When I arrived in Kyiv in early December 2014, it was bitterly cold. At night, a crystalline fog would descend. In the morning, the trees were coated in ice, every twig and branch glowing golden as it fractured the light of the low winter sun that swept sullenly across the sky. The sun did little to melt the ice or warm the day; the temperatures stayed below freezing. Every breath out in open air became a puff of glittering snow; every breath in, a jolt. Everything looked like a scene from