At the start of the invasion of Ukraine, as Russian tanks rolled south towards Kyiv, a group of Ukrainian soldiers stood at a barricade at midnight playing draughts. Specifically, they were playing shashki – also known as Russian draughts – arguably the game’s most dynamic variant, where pieces can capture forwards or backwards and kings can move any distance. More specifically, their playing pieces were Molotov cocktails.
It might sound an odd time to set up a board game – the temperature was below freezing, they had use electric torches to see the improvised board, and somewhere to the north the full motorised weight of a global superpower was thundering towards them. Certainly, it puts into perspective all those times we’ve turned down a games night because we’re ‘a little busy’. On the other hand, it was the perfect time.