Nine years ago this evening, I left my village in Donbas and boarded a night train.

I arrived in Kyiv next morning — with a single backpack and a hundred saved-up dollars in my pocket. That was all. I was alone.

The next day was my first day at work — as a journalist for a second-rate news website that paid just enough to scrape by on food.

I rented a tiny summer annex attached to an old house, where an elderly landlady lived who was not entirely in her right mind. And so began a new life from scratch — in a vast, unfamiliar city.

I was 24.

Thank you, ancient Kyiv, again and again.

You gave me everything a human being should earn through persistent and honest work.

Who could have imagined how much we would go through together — from everyday struggle to great historical events, to the war itself and the dramatic battle beneath your walls.

And who could have imagined that one day I would write a book about you.

The greatest city on Earth — a city where every square meter holds deep layers of history and legends gathered over 1,200 years.