Everyday Life In a War Zone: How To Live For Years With Air Raid Sirens and Tanks in the Street

What goes through the mind of a mother who must send her child to school across a minefield or the men who belong to groups of volunteer body collectors? When living in a warzone, such questions become part of the daily calculus of life. This is an everyday form of war that included provisioning fighters with military equipment they purchased themselves, smuggling insulin, and cutting ties to former friends.

Today’s guest is Greta Uehling, author of “Everyday War: The Conflict Over Donbas, Ukraine.” She explored these questions by researching Donbas, Ukraine, where an armed conflict over the region began in 2014 and continues to today. Uehling engaged with the lives of ordinary people living in and around Donbas and showed how conventional understandings of war are incomplete. She found that rather than nonstop air raid sirens, humans are able to forge a sense of normalcy in the most abnormal conditions.