"'They can’t win,' Ira said. 'They can slaughter us but they can’t win.' Max nodded, calm despite the chaos."

"I’d met him a few weeks before the war when he was working as a translator for another journalist. He had black hair swept off his face, a tattoo under his Adam’s apple that referenced the American poet Walt Whitman and he looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. We were the same age, 31, and I liked him straight away.... Since Berlin had been colonised by tech bros, the centre of gravity for European hedonism had shifted eastwards to the Ukrainian capital.... There were warehouse raves in abandoned buildings, queer-friendly spaces with art installations and a club known only by the mathematical symbol ∄ (meaning “does not exist”), which had a dark room and wipe-down banquettes.... ...Kyiv had come alive through adversity, a fight for freedom against authoritarianism.... Kyiv’s freedom had been hard won, thought Max and his friends, and it shouldn’t be wasted.... Before [the war] the Kyiv party scene had been targeted by far-right, antigay thugs who had broken into nightclubs and beaten up ravers. Now, Max told me, one of his friends had put out a eulogy when the head of one of these groups had been killed in battle. As the Russians rolled closer, the ravers had stepped up. The dark room at Kyrylivska became a bomb shelter.... Max was lyrical with happiness that he had stayed, risking his life for his city again, as he and his friends had done during the Maidan protests...."

From "From hedonism to war: meet the young ravers of Kyiv/Before the Russian invasion Kyiv was the rave capital of Europe. That changed in a single night. Louise Callaghan joins a group of young artists caught in the chaos" (London Times).