The nighttime roar of kamikaze drones breaks the silence of Obolon. One of the Shaheds hits three doors down from the apartment of the Kyiv guide Tetiana Lytvyn. The windows shatter, and the yard is covered with shards of glass. People run out into the corridors and onto the street. For the residents, it was another test, for her, another sleepless night of war. But the next morning, as if in spite of this reality, Tetiana goes to work. Two tours – a group tour and an individual tour.

“The war taught me to distinguish between real fear and conventional fear,” she says. – “If a missile can fall at night, that’s real. But the fear that you’ll forget something or say something wrong – it no longer has weight.”

Lytvyn is a cultural historian by training. She once wrote her PhD thesis and worked on television. But her real calling was to give tours of Kyiv. At first, it was a part-time job, “on weekends”. After February 24, 2022, it became her own business.

“I survived the evacuation to Irpin and then to Sweden. I came back when I realised: fear had receded. All that remained was the desire to share Kyiv.”

Her routes are not only about classic architectural monuments. Lytvyn talks about what has been silenced for decades: Baturyn, the Holodomor, the true face of Hetman Mazepa.

“For years we were told that Mazepa was a traitor. But he was a European choice for Ukraine. And there is still no monument to him in Kyiv,” she explains to tourists.

This presentation resonates. Especially in times of war, when people are looking for roots and answers.

Her first videos on social media turned her into a recognisable guide-blogger. People come “from the Internet” to real tours. And those who have travelled abroad write: we want an online tour to see Podil or the Green Theatre again. “There is demand from the diaspora. People miss Kyiv and are ready to “buy the city from a distance”,” says Tetiana.

The main “trick” is the balance between humour and a serious story. She can joke while talking about Magdeburg law, but then switch her attention to the dramatic events of the Mongol-Tatar invasion or Bolshevik repressions.

The shelling continues in Kyiv, but new routes are being built and historical sites are being restored. For Tetiana, this is a sign that life goes on. “My tours are not only about the past. It is a way to show that Kyiv lives on, despite everything. And we are with it,” she says.