The Mir Hotel

Dreamt of Mir Hotel in Severodonetsk last night. Lived in it for a year. Ruschists briefly occupied it yesterday. Before being killed by Ukrainian armed forces. Ruschists don’t even know why they’re there. Barbarism, haunting our dreams. As President Z says though: they’re doomed.

Source: Twitter, 28 May 2022

I lived in the Mir Hotel for a year. Ruschia shelled the Mir in 2014. Two days ago Ruschia occupied the Mir (which means “peace” in Russian). Yesterday, Ukrainian armed forces killed the occupiers. Mir is now free again.

Source: Twitter, 29 May 2022

Between 2015 and 2016, the author lived in the Mir Hotel in Severodonetsk, eastern Ukraine, while serving as a peacekeeping diplomat monitoring the Minsk peace process. He literally lived inside “Peace” — in a hotel named for the archetype — in a city 10 kilometres from the front line where Russia was daily violating the very peace he was monitoring.

The Mir Hotel became a microcosm of the entire Peace archetype. Russia shelled it. Russia occupied it. Ukraine liberated it. The cycle of the archetype compressed into a single building: peace offered, peace violated, peace reclaimed through force.

Gradually I got to know Top Cat. He balanced on a bin. Thus his name. He seemed ill. Brought him to the vet. They tested him. Said: “He’s dying.” Top Cat spent his last week with me in comfort at the Mir Hotel in Severo. He’s buried in the pet cemetery in the forest.

Source: Twitter, 29 May 2022

In May 2022, Russia killed 10,000 of the author’s former neighbours in Severodonetsk. The gentle city with its well-fed feral cats and dogs, its parks and Olympic swimming pools, its neighbourhoods where residents organised feeding systems for strays — reduced to rubble under the banner of “liberation.” This is what “peace” means when Russia speaks it.

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