To be honest, I've been asked that question so many times, um, it's gotten hard to keep track

of what my mood is at a given point.

Romeo lives in Ukraine. He used to live in the capital, Kiev. He fled a few days back.

Now he's staying in the country in a house his grandfather built decades ago. It's pretty quiet

there, but it's not completely out of the war zone. Like there were a couple missile strikes

against one of the local airports or against the local airport. I should say a few days ago,

but that wasn't the airports outside the city. And to be honest, everyone was kind of expecting

that airport to be hit anyway, so it wasn't really surprising. You sound very chill about a missile

strike. I mean, how else am I supposed to be? Oh my god, like my hair's on fire. I mean, yeah,

like the enemy has cruise missiles. They're clearly going to use them. Like they're going to

use it's a war. So it's hard to, um, it's hard to be freaked out all the time.

Romeo works as the managing editor for a website called The New Voice of Ukraine. He also hosts

a podcast. It's called Ukraine without hype. His schedule is basically reduced about the war,

assigned coverage of the war, checking with friends about the war. And then once my work day is

overbarring some massive, massive advance, um, or, um, changed like we had in the first week of the war.

I tried to just decompress and just like, I don't know, watch Star Trek and play video games,

and just not think about it. Because if I had to do that, even more, I would have just off myself by now.

A few weeks ago, before the invasion, you talked in another interview about having a kind of

doomed optimism, which I thought was just such an interesting way to put it. Like, how does that

even work? Dumed optimism was, honestly, it really didn't have the pre-war feeling of everyone.

You could, you, I think, felt that things were about to change your bones. But at the same time,

everyone kept planning life, you know, setting like movie dates and setting work events and

...