In an Odesa Cafe

In the early months of 2023, the war in Ukraine was barely a year-old. Odesa was damp, dark and frigid, an unforgiving combination. Like most people, I was driven from the streets by the biting Black Sea wind, and my morning routine was to take refuge at the Cafe Central, eat oatmeal, and drink coffee. The cafe was housed in a kind of glass box right on Derybasivska, the city’s main pedestrian street. Sitting there in the warmth and light of the caffeinated greenhouse, nursing a flat white, the war seemed far away, unless I considered what hundreds of shards of glass would do to my body were a Russian drone to explode nearby. So for the most part I thought about other things. Or I chatted to Roman. Roman was perhaps 22, a slender, good-looking boy with dark hair and eyes. He and his inseparable girlfriend often worked the same shift and sometimes one or the other would pause at my table to make small talk. Both were originally from Donetsk but had left as teenagers years before, fleeing the Russians and the strange mafia of Ukrainian nihilists who had been installed by Moscow as the leadership of the short-lived Donetsk People’s Republic. For them Odesa felt like a paradise, albeit one that Russia still desperately wanted to capture.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Since Roman’s English was good, he was the one who most often engaged with me. Sometimes he’d ask about my reasons for being in Ukraine during wartime, or query me about some odd turn of phrase in American English. But he also had a naive belief in the prescience of a random foreigner and sought my opinion on a more existential topic. When, he asked shyly, did I think the war would end? Other Topics of Interest ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 29, 2026 War in Ukraine - Latest update, key takeaways and map from the Institute for the Study of War on July 30, 2026 This was a perfectly reasonable question. Roman was what’s known in military circles as a “fighting age male,” precisely the kind of person Ukraine needed – and still needs. Although he was still too young to be conscripted, he knew the clock was ticking. And so, he sought an answer from my crystal ball. I should have known better than to answer, but in an elliptical, highly qualified way, I predicted that it would probably be at least another year. While this turned out to be true, it was a feeble reply. Yet, for whatever reason, he seemed satisfied, as if I had confirmed something he had long suspected. A few months later -– I don’t remember how many -– Roman and his girlfriend were no longer at the cafe. This, in itself, wasn’t noteworthy. Service industries everywhere have constant turnover. Periodically, though, I would wonder what happened. Was Roman in the military, had he fled the country, or was he hiding from the draft officers in his girlfriend’s apartment? Or maybe he had returned to Donetsk, this time in an army uniform, and stepped on a landmine? Whatever the answer, Roman was gone. So too is the Cafe Central which, while retaining its name, has turned into a smoggy hookah bar with excremental club music. The war, of course, is still with us. Needless to say, Ukrainians still wonder when the horror will end, as people have for millennia, ever since we first started killing one another in large numbers. They know that it will cease someday, because all things, bad or good, eventually do. But when? I suppose the question is, what does my reminiscing have to do with you? Only this: the more robustly we in the West support Ukraine’s struggle for liberation, the sooner this awful war will end. Each letter we write to our political leaders, each charitable donation we make, each pro-Ukraine message we post can bring peace incrementally closer. A peace where people like Roman and his girlfriend can build a life, furnish a home, make a family, and not have to ask strangers when death will leave their land. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post. Chris HennemeyerChris Hennemeyer is a long-time humanitarian worker who has spent his career mainly in Africa and Asia, but since retiring now focuses on providing support to frontline Ukrainian military units. He splits his time between Washington DC and Odesa.