By Lizzie Johnson and Kamila Hrabchuk<\/p>\n
IZYUM, Ukraine \u2014 Newly 16, she likes to walk alone, hands shoved in pockets, music loud in her ears, for mile after mile.<\/p>\n
If Kate Kobets walks far enough, she can escape into her own world. It is a place where her childhood hasn\u2019t been destroyed \u2014 her home loud with war, her soldier stepfather locked away as a Russian prisoner of war, she and her mom confined to a bomb shelter for much of the year after she turned 14.<\/p>\n
She is part of a generation of Ukrainian teenagers living through a conflict entering its third year with no end in sight. Raised during a pandemic \u2014 then through gunfire and bloodshed \u2014 Kate, like many of her peers, is unsure what it means for her future. She knows she is luckier than some of her friends \u2014 who have lost their homes or even their lives. Still, it is difficult to make sense of it all.<\/p>\n
Kate feels frozen, she said in interviews during three days of visits to her home, her life suspended when Russia invaded her country in February 2022, then overtook her city a month later \u2014 a brutal occupation that lasted half a year. Kate\u2019s mom didn\u2019t want to split their family up. By the time they decided to evacuate, it was too late.<\/p>\n
Kate was there as 80 percent of Izyum was razed, as more than 1,000 of her neighbors were killed. She was there when the city \u2014 an important transportation hub in eastern Ukraine with a preinvasion population of about 45,000 \u2014 was liberated in September 2022.<\/p>\n
Her classes are still online. Her friends are displaced. Her crush is in a different country. Her beloved woods contain mines and at least one mass grave. Still, she thought that 16 would be different \u2014 more freedom, more maturity. But her birthday came and went on Dec. 4, and now, it is just more of the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Wow, cool. I will be so grown up,\u2019\u201d Kate said. \u201cAnd I feel like a 10-year-old child.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly every day, she walks \u2014 remembering what her life was, escaping what it has become \u2014 until her legs ache and her mind goes blank.<\/p>\n
Remembering<\/strong><\/p>\n Strolling Izyum\u2019s downtown, Kate walked through her memories.<\/p>\n The city changed, but the streets stayed the same, and she finds comfort in them. It was late December, and she walked with slow, sure steps \u2014 as if she could go unseen \u2014 in a donated women\u2019s parka she has yet to grow into. Red hair poked from beneath her beanie, her cheeks a sandstorm of light freckles.<\/p>\n She stopped at each crosswalk \u2014 looking back and forth, back and forth \u2014 as military vehicles roared by, exhaling black smoke.<\/p>\n She walked by her old school, the red and white brick crumpled, the roof open to the sky. In the winter, Kate remembered, students used to pour an ice rink out front. Once, a girl slipped and broke her arm \u2014 back then, big news.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems as if I will wake up in the morning \u2026 and everything will be as before,\u201d Kate said.<\/p>\n Past the schoolyard, she cut through the city\u2019s main park \u2014 shorn of trees, the fountain at its center dark. This was where her parents met and fell in love at 19. They were just three years older than she is now, but Kate could not yet imagine a love like that. Her parents divorced when she was 7 \u2014 what she thought then would be her hardest year.<\/p>\n Kate used to spend a lot of time at the park. Picnicking on the grass with Kira and Nastya in the summer \u2014 cold lemonade, mushroom sandwiches. Borrowing Olya\u2019s skates to zip around the main square, rolling so fast it felt like she was flying.<\/p>\n Now, only Kira is left. \u201cPromise always that we will be together,\u201d she wrote in Kate\u2019s birthday card that month, stamping her hand in red paint on the front.<\/p>\n With the card, she gifted Kate a friendship bracelet with beads of pastel shells.<\/p>\n Kate walked down a long street to the Donets River. The girls once celebrated the end of summer here, diving into the cool water, their clothes dripping wet. At Nastya\u2019s house, they used a hair dryer on Kate\u2019s outfit to hide the evidence. Her mother \u2014 who had forbidden Kate to swim \u2014 never found out.<\/p>\n That was before Nastya moved to Russia with her family.<\/p>\n Kate walked to the next road, then stopped abruptly, her face like another collapsed building.<\/p>\n Olya \u2014 killed in a shelling at 14 \u2014 once lived down there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lizzie Johnson and Kamila Hrabchuk IZYUM, Ukraine \u2014 Newly 16, she likes to walk alone, hands shoved in pockets, music loud in her ears, for mile after mile. If Kate Kobets walks far enough, she can escape into her own world. It is a place where her childhood hasn\u2019t been destroyed \u2014 her home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1,3,78,80],"tags":[340,337,338,339],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23200,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23195\/revisions\/23200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maremontrealestate.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}