I found out about the outbreak of war when I was in Africa. I was stunned by the news, I couldn’t believe it had happened. We were the only Russian-speakers in the Israeli group. In the evening (there was no Internet in the daytime), when I showed the group pictures of the destruction, everyone groaned, asked what it was that Putin wanted, and… they forgot. They went back to looking at their safari photos. This was not their war.

It’s been over a month now. And we’re starting to…get used to it, as awful as it sounds. It’s not that we don’t care, but I call my Odessa girlfriend less often now. We don’t just watch the news, we switch to movies.

I guess it’s normal – a person can’t live in pain all the time if that pain is foreign… We accept refugees, help them, stay in touch with our Ukrainian friends, but all this is superseded by our local horrific events, terrorist attacks, and the killing of Israeli civilians.

These are sad thoughts about war and human nature.