Even as air-raid sirens blare in wartime, Ukrainians wait for the traffic light to change
Complicated espresso drinks are still sold at service stations; pizza and sushi are still on offer; and rave parties still rave, even if they end at 11pm, in time for the midnight curfew.
The desire for order is core to how Ukrainians cope in this fourth year of Russia's full-scale invasion.
Traffic lights seem to be the most obvious sign of how Ukrainians hold onto normality.
Red means stop. Green means go. There is no yellow light here, no caution, no chancing it. Even during air-raid alarms.
'Even when I walk my dog in the evening and there are no cars at all, I still wait at the kerb,' said Volodymyr Yeremenko, 63, a resident of Pryluky, a city of about 52,000 people about 145km east of Kyiv, who had come to the capital for a doctor's appointment.
Spotting a foreigner in Ukraine is easy.
They cross when the light is still red, or, God forbid, wander in traffic, something that is a hobby (or death wish) in cities like New York. Ukrainians have been known to shake their heads or to caution them not to cross.
Ukrainians say strictly obeying traffic signals was a peculiarity here long before the war.
Maybe it's a way to show they are more like the people in notoriously law-abiding street-crossing nations such as Finland or Germany.
'In Lviv, it's striking how people obey pedestrian traffic lights, even when there are no cars around,' wrote Johannes Majamaki, 24, a Finnish law student, on social media recently.
Majamaki, who often visits Ukraine, posted a photograph of pedestrians waiting on a carless corner. 'It feels like being back home in Helsinki,' he noted.
Putting firm numbers on how widespread law-abiding behaviour at traffic lights is in Ukraine is difficult.
Pedestrians wait for the light at a crossing in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 20. Photo / Brendan Hoffman, the New York Times
The Kyiv police did not respond to repeated questions for data on the number of tickets issued for crossing against a red light.
The offence, a US$6 fine, is lumped together with offences by animal-drawn vehicles and errant bicycles, so it's impossible to parse out the pedestrian violations.
But Anton Grushetskyi, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, said he thought that waiting patiently at the light was a cultural habit.
He said he typically crossed the street only on a green light. He said that was his custom, even if there were no cars, in 2005 and today, in the middle of the war.
He added that he had not noticed any change in Ukrainians' street-crossing behaviour since the Russians invaded in February 2022 because the war had been normalised for most people.
'This is more a matter of habit — something the war hasn't really changed,' Grushetskyi said.
'The sum of all these habits creates the impression of normal life, which is something many people deeply need.'
That doesn't mean that everyone always follows the rules in Ukraine. Plenty of government officials, for example, have been accused and convicted of taking money they shouldn't.
While waiting for the light, Yehor Riabchenko, 16, admitted that he climbed a wooden fence last year when he wasn't supposed to. But he also fell and broke his elbow.
On this Tuesday, he was rushing to the hospital to get stitches removed after a recent surgery for the injury when the air-raid alarm rang out.
Still, he waited for the green.
Yurii Ukrainets, 71, a retired military man, also waited patiently at the corner in Kyiv for the green pedestrian light during the air-raid alert because, he said, he had no desire to throw himself under the wheels of an oncoming car. What would happen if he ran across the street dodging cars? Chaos, that's what.
'Rules are rules,' said Ukrainets, who was on his way to a government office to check on his pension.
'Imagine my grandson is out there with my daughter, and they see me crossing against a red light.
'If I don't see them, but they see me, what will they think? 'Grandpa breaks the rules — so I can too.' I don't want to set that kind of example.'
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Kim Barker
Photographs by: Brendan Hoffman
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Not only are rising seas causing people to leave, but warming waters are forcing out tuna
By morning's end, the pair had caught eight tuna - a haul far smaller than when Petaia's father taught him to fish 30 years earlier. 'We have to spend longer and go farther to get them,' the 48-year-old said as the fishermen unloaded their catch. 'I'm not sure there will be any tuna left by the time I'm my uncle's age,' added Smoliner, 22. Tuna is a pillar of life in the Pacific, where for centuries people have braved the ocean to bring back yellowfin, skipjack, bigeye and albacore for their families. In recent decades, as global demand for tuna has soared, Pacific Island nations including Tuvalu have propped up their struggling economies by selling licences to allow international fishing companies to trawl their vast exclusive economic zones. These seas provide as much as one-third of the world's tuna supply. But climate change is warming the world's oceans at an accelerating rate, threatening livelihoods. Scientists predict that climate change will push tuna away from Pacific Island nations and towards the high seas, where wealthier countries with large fishing fleets - China, Japan, South Korea and the United States - will catch them without paying licence fees. It is yet another climate danger for a country - population 10,000 - whose existence is already threatened by rising seas, increasingly powerful storms, and a potential exodus of people. 'It's ironic that the ocean, which has been the sustainer of our livelihood and economy, suddenly poses all these threats to us,' Tuvalu's Prime Minister, Feleti Teo, said in an interview here. Ranol Smoliner, right, and his uncle Kauaka Petaia fish for tuna in the Pacific Ocean near Funafuti, Tuvalu, in early April. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post This low-lying atoll nation has become a premonition of climate change. Its leaders have made desperate pleas - including one delivered while thigh-deep in water - about the existential threat of rising sea levels. The potential exodus of fish threatens to strip Tuvalu and other Pacific Island nations of the very money they need to fight the impacts of global warming. About 60% of Tuvalu's locally generated government revenue comes from fees foreign countries pay to fish for tuna in its waters, Teo said. That revenue has plunged by about 40% over the past five or so years, denting the tiny nation's overall budget by almost 6%. Scientists say it's hard to know how much of that recent drop is due to climate change as opposed to natural migration linked to ocean cycles. But scientific modelling suggests Tuvalu could lose one-quarter of its tuna by 2050. Efforts are under way to help Tuvalu and 13 of its neighbours track how tuna populations are shifting and to demand remuneration. They were recently awarded more than US$100 million ($166m) from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) to help adapt. 'Pacific Island countries are fighting hard to establish our rights to be compensated for fish that are caught in the high seas,' Teo said. 'If we are able to definitively assert that the stock that used to occur in our EEZ is now in the high seas as a result of climate change, then that will strengthen our case.' Warming waters are also bleaching local corals, depleting reef fish that Tuvaluans depend on for food. Some of the fund grant will go towards fish aggregation devices: floating structures that help lure larger ocean fish, including tuna, closer to shore for locals to catch. Coral bleaching also disrupts the natural wave protection of atolls like Tuvalu and the replenishment of their shores, said Arthur Webb, who led the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project to reclaim swathes of desperately needed land in the capital. Each day, a dredging machine in Funafuti's lagoon sucks up sand and pumps it onto reclaimed areas. Sand is also pumped into large bags that are stacked to form protective seawalls. The new land is left to settle before building, which has yet to begin. Tuvalu's ring-shaped land mass covers only 26sqkm and is less than 1.5km across at its widest point, sometimes narrowing to a mere 18m. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post Tuvalu is roughly 1.5m above mean sea level. Its waters are now rising by about 2.5cm every five years - well above the global average - and estimated to reach 60 to 90cm by 2100, according to Moritz Wandres, an oceanographer with the Pacific Community. By 2060, once-in-50-year floods are predicted to occur every five years, rendering Tuvalu uninhabitable without large-scale adaptation efforts, Wandres said. King tides already routinely inundate much of Funafuti, where motorbikes splash through the water seeping up through the sandy ground. Tuvalu is preparing. It has amended its constitution to protect its statehood and maritime zones, even if it no longer has any land. And it announced a plan to clone itself in the metaverse, preserving its history and culture online. In 2023, Australia provided a more tangible escape plan when it created special visas, at least in part, to help up to 280 Tuvaluans per year escape the wrath of climate change. More than 80% of Tuvalu's population - or 8750 people - has applied for the visa, according to official Australian figures released last week. The predicted decline in tuna will only hasten the outflux. 'This is our only resource,' said Laitailiu Seono, a Fisheries Department officer, as he carved up tuna to be dried and sold. 'That's why we really want to look after them. No fish, no job.' Compounding Tuvalu's anxieties, the US Trump Administration has dealt Pacific Island nations another blow, suspending US$60m per year in South Pacific Tuna Treaty funds for the region - part of a long-standing deal to guarantee US fishing access. During his presidency, Joe Biden promised to double the tuna treaty funds in a bid to counteract China's efforts to woo Pacific Island countries. Instead, Teo said, Tuvalu had yet to receive roughly US$7m it had been counting on: 'A big hole in our projected revenue'. Children play on a seawall surrounding reclaimed land in Funafuti. Tuvalu, a low-lying island nation endangered by rising seas, is building up swathes of land for housing, even as many inhabitants contemplate leaving. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, the Washington Post At the same time, President Donald Trump's decision to open up the 400,000-square-mile (1,100,000sqkm) Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing suggested he could scrap the treaty altogether. Like other Trump Administration moves - pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, cutting US Agency for International Development funding and climate financing, and potentially putting travel restrictions on some Pacific countries, including Tuvalu - abandoning the treaty would hurt America's strategic interests and boost that of its stated rival, China, said Alan Tidwell, director of the Centre for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University in the US. 'If the US pulls out totally from the Pacific, then someone has to fill that role,' agreed Teo, whose nation is one of only three in the region that still recognise Taiwan instead of China. 'And we know who is eager.' A State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the department 'will continue … to align its activities and programmes with the foreign policy priorities of the president and the secretary.' When Kauaka Petaia returned to shore, his son Siuele was there to help him unload the tuna. The 27-year-old said he had no desire to follow in his father's footsteps. Instead, he would soon head to Australia to work in a meatpacking plant, where the pay is more certain. 'By 2030 or 2050,' he said, 'I don't know if tuna fishing will still be a job in Tuvalu.'
NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Riders are opposed to a plan to rip out 22.5km of bike lanes, while many motorists blame them for traffic jams
So, Doug Ford, Premier of Toronto's province, Ontario, passed a law to rip out 14 miles (22.5km) of the lanes from three major streets that serve the core of the city. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow arrived for her first day in office two years ago riding a bike. She was not pleased with the law, arguing that the city had sole discretion to decide street rules. Chow did not respond to a request to comment. But in public remarks, she has since softened her tone, suggesting it was possible to have a 'win-win solution' by relocating some bike lanes or keeping them in place while adding more driving lanes. 'We could design them better,' Chow told reporters in April. Bike lanes are a sore point for many drivers frustrated by the constant traffic jams in the heart of Toronto. 'There's so much traffic because of bike lanes,' said Nasser Moradman, who has driven a taxi in Toronto for 30 years. The lanes aren't even used much during the long winter, he complained, adding: 'It's miserable. It's very tough to drive in the city.' Cycling proponents and others who vehemently oppose Ford's move mounted a legal challenge, and a provincial court has temporarily barred the removal of any bike lanes until a judge decides if the new law is unconstitutional. Cities across the world, including New York and Paris, have added kilometres of bike lanes to make streets safer for cyclists and encourage drivers to abandon their vehicles and opt for more climate-friendly modes of travel, such as cycling and public transportation. In some places, the lanes have also set off criticism from drivers and others who say that they have made life worse for people who have to drive, including delivery workers and taxi drivers. Sharon Danley who opposes Toronto's bike lanes. Photo / Ian Willms, the New York Times United States President Donald Trump called New York's bike lanes dangerous and claimed that cyclists were 'whacking people'. In Canada, government data shows that about an average of two million people commute to Toronto by car on workdays. And those commuters contribute to the city's congestion, which ranks second behind Vancouver among Canadian cities, according to TomTom, a global traffic index. Toronto's chronic traffic snarls can come as an unwelcome surprise to some visitors. In February, the Carolina Hurricanes hockey team had to abandon a ride because of traffic and walk the remaining blocks to a downtown arena — not the first time that professional athletes have had to do that. The problems have cost the Toronto region about CA$45 billion ($54.6b) in lost productivity per year, according to a report by the Canadian Centre for Economic Analysis. 'Congestion has reached crisis levels,' said Giles Gherson, president of the Toronto Board of Trade, which suggested in a report that Toronto 'rebalance' its roads by cutting back street-level parking and moving bike lanes. Many commuters also argue that driving into Toronto from the suburbs is often faster than using public transportation, with experts saying that the city lacks enough rapid transit to meet its needs. The provincial government has been criticised for long delays to transit projects. The province says only 1.2% of workers commute by bike. For comparison, even in New York City, which has a large system of bike lanes, about 1.4% of people commute by bike, according to city figures. The conflict in Toronto has resonated with people such as Sharon Danley, a retiree. She recently joined a citizens group opposing a bike lane on her street, which she said was disruptive and unfair. The lane, she said, slows down a transit bus for people with disabilities. 'Now what we're doing is clogging up lean arteries and causing a lot of harm,' Danley said. In Toronto, where the car has long been king, cyclists have been gaining ground. Toronto added 67 miles (110km) of bike lanes between 2020 and 2024 and now has 207 miles (333km) of them. The city's bike-share service had 6.9 million rides in 2024, up from 2.9 million in 2020. 'Cycling has become more pleasant,' said Chad Mohr, a food-bank volunteer who delivers groceries by bike. 'Now they're talking about ripping tonnes of that infrastructure out, which would be a tragedy and just a giant, ridiculous, expensive step backward.' The city spent about CA$27 million ($32.7m) to install the bike lanes that Ontario now wants to eliminate. In a report, it estimates that removing them would cost CA$48m. A ghost bike memorial to a cyclist killed in a traffic collision in Toronto, Canada. Photo / Ian Willms, the New York Times Last year, Toronto said halfa dozen cyclists were killed in the city, the highest number in two decades. Between 2016 and 2023, 260 cyclists have been seriously injured, with most crashes on streets with no bike lanes. Removing bike lanes would 'cost people their lives', said Geoffrey Bercarich, a bike-repair technician who installs memorials called ghost bikes in places where cyclists have been killed. Ford has made it clear that he is not opposed to cyclists or cycling. 'I'm not against bike lanes,' he told reporters in May. 'Build all the bike lanes you want, just not on main arterial roads.' Cycling proponents argue that the province has not shown any evidence that removing bike lanes will ease traffic. 'This idea that they're somehow the cause of Toronto's traffic woes isn't based on any fact,' said Michael Longfield, executive director of Cycle Toronto, an advocacy group. He was speaking by phone from a hospital, where he was recovering from a fractured leg that he said he sustained while cycling when a driver opened a door into a bike lane. The Ontario Government has passed a measure that would protect it from lawsuits by cyclists injured on roads where the province tears out bike lanes. Cycling supporters say the move amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that riders will be hurt if the province is allowed to eliminate bike lanes, said David Shellnutt, a personal-injury lawyer in Toronto specialising in cycling cases. 'It is an admission that, yes, we know that what we're proposing here will result in injury and death,' Shellnutt said, 'and so we're going to insulate ourselves from accountability.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Written by: Vjosa Isai Photographs by: Ian Willms ©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
US and EU reach trade deal after Trump meets EU chief
world world politics 28 minutes ago The US and EU have just reached a trade deal, after talks between President Trump and the EU president Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland. Correspondent Nick Harper spoke to Ingrid Hipkiss.
