Letters From The WWI Trenches To Ukraine Speed Dating: Love Finds A Way Even In Wartime

KYIV — On the platform of Kyiv’s main railway station, as the trains screech to a halt, Ukrainians wait, flowers in hand. Roses, daffodils, tulips – it’s not Valentine’s Day, yet all those waiting for their loved ones have bought flowers. In the streets, it’s the same thing: flowers everywhere. Because in Ukraine, after three years of war, every weekend sees soldiers coming back from the front, exiled women returning home, and couples reunited.

In the streets, flower shops have multiplied, as have short-term apartment rentals. The war has turned any reunion into a little Valentine’s Day of sorts. But on this Sunday in early February, in this restaurant in central Kyiv, the men and women gathered are those who are not so lucky: they have no one to buy flowers for, and above all, no one with whom to share the anguish and uncertainty of war. They’re single. Maybe not for much longer? This Sunday, they’ve all come together for a large speed dating event.

In Ukraine, there is an ongoing “love crisis”: How are you supposed to meet someone when nightly bombings confine everyone inside their homes? How can you love someone long-distance when war has separated couples? Is it even possible to start a relationship when you don’t know what tomorrow brings? Those questions, which for Ukraine started at the start of Moscow’s “special military operation” three years ago, are as old as war itself. All over the world, civilians and soldiers have asked themselves the same questions and, sometimes, found a way to love each other.

This Sunday, the weekly speed dating event organized by the TetAteT company is packed to the rafters. On two floors, about 50 Ukrainians – ranging from 20-somethings to 50-somethings – will get to know each other during a three-hour marathon. At the sound of a bell, every five minutes, the men get up and change tables, while the women take notes on small note cards. Shy smiles, flushed cheeks and exchanges of phone numbers are all in the air.

Front lines and heart lines

In this age of apps, the practice of speed dating has a slightly outdated ring to it. “In times of war, people feel the need to come together, beyond the mere search for a romantic partner, there’s also a need for community and emotional support,” says Alisa Samusieva, 38, head of TetAteT since 2012. The conflict has also brought a feeling of urgency. “You can spend weeks chatting with someone online, but at the end of the day, it’s only when you see the person that you find out whether there’s good chemistry or not. These days, Ukrainians need a real connection, someone to share this difficult daily life with, but on the apps, there are too many people who are not looking for anything serious.”

Sasha, 27, a tall blond man in a white sweater, is a regular. “The war has changed the way you meet people, people go out less, they stay at home more, with people they already know. Here, though, I know I’ll meet around 20 women,” he says. Meeting women is not easy anymore in Kyiv, as many left when the war broke out in 2022. Women are allowed to leave the country – unlike men, who are liable to be drafted. That’s what put an end to the 49-year-old Oleg’s love story. “My ex-partner decided to move to Germany. I get it, there are more opportunities there, there’s no war and it’s safer. But we had to split up,” he says with a sigh. This is the fifth time he’s taken part in this speed dating event. With women having moved abroad and men away fighting, finding enough participants has been a struggle in recent months. But now that the air defence over Kyiv has proven effective, things are progressively getting back to normal: “People from remote areas and the eastern occupied territories are now coming to live here,” says Alisa.

But on the way to love, other issues can spring up: political opinions, which are becoming more contrasted, and, in Ukraine, language. Online, it is not uncommon for young women to say they refuse to connect with Russian speakers – in 2019, they accounted for about 20% of the country’s population. Igor, 37, has often been confronted with this ideological barrier: “I speak Ukrainian and I work in Ukrainian, but my mother tongue is Russian. It’s the language in which I think, dream and express my feelings. It’s difficult for me to have a romantic relationship in Ukrainian”, he says.

Marta, 22, is sitting at a table, watching men come and go. Her last relationship ended in 2021, and it took her two years to get over it. By the time she felt ready to meet someone again, the war had taken over. While she doesn’t mind Russian speakers, she’s not keen to start a relationship with a man who might have to go on the frontline. “It’s paradoxical because I don’t want to fall in love with a man who may die at the front in the next few years, but at the same time I can’t see myself leaving my country and dating a foreigner,” says Marta, who leaves today’s event with a few phone numbers, but no real crush.

But just because love is hard to find in Ukraine doesn’t mean that sex has disappeared – quite the opposite. It’s even part of the war effort. On apps, some Ukrainian women offer to send nudes to soldiers at the front, as a way of saying “thank you.” Anastasiya Kuchmenko sells naked photos of herself to men on Telegram, in exchange for a proof of donation to the army. Thanks to her Teronlyfans page (a combination of “Territorial Defense” and “OnlyFans”) she set up with a girlfriend, she has raised the equivalent of €800,000 – a small fortune.

Meanwhile, the “Loveplace” sex shop in Kyiv organized a special sale of sex toys, with proceeds going to the army: nearly €12,000 worth were sold. In March and April 2022, when the war in Ukraine was just beginning, the country recorded 5% more marriages than the previous year. Since then, it has even become possible for soldiers to get married on the Internet with just a few clicks. A “marriage boom” which reminded Clémentine Vidal-Naquet, a researcher specialized in intimacy during World War I, of the one in Paris in August 1914: “Very quick, en masse marriages.” She has spent years studying the letters couples sent each other during the so-called Great War.

Cement letters

At the time, three to four million letters were sent from the homes to the front, and almost two million the other way. During the war, postal services were free – as if the public service knew it was saving thousands of relationships. In these letters, preserved by the families, she found heightened feelings, declarations made easier by writing, and modesty that fluctuates with death around the corner. “War drives everyone to write, even those who weren’t used to it. Not only are letters essential as proof of life, but this first step into writing leads to introspection: for the first time, couples can think and express their feelings, desires, fantasies or dreams…” says the historian, who has written two books on the subject, Couples dans la Grande Guerre (“Couples During the Great War”), and Noces de cendres (“Ash Weddings”). They may even be more willing to confide in each other than in person, especially men, whose letters often speak of tears and loss. But what’s most striking is the place given to the ordinary: routine, which is usually blamed for ruining passions, proved to be the cement that held Great War couples together.

“It’s a time of great violence for the soldiers, and great anguish for the women in the rear, and even if the situation is exceptional, in couples’ correspondence the ordinary remains central. They celebrate important dates, talk about work, children’s first steps… It’s a way of holding on, of pretending that nothing has changed.” And yet, everything has changed, and so have the dynamics of these couples. As in every war, women have replaced men in the shops and factories, while men at the front have to learn how to cook and do the laundry… There’s a shift taking place. The letters reflect this, showing them trying to pretend that nothing has changed: for example, the wives ask their husbands for advice on how to run the business, when they know full well that by the time the answer arrives, they’ll already have made the decision.” And although there was a surge in divorces after the war ended, couples still needed to talk about their future together to survive.

The state as killjoy

So what to do when peace never seems to come? In Israel and Palestine, the 77-year-old conflict has shaped imaginations and unions. “And even fantasies!” adds Salomé Parent-Rachdi, former correspondent in Jerusalem and author of the comic strip Amour, sexe et Terre promise(“Love, Sex and Promised Land”). From the very first pages, Lana, a 34-year-old Palestinian and Israeli citizen, relates: “Online, everyone specifies their origin, people are obsessed with it.” She dated an Israeli for six months herself, before splitting up: “With him, I got to explore my sexuality, which I could never have done with a Palestinian, but in the end, we were too different.” Today, Lana is married to a Palestinian.

“In Israel-Palestine, it’s there right away, in every relationship. The conflict is everywhere, between Palestinians and Israelis, but also between foreigners, and among Israelis, who often ask each other which political party they vote for”, says Parent-Rachdi. Since October 7, this dynamic has been further exacerbated. It can even be observed in the evolution of fantasies: “For some Israeli women, IDF soldiers are super-sexy; for others, they’re an absolute turn-off.” And in Israel-Palestine, love stories have always been a matter of concern even to the government. “For mixed couples, it’s very hard,” says the journalist. The government requires them to go through endless red tape, the deadlines are very long, it’s expensive… And since October 7, it takes even more courage to be openly a mixed couple.”

Marwan and Alexandra, a French-Palestinian couple who met in Jerusalem, have also found it hard to survive the last few years. “Our relationship is obvious to us, yet we’ve talked about separating several times,” says Alexandra in the comic strip by Parent-Rachdi. For Alexandra, who would like to go back to France, “the war has amplified the worries we already had about our future. The fears are real for both of us: for Marwan, of being away from his family if any action was taken against the residents of Jerusalem, for me, of seeing the situation worsen and knowing that he could be in danger.”

In a society where civil marriage does not exist, couples of different religions are unable to unite, and most of them do it abroad – notably in Cyprus, which has become a popular destination for Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese, whose country applies the same rule. The state is nevertheless willing to do anything to prevent this, and even to finance free vacations: for years, Benyamin Netanyahu’s government has been offering young Jews from the diaspora trips to Israel all expenses paid, with the official aim of meeting young Israelis.

Since the MeToo movement, these trips have been denounced in the press for their “boozy culture” and a certain “pressure” to create couples. Since October 7 and the start of the bombardments in Gaza, the region’s dating apps have lost their minds – literally, as the Israeli army has scrambled GPS signals in the north of the country and in southern Lebanon to prevent potential attacks by Hezbollah.

As a result, Tinder and similar apps tend to geolocate users randomly, and it’s not uncommon for users in Haifa, Israel, and Beirut, Lebanon, to bump into and match each other. An opportunity to realize that they’re not so different: Daniela, a 31-year-old Israeli, found herself “geolocated at Beirut airport”, she told Swiss media outlet NZZ. I was a bit scared at first, it was just after October 7, but then I started talking to Lebanese people, and they were much nicer than I expected. They were condemning the October 7 massacre, they wanted peace. I thought we could have been friends.”

Raphaël, a 29-year-old Franco-Lebanese living in Beirut, had a different experience. On Grindr – the gay equivalent of Tinder – he found himself geolocated in Jordan and came across numerous profiles of Israelis. “It was just as Beirut was being bombed, last autumn. I sent a message to all the Israelis I came across, saying that I hoped they didn’t approve of the strikes and that, like me, they wanted peace”, he says. Unfortunately, the responses were rather provocative. No matter, Raphaël kept on meeting people in Beirut – even under the bombs. For him, accustomed to unusual fantasies shaped by a multicultural society, complicated times were just making things a bit more complicated.

Love, stronger than anything

“People were sometimes afraid to move around the city at night, especially if they had to go through the southern districts,” he recalls. One evening, the date didn’t go as planned. “He was living in a hotel, because he had been displaced by the war. The house he used to live in with his mother had been bombed. In the end, he needed someone to talk to more than anything so we spent the night talking about how we were living this war. It was quite strange that on the first date he told me about his traumas, his relationship with his mother, his fears… But that’s what war does to you.”

In Ukraine, too, apps bring their own surprises. Soldiers avoid using them so as not to reveal their positions to the enemy. They can, however, turn their cell phones back on as soon as they move away from the front line. Soldiers who have already found love often show up on another station platform, which has become the most romantic in the country: Kramatorsk station, the last stop before the war, 30 km from the front line. Every day at 1 p.m., when the daily train from Kyiv gets there, the women come down onto the platform to look for their soldier boyfriends. They meet up for a few hours’ leave. Interrupted for a few months in 2022 after a bombing raid on the station killed 53 people, the trains have resumed. Regardless of the danger, the line boasts the highest passenger rate in the country, 94%. And there too, flowers sell like hotcakes. On the platform, the most popular bouquets are yellow and blue, the colors of Ukraine.