Love During War: A charmdate scam rumor busted in ashes

It is a strange paradox to live in Kyiv during war. Our city struggles through resistance. One moment I sat casually checking out people when drinking coffee under a soft yellow light in a semi-deserted cafeteria; the next I am sheltered in a corridor clutching a torch, listening to the baying of sirens echoing off over the rooftops. We still go to work. We still go shopping for bread. We still laugh. But underlying all of this is a repressed fear question: What will the next hour bring?

I am Mila, 32 years old, a former graphic designer turned volunteer coordinator, and I'm in love with a Russian man named Alexei who I met on a dating site when he traveled and lived in the US. That would be enough to have me shunned by some individuals. We joked about how charmdate scam is so common on the internet and we never doubted if the other person was genuine. We just met straight away without thinking too much. But this is not one of those taboo romance tales. This is a survival story, of options, and how one can stay human in a world built to make humans into ice.

The World Before

I met Alexei on internet before the war started despite the reputation and rumors have it as charmdate scam - late 2021 - and we met up in real life on a freelancers' Slack community. I loved his sense of humor, his posts on Soviet buildings, his ability to explain code in terms of music. He was from St. Petersburg, and I had no reason at the time to associate his personality with anything nefarious. We did a little UX project. Then another. Then calls and late-night memes.

By January, we were talking every day. He introduced me to his favorite movies by Tarkovsky. I introduced him to my city's murals. We both had no clue what lay ahead.

When the Sky Fell

It shattered on a cold Thursday morning. February 24, 2022. The world was transformed.

I had been staying with my mother on the Left Bank when the initial booms shook our windows. My mother was very worried from the first time I told her about Alexei. She heard too many rumors, gossips about who was trapped by charmdate scam on the internet. To her, internet is the worst evil. I remember grabbing my laptop and my external hard drive first thinking I might just can send a message to Alexei telling him I was safe. It was senseless. As if saving my virtual life was going to keep my own life together.

We waited days on the metro. My world narrowed to distant booms and Telegram texts. Food became rationed. Pharmacies were emptied. But some way, through it all, Alexei texted me.

"Are you okay?" That was the initial message.

I didn't respond for hours. I wasn't sure if I wanted to.

He texted again: "They told us it was a special operation. But it isn't special. It's terrible."

That broke me. I typed back: "Kyiv is burning. What do you expect me to say?"

But we kept talking.

Wi-Fi and War Rooms

My apartment miraculously had power. But the internet? That was a problem.

Enter Starlink. Within weeks, the Ukrainian government partnered with Elon Musk to set up satellite internet stations. In my building, we took turns charging phones off a car battery in the basement, but we had Wi-Fi. So I kept in touch with him on Charmdate and everywhere I can possibly think of just in case my messages didn’t get through. In a war zone. The absurdity of modern life.

Meanwhile, Alexei's internet was getting worse. Not in a technological sense - but political. Russia began blocking websites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. VPNs were made illegal. He messaged less. When he did, it was on Proton Mail or self-deleting encrypted messages.

"If they intercept our texts," he wrote, "they can arrest me." So we kept the conversation, more like a broken conversation of a few words and sentences on we though within a website there is no way anyone can find us.

He stopped using my name. I was "K."

I wasn't sure if I was honored or appalled.

The Café That No Longer Exists

I took Alexei in the autumn of 2021 to a tiny café by the Dnipro River right after we took everything to real life. To be honest, I thought of charmdate scam for a second wondering what if Alexei is not who he claimed to be. What if he is a bald? That was part of the reason why I asked Alexei to meet in my city instead of I visited him. We had cappuccinos and listened to a street musician play Coldplay.

That café is gone. It was damaged in a May 2023 drone strike.

When I texted him a picture of the wreckage, he replied with: "I still remember the taste of your coffee that day."

This was not romanticism. It was grieving.

Chapter 5: Daily Life, Disrupted

War does not suspend life, it distorts it.

We still shop at markets. But we scan rooftops for drones. We go on dates - to bomb shelters. We celebrate birthdays with rationed cakes and conversations that go around politics.

I live in a flat now. Three women and a dog named Sova. We have an air-raid shelter schedule in a Google sheet. One of the flat mates is a pediatric nurse who delivers across checkpoints. The other used to be a wedding planner.

There are nights when we stay up late and laugh until dawn. There are nights when we cry over lost friends there.

Censorship and Silence

Alexei told me about his uncle - arrested for attending an anti-war protest. A peaceful one. With an empty sign.

He doesn't speak much now. Not because he's for the war - but because he's watched colleagues disappear.

"They come at 4 a.m.," he once messaged. "They take your phone first. Then your laptop. Then they take your words."

He erased all our past messages. This could be a classic move if someone intended for a scammer: erasing all the chat history because he was talking to more than one person at a time so he got confused in each conversation. And his words wouldn’t match up. It was kind of amusing at that moment. I nearly laughed out.

We talk now only in voice messages - using metaphors, inside jokes, codewords.

We’re not lovers. We’re ghosts whispering across firewalls.

Power Cuts and Poetry

Kyiv winters are brutal. Not just for chill - but because Russia is shooting at our grid.

There have been periods where, for weeks on end, I existed by candlelight. When showers translated to bucket baths. When the food spoiled in my fridge because it had been out for days.

But somehow, I always caught his voice messages. I sat at the window, wrapped in four blankets, and played with his voice: tired, gentle, heavy with unspoken sorrow.

"K., today I saw a crow sitting on my balcony. First time in weeks. It felt like a message."

I replied: "Maybe it's a spy. We should teach it Morse code."

We laughed. Even in war, we laughed.

The Blame

Not everyone understands especially when they knew that I met Alexei on the internet, worse, on dating apps full of charmdate scam. Some of my friends cut me off when they found out I was still speaking to a Russian.

My brother hasn't spoken to me in months.

"You can't divorce the man from the regime," he says.

But I do. Not because I'm naive, but because I know what Alexei risks just hearing my voice. Because I know that love, true love, isn't patriotic. It's defiant.

Futures in Fragments

We don't make plans. That's the first casualty of war.

We used to joke that we'd meet in Istanbul. Or Tbilisi. But Alexei can't leave Russia for fear of detention. I can't leave Ukraine for fear of guilt.

Yet still, we dream.

"When this is over," he said once, "I want to walk with you down street. No sirens. Just music."

I said: "Only if you buy me ice cream."

He laughed. The type of laugh that I live for.

Why I Still Care

I don't know what Alexei and I are. Friends? Leftovers of a time prior to war? A flicker of what could have been.

But I do know this: war is intended to make us hate. To minimize. To dehumanize.

But with every day that I talk with him, I am reminded there are Russians who whisper in the dark. Who protests. Who believes. Who break.

He once told me: "If we lose our humanity, they win."

So, I remain. I respond. I hear.

For even if the world is on fire, I will not lose hope in the potential of two people - on opposite sides of a broken map - deciding to be kind. This is far more scaring and sad than being scammed.

Life, Continued

Yesterday, I walked past a park where there was a child flying a kite. The sky was blue. For once. No whir of drones. No furtive glances skywards. Just the soft breeze and the silent tug of string on the small, clutching hand of a child. I stood there for longer than I ought, watching that small piece of fabric fly higher than the trees. It was a moment from another life.

I sent Alexei this text: "Blue sky today. Unbroken."

He replied: "I hope it lasts that way—for both of us."

I stared at his message for hours. It wasn't dramatic, it wasn't poetry. But it was enough. In a world where all can be lost—from houses to histories to human lives, that common prayer felt colossal. It was the sort of sentence that grounds you when everything else fails.

I walked on, though more slowly. I listened to the crunch of my boots over fallen leaves. I noticed groups of couples walking dogs along, and men old enough to be playing chess on weathered benches. Kyiv, my city under siege, still drew breath. Still throbbed. And somehow, intangibly, so did we.

All I require is that thin thread—stretched as far as mountains, as fear, as bony skylines—that speaks:

I see you. I hear you. I care.

And maybe, for now, that is what peace is.

Not silence. But understanding. Not security. But peace. Not victory. But fellowship. I am lucky enough to have Alexei during all this. But it is hard enough to go through all the charmdate scam rumor, the war and everything stretched in between.