadows and silhouettes — quiet, dim, almost unrecognizable.
Headlamps and phone flashlights made delicate patterns on the walls.
Street musicians performed in underpasses, their tunes blending with the rumbling of portable generators outside.
Sometimes the blackouts were scheduled, rotated between neighbourhoods to ration what little electricity was left. Other times, everything would vanish at once — whole sections of Kyiv cut off after a major strike.
I met street photographers, too — not shooting war, just minimalist scenes, made possible by the darkness.
Empty streets. Headlamps. Faces lit by phones. A strange beauty in the simplicity.
Some people told me they actually enjoyed walking through the city centre at night back then. It was quiet. Strange, yes. But calm in its own way.
Of course the situation was difficult.
People working online gathered in cafés and metro stations where generators ran for a few hours a day.
A young video editor I talked to in a Kyiv café told me he always sleeps with his lamp turned on.
That way, if the electricity returns in the middle of the night, the light wakes him — and he jumps up to use his computer before the power goes out again.
When the light is off, he sleeps. When it comes on, he works. It’s a rhythm of survival — one shared by thousands.
I’d seen a post on Facebook about an atmospheric phenomenon known as airglow, which looks a bit like the Aurora Borealis. An amateur astronomer in Kyiv had captured images of it during a massive blackout, claiming the reduced light pollution made it visible.
I came across a post on Facebook about something called airglow — a faint atmospheric light that looks a bit like the Aurora Borealis.
An amateur astronomer in Kyiv had photographed it during a blackout, saying the reduced light pollution made it finally visible.
That image stayed with me.
So I went to the Astronomical Centre in Kyiv to ask more.
The astronomers there explained that the night sky is never completely dark.
Even if every artificial light on Earth were switched off, the atmosphere and the planet itself would still emit a soft glow — a kind of natural radiation coming from the upper layers of the atmosphere and from the Earth itself.
During blackouts, this glow becomes easier to see.
It’s a quiet reminder that even when cities shut down, the sky doesn’t.
There’s still something up there — faint, steady, alive.
By the time I left, I wasn’t thinking about war in abstract terms anymore.
I was thinking about people. About how a city works when it’s forced to stop working.
And how, even in that kind of blackout, something keeps running — quietly — between people.
A film came out of it. Not about war, but about life, adaptation, and resilience.
It’s currently available on DAFilms: https://dafilms.sk/film/18102-navokol-tma (with eng subtitles)
