Amuchina and still water with ice. Heavy curtains crossed by eighties patterns, like the chairs traced by yellowish rhombuses. An opaque table. The TV wedged into a heavy wooden cabinet. The clock that tells the time: midnight and fifty-four minutes. Everything is sober, modest, a bit abandoned, because there is a war around and there is no time for details. Yet there is the story in this shot, the Europe leading the Union to Kiev.
Ukrainian security men have dark circles as they venture into the narrow corridors of the special train. That everything on board is Spartan – the uniforms of the delegations and the sparkling water, the sad ocher of the interiors and also the tone of voice of the Europeans on a mission – is also a tribute to them who resist, to a country transformed into a bunker.
The style also adapts, it is shaped by the choice of bringing politics to the field, a real war field. Emmanuel Macron in a white shirt and a stand-up collar. Mario Draghi with the air conditioning sweater. Olaf Scholz in jeans and a short-sleeved black shirt that is no longer in fashion.
A shot in the night, as the train runs from the Polish border, straight towards the capital. The three of them, the leaders, find themselves in the Frenchman’s cabin, when the wagons still move in fits and starts and the Ukrainian border police stop the train to check the passports of those present. The founders of Europe speak for at least an hour and a half.
The folders on the table remain closed during the photograph. And with them, sealed, the line of each leader, their differences, the choice of still being together in the presence of the President who resists the Tsar. They go to Zelensky to tell him that he can come in someday. That Putin’s bombs do not stop a project, even if Berlin pushes to negotiate and Draghi instead seems more uncompromising, “there cannot be an imposed peace”.
The train runs in the night, it will only arrive in the morning. Next stop, Kiev.