Ukraine Dispatch
Kyiv Nightlife Comes Back Amid Urge for Contact. ‘This Is the Cure.’
Frenzied raves. Crowded bars (with free therapy). And of course, cuddle parties. Nightlife is returning to Ukraine’s capital. But revelers still have to reckon with guilty feelings. Plus curfew.
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KYIV — The rave had been planned for weeks, with the space secured and the D.J.s, the drinks, the invites and the security all lined up.
But after a recent missile strike far from the front lines killed more than 25 people, including children, in central Ukraine, an attack that deeply unsettled all Ukraine, the rave organizers met to make a hard, last-minute decision. Should they postpone the party?
They decided: No way.
“That’s exactly what the Russians want,” said Dmytro Vasylkov, one of the organizers.
So they rigged up enormous speakers, blasted the air-conditioning and covered the windows of a cavernous room with thick black curtains. Then, they flung open the doors to an old silk factory in Kyiv’s industrial quarter.
And as if on command, the room filled with young men with their shirts stripped off and young women in tight black dresses, everyone moving as if in a trance, facing forward, almost like at a church, the D.J. the altar.
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