I live in the top-10 least livable city in the world. Kyiv. I have lived here for years.
“EIU’s Global Liveability Index assesses 173 cities across the world across 30 indicators grouped into five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, with the aim of showing how comfortable these cities are to live in.”
“The bottom ten cities in our index have nearly all been affected by war or poverty, or both, with all scoring particularly poorly for stability.”
I moved to Rusanivka, on the left bank, in 2021. Before that, it was Vyshneve, Kyiv's satellite town, a city-train ride from the center.
Both Kyiv and Vyshneve have been in the news recently. Vyshneve suffered from secondary detonations of ammo storage right next door to its residential areas. Explosions lasting several hours rocked this town and demolished entire neighborhoods. Kyiv is continually hit and damaged by russia, and it will be a target for as long as war goes on.
Every place I've lived in this country for longer than a season has, at this point, been hit by russia. Shepetivka, Vyshneve, Kyiv.
I’ve been in Kyiv all the way since the full-scale war just began - or, to be fully transparent about my personal security choices and relocations - since June 2022 onwards. February-June of 2022 I spent near Shepetivka, my hometown. June 2022 onwards I’m a Kyiv girlie in war, a Millennial hipster with her sleeping bag on the metro platform, a contributor to the local economy, a resident queer.
I was here for the first strikes on the power grid, October 2022. I was here for the first real blackouts, that winter into spring. I was here in May 2023, when the drones and missiles came in waves, every night, back to back. I was here when they hit Okhmatdyt, the children's hospital, in 2024. I was here in spring 2025, when it all started intensifying again. I was here on May 24th, 2026.
I am here.
It is dangerous. And I’m not gonna lie, this city sucks. We have the worst mayor imaginable. The public transit system is shit. Rent is uncontrolled and predatory compared to average pay. You pay a lot for rent just to end up sleeping on a mat in the shelter. This city has no incentives for me to stay here. Basically, in its libertarian mentality, Kyiv couldn’t care less if I live or die. As soon as your money runs out, Kyiv spits you out onto wherever you came from.
But.
In this least liveable city, I have lived through several loves and lives. I've grown more in my late twenties and early thirties here than I think I would have grown anywhere else, bumping up against this place and the people in it, learning to stop postponing things, carving out a corner of the world that's mine.
How dare you call it least livable when there’s so much life in it.
My favorite song about Kyiv, called ‘The streets of Kyiv’ by Postman.
Especially now, in the goddamn year 2026, the fifth (gods! fifth!) year of the great war, Kyiv is still vibrant with culture and activities and business and of course with defending and repairing itself from the russian assault.
My circles of friends still holding onto this city are bound by the same shared obstinate determination to be here. Weirdly, we share a strange willpower to enjoy the good parts that Kyiv has to offer. What makes all of us huddle here, concentrate here? Sure thing, for some it’s a necessity. Some folks have jobs, kids that attend schools here, they own property. For me, it’s not a necessity exactly, though my current job is actually bound to this city for its access to decision-making.
What keeps pulling me back to Kyiv?
Perhaps it’s about the concentration of fascinating Ukrainians (tired, stubborn, barely functioning, intelligent, exhausted, brave Ukrainians) per square meter.
Perhaps I’m feeling like a million dollars here when I’m being bombarded by missiles worth millions of dollars.
Perhaps here I feel the importance of me just being. The cost of living is high here, in more ways than just one. The value of living here is high.
My favorite film about Kyiv, ‘It’s a date’. It’s a very brief sapphic story, a wartime story. It’s six minutes long, has no dialogue, and is shot in a single take. A car rushes through Kyiv at dawn… Who does she rush to meet? This date, this queer life, is one of the lives this war is being fought for.
You’d think there would be more disorganization, more chaos with the war, but it’s so surprisingly orderly here. Everyone minds their own business. I love that. Nobody has the energy to mind someone else’s business. As I wrote, it’s quiet in the metro when people shelter. People don’t enter each other’s orbits unless explicitly invited. There is little small talk. Little cat calling. Although I often sorta pass as a guy, with my androgynous facial features and a bountiful moustache….. But it’s a city with such well-set boundaries, for the most part.
We each want to live our lives. We’ve got no other life, just this one. And so, we look for love and acceptance and community, we build and rebuild it. The power - this powerless power in Kyiv - feels electrifying sometimes.
Kyiv is vibrant, alongside its wounds.
I walk to Zavertailo, damaged in the May 24th strike, open again, for the best ice cream in a waffle cone I've had anywhere. Around the corner, Buck Coffee Roasters, where I buy filter coffee by the half-bucket to survive the bad nights. At Talkies, also hit, also open, the cocktail menu is a spinning wheel pointing to drinks named for different countries. At Old Lev Bookstore, people sit reading with a glass of wine. The walls of my neighborhood are papered over with posters for pop-ups, raves, fundraisers. My neighborhood, unapologetically hipster, with an assortment of flavors and characters.
If not me, then who am I giving these streets to? I own nothing in this city, yet I own these streets.
I own part of my own history here. Who am I to give it to? Not to a spreadsheet compiled by risk consultants in London. Not to thirty indicators and a stability score. And certainly I won’t give it to russia.
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