乌克兰，基辅——很难想出比战区和肉桂面包更不可能的组合了。
然而，这些面包却在赫利巴的陈列柜里，这是乌克兰首都基辅附近的一家高档面包店（面包店的意思是面包吧）。它们涂着奶油芝士糖霜，坐在托盘上，里面装满了*粟罂**籽糕点、樱桃卷、奶酪辫子和精致制作的带有糖霜的蓬松糕点蛋糕。
尽管在基辅郊区，俄罗斯的大炮和火箭弹在轰鸣，但数十名顾客在外面排成长队，或者坐在里面的高椅上，喝糖和咖啡因。
这是新常态的一个标志，因为城市剩余的居民重新适应冲突中的生活。两列俄国装甲纵队冲向该城，促使基辅开始开战。带有钙的检查站——大型玩具形状的反坦克障碍物——混凝土板和沙袋，在每一条主要街道和林荫大道上发芽。人们在超市和药店前排队，准备进货，然后再匆匆回家。由于该市300万人口中有一半逃到了安全地区，其他大多数机构都被关闭了。
但在入侵三周后，一些仍在这里的人已经开始做出改变。42岁的企业家谢尔盖·切尔内特说，赫利巴面包在战争开始时就关闭了，但三天后再次开业，他经营着这家面包店和其他三家企业。“我们看到了一个问题。人们甚至为了面包而争吵，所以有需要。我们打开了，队伍绕着街区。
”在乌克兰的基辅，当太阳落山时，一个女人独自坐在一个公园里。尽管如此，人们仍然要求要更多的东西。“当人们来吃面包时，他们不断地问，‘糕点在哪里？我们想要的是糕点！’”切尔内特斯说。“所以我们也决定这么做。”他已经召集了三个面包师回去工作；幸运的是，他的其他员工还在基辅，其中包括两名糕点师。他把他们都叫了回来。“我们每天都有越来越多的顾客，”切尔内特说，他补充说，直到本周，他才是唯一一家在波迪尔经营的糕点店。“以前，它只是来自波迪尔的顾客。现在我们要从中心和其他地区得到他们。”维克多·莫佐维是当地公共广播公司苏斯皮恩的摄影师，他和同事坐在一张桌子旁，像赫利巴这样的地方似乎是很久以前的标志。
“我开车，我们四处旅行，我看到了我的办公室……”我记得工作。只是几个星期，但感觉就像一年。”2015年，莫佐维自愿担任军事摄像师，在乌克兰东部报道了与俄罗斯支持的分裂分子的战争一年，然后重返平民生活。现在他又回到了一场战争中。“很多人都无法理解这种转变。但我生活在2015年，已经知道战争就是战争，”他说着，叉子穿过悬崖，悬崖发出柔软、充满奶油的嘎吱声。“拥有这个很重要，只是为了感觉我还过着几周前的生活。”在一个阳光明媚的春天，在波迪尔漫步，一种第聂伯河上的回声公园，曾经是基辅工业贸易的中心，显示其他人也试图恢复他们入侵前的生活方式。在离赫利巴几个街区的地方，61岁的瓦伦蒂娜·耶玛克坐在科科餐厅的椅子上，而特蕾莎·沃罗什娜用她敏锐的眼睛观察耶玛克的头发，她的手不断地在顾客的头上旋转。“我想感觉自己像个女人。我不想让我的外表下降，我想保持优雅。”她指了指沃洛什海娜。“和特蕾莎是优秀的。”
目前在保加利亚的沙龙老板在她的instagram页面上收到了很多关于预约的询问后，该沙龙于周二重新开业。54岁的沃洛什纳是仍在基辅的三名工作人员之一——她说，“其他人都去了德国、波兰、利沃夫，到处各地。”她住的大楼有300个单元，但只有15个仍然被占用。起初，她自愿和一个小组一起准备药品和其他用品，但目前那里对她的需求减少了，所以她决定回去工作。但她发现，这也是一种帮助。“当人们看到我们时，他们真的很高兴。他们付钱让我们乘出租车来他们家，然后多付我们钱。看到我们让他们很放松，”她说，她还接到了一些简单的电话。
沃洛希娜是一位时髦的女性，有着金发精灵发型，一副钢铁般的风度。她说，尽管宵禁意味着沙龙不能像战前那样每天开放12个小时，但仍然有很多人没有预约。“人们告诉我们：‘因为我看到你开沙龙，我们有希望，’”她说。她补充说，那天只安排了一次预约，但到目前为止已经有7个人来了。
重新开放并不仅仅是一种心理上的提升。乌克兰战争对该国的财政产生了灾难性的影响：本周，国际货币基金组织表示，乌克兰经济将收缩10%——如果战争持续很长时间，甚至可能高达35%。尽管国际货币基金组织已经宣布了为乌克兰提供快速融资的措施，但它们无法阻止已经对乌克兰基础设施造成的破坏，据悉乌克兰基础设施的规模在1000亿美元左右。
这促使沃洛迪米尔·泽伦斯基总统本周在向世界各地的议员发表请求更多军事援助之间，放松对企业的监管和税收要求，取消增值税和利润税，并对大公司只征收2%的企业税。泽伦斯基说，对于较小企业来说，纳税将是自愿的。“也就是说，如果你能付钱的话。你不能，不问任何问题，”他在本周的一个视频讲话中说。检查也将取消所有企业”为了让每个人正常工作，为了使城市恢复生活，为了让生活继续在所有地方没有战斗，”他说，并补充说，“乌克兰的经济*压镇**”是俄罗斯的战争目标之一。
泽伦斯基说：“只有一个条件：你必须在乌克兰立法的框架内确保你的业务的正常运作。”
一些企业家也在将他们的业务重新定位为帮助政府。迈克尔·乔巴尼安是一名*币特比**专家，他创立了加密货币交易所库纳，在战争爆发之前，他已经将大部分员工从公司在波迪尔的办公室转移到巴尔干国家黑山。他也离开了乌克兰，但正在利用他的交易所帮助基辅的政府将战争开始以来收到的约1亿美元加密货币捐款转换为美元或其他货币。
他说：“我们已经做到了一些，现在我们正试图扩大规模，因为很多捐款都是通过*币特比**进行的。”“我的工作是确保一切进展得尽可能快，以最低的佣金和成本。”泽伦斯基关于重新开业的信息也引起了从事更多日常生意的基辅人的共鸣。这就是为什么31岁的咖啡师玛丽亚·利亚申科住在波迪尔的一家巴克咖啡烘焙店里，周二重新开张了这家店。
“我这样做是为了客人，为了经济。它需要得到支持。我们的*队军**需要得到报酬。”
“这是我的国家，我不会投降的。”
Pastries and artillery fire. Welcome to Kyiv’s jarring new normal
KYIV, Ukraine — It’s hard to think of a more unlikely combo than war zones and cinnamon buns. （for english learning : one seven three one double seven double six one three nine）
Yet there the buns are in the display cabinet of Khlibar, a high-end bakery and coffee shop (whose name means Bread Bar) in Podil, the hipster neighborhood in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Slathered in cream cheese frosting, they sit on trays laden with poppy seed pastries, cherry rolls, cheese braids and delicately constructed puff pastry cakes with a bouffant of icing. There’s no lack of takers, with dozens of patrons lining up in a chaotic queue outside or sitting on high chairs inside for a sugar-and-caffeine fix despite the drumbeat of Russian artillery and rockets blasting on Kyiv’s outskirts.
It’s one sign of the new normal here, as the city’s remaining residents readjust to a life under conflict.The two columns of Russian armor thrusting toward the city spurred Kyiv to go on a war footing. Checkpoints with caltrops — the large toy-jack-shaped antitank obstacles — concrete slabs and sandbags, manned by jittery soldiers and reservists, sprouted on every major street and boulevard.
People lined up in front of supermarkets and pharmacies to stock up on supplies before hurrying home. Most other establishments were shuttered as possibly half the city’s 3 million people fled to safer areas.Khlibar closed at the start of the war but opened again three days later, first by offering loaves of bread to help alleviate supply shortages, said Sergei Chernets, 42, an entrepreneur who owns the bakery and three other businesses.
“We saw a problem. People even got into fights over bread, so there was a need. We opened up, and the lines were around the block,” he said.A woman sits alone in a park as the sun sets in Kyiv, Ukraine.(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)Still, people were clamoring for something more. “When people came for bread, they kept asking, ‘Where are the pastries? We want pastries!’” Chernets said. “So we decided to do that, too.”He already had summoned his three bakers back to work; luckily, the rest of his staff was still in Kyiv, including two pastry chefs. He called them all back in.
“Every day we’re getting more customers,” Chernets said, adding that up until this week his was the only pastry shop operating in Podil. “Before, it was just customers from Podil. Now we’re getting them from the center and the other districts.”For Victor Mozhovi, a cameraman with local public broadcaster Suspilne who was sitting down at a table and demolishing an eclair with a colleague, places such as Khlibar are a marker of what now seems a time long ago.“I drive in the car, we travel around and I see my office. … I remember work. It’s just been a few weeks but it feels like a year,” he said.
Mozhovi had volunteered as a military videographer in 2015, covering the war against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine for a year before returning to civilian life. Now he was back in a war again.“A lot of people can’t understand this transformation. But I lived this in 2015 and already know war is war,” he said, running his fork through the eclair, which split open with a soft, cream-filled crunch. “It’s important to have this, just to feel I’m still living the life I used to have a few weeks ago.”A stroll on a sunny spring day through Podil, a sort of Echo Park-on-the-Dnieper that once was the heart of Kyiv’s industrial trade, shows others also trying to recapture a hint of their pre-invasion lifestyle.A few blocks from Khlibar, Valentina Yermak, 61, sat in a chair in the Koko Nailroom while Theresa Voloshyna trained her discerning eye on a lock of Yermak’s hair, her hands a constant whirl around her customer’s head.“I want to feel like a woman. I don’t want my looks to go down, and I want to stay elegant,” Yermak said. She gestured to Voloshyna. “And Theresa is excellent.”
The salon reopened Tuesday after the proprietor, who’s now in Bulgaria, got many inquiries for appointments on her Instagram page. Voloshyna, 54, was one of three staff members still in Kyiv — “all the rest have gone to Germany, to Poland, Lviv, everywhere,” she said. The building she lives in has 300 units, but only 15 are still occupied.She initially volunteered with a group preparing medicines and other supplies, but there was less need for her there at the moment, so she decided to go back to work. But that, too, was a form of assistance, she found.“People are really happy when they see us. They pay for us to come to their house by taxi, and pay us extra. It’s relaxing for them to see us,” she said, adding that she was getting calls for something as simple as a manicure touch-up.
Voloshyna, a fashionable woman with a blond pixie cut and an air of steely competence, said that although curfew meant the salon couldn’t be open for the 12 hours daily as it was before the war, there were still plenty of walk-ins.“People tell us: ‘Because I see you open the salon, we have hope,’” she said, adding that only one appointment was scheduled that day but that seven people had come in so far.
The reopenings are more than just a psychological boost. The war in Ukraine is having a cataclysmic effect on the country’s finances: This week, the International Monetary Fund said the Ukrainian economy is set to contract by 10% — and possibly by as much as 35%, if the war drags on for a long time.Though the IMF has announced rapid-financing measures for Ukraine, they can’t stop the devastation already wrought on the country’s infrastructure, which is thought to be in the $100-billion range.
That prompted President Volodymyr Zelensky this week — in between speeches to lawmakers around the world pleading for more military aid — to ease regulations and tax requirements for businesses, scrapping value-added tax and taxes on profit and levying only a single corporate tax of 2% on large companies. For smaller businesses, tax payments would be voluntary, Zelensky said.“That is, if you can — pay. You can’t — no questions asked,” he said in a video address this week.
Inspections would also be canceled for all businesses “in order to allow everyone to work normally, in order to enable cities to return to life, in order to allow life to continue in all places where there is no fighting,” he said, adding that the “economic suppression of Ukraine” was one of Russia’s war aims.“There is only one condition: You must ensure the normal operation of your business within the framework of Ukrainian legislation,” Zelensky said.
Some entrepreneurs are also reorienting their businesses toward helping the government. Michael Chobanian, a Bitcoin maven who started Kuna, a cryptocurrency exchange, had already transferred much of his staff from the company office in Podil to the Balkan nation of Montenegro ahead of the hostilities. He, too, has left Ukraine but is leveraging his exchange to help the government in Kyiv convert the estimated $100 million in crypto donations received since the war began to U.S. dollars or other currencies.
“We’ve already managed some of that, and now we’re trying to scale up because a lot of donations are coming in through Bitcoin,” he said. “My job is to make sure everything is going as fast as possible with minimum commissions and cost.”Zelensky’s message to reopen has also resonated with Kyivites engaged in more quotidian businesses. That’s why Maria Liashenko, a 31-year-old barista ensconced amid the accoutrements of a Buck Coffee Roasters branch in Podil, reopened the store Tuesday.
“I did it for the guests, for the economy. It needs to be supported. Our military needs to get paid,” she said.
“This is my country and I will not surrender it.”