Warsaw, Poland, March 7, 2022

By Matthew Hatcher – Special Columnist for the Bloomingtonian

Walking around Warsaw, you might never guess that just 400 km away, in Ukraine, a deadly war is unfolding on a scale and scale not seen since World War II. People go about their daily business, buy food, get drinks from bars, take their children to school. But if you pay enough attention to radio, television or even graffiti and flyers stuck on buildings, you can take advantage of the growing storm brewing next door that is now being called the Russian-Ukrainian War.

At a store near the hotel I live in. Came across a man and woman talking behind the counter and heard about Ukraine several times. While smoking a cigarette near the metro station, graffiti and flyers decrying Putin and displaying the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag, on TV in the hotel lobby, guests and hotel staff stand next to the TV on the wall in the lobby showing footage of the fight.

The war is there, but its intensity seems different. It looks more like a brewing storm than an active disaster.

I am only in Warsaw for one night before crossing the border into Ukraine, but already the signs and the “feeling” of the conflict are heavier and more present under the surface of everyday life.

Tomorrow we begin the journey to the border, then plunge headlong into the maelstrom of war and tragedy, and I fully expect that with every mile that brings us closer to the border, the sense of a brewing storm gives way to something much more terrible.

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Matthew Hatcher worked as a photojournalism intern at a Bloomington newspaper in 2014 and currently works as a Detroit-based freelance visual journalist.

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