July 12-29, 2022 Svitlana Stretovych, Tania Kasian, Oksana Stomina, Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Taras Prokhasko

Flash essays from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” tell about the insights, experiences, and beliefs of Ukrainians, which ignited their society in 2022, when the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine began.

The Cultural Hub community and curators carefully collected, translated, and illustrated these texts in order to capture the values ​​of Ukrainians — Freedoms, Bravery, Dignity, Responsibility, and Humour. 

A series of publications in partnership with Chytomo introduces this collection to the English-speaking audience. Volume 24 continues to present the series. You can get acquainted with the previous collection here.

​​Svitlana Stretovych: That is the question. July 12

Any biography, just like any introduction, starts with one question: “Where are you from?”

In 2011, I started teaching at the university. I liked being the first one to introduce students to their discipline and ask questions.  

“Hello! Now, this might make you think of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Please tell us your name and what motivated you to join the school of journalism.”  

“Hi. I am Yaroslav. I decided to major in journalism because I’ve been dreaming of becoming a sports reporter.”

“And where are you from?”

“Rivne.”

At the introductory meeting, students would sometimes say there was little chance that I heard about their hometown, as it was quite small. “I’m from Bashtanka, but I don’t think you know this place,” someone would remark.

As a post-graduate intern, I delivered my first lecture to 120 students. The fate brought people from at least ten regions of Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula together in a large hall.   

“Oh, Crimea,” the students said dreamily. 

Everyone was envious of people who arrived from the peninsula with the subtropical Mediterranean climate along its southern coast, luscious mountains, and the inspiring sea. Their envy vanished in 2014.

You can establish one’s political attitudes by asking them: “Who does Crimea belong to?” 

When the war broke out in Donbas, and russia occupied Crimea, my students and I resisted it in our own way. Our theses explored the experience of journalists who moved onto the mainland of Ukraine after the illegal referendum, unwilling to live under the russian flag. We prepared materials about Oleh Sentsov, political prisoner who was illegally detained and charged with terrorism.

After 2014, the phrases “I’m from Crimea” or “I’m from Donbas,” said during the round of introductions in the lecture hall, triggered a sense of despair.    

Pursuing their discipline, the students asked another laconic question that revealed the truth: “Who does Crimea belong to?” If you did not speak out against that crime, it meant you were an accomplice.  

Some questions have only one answer: “I’m Ukrainian.”

Ukraine has 24 regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.

Explosions in Kyiv.

Explosions in Kharkiv.

Explosions in Kherson.

Explosions in Lutsk.

Explosions in Ivano-Frankivsk.

As a lecturer, all I know about geography is my students’ hometowns. My social media feed turned into the news feed:

My former student. Killed in the war. His wife and two children left behind.

My student. Her husband was killed in the war. She is left alone with her little son.  

My student. Her brother was killed.

My students. Their professor was killed.

My student. Her apartment in Mariupol was shelled to pieces.  

My student. His apartment was destroyed in the missile attack in Kyiv.

Dmytro announced a fundraising effort to install air conditioning units in several rooms of the military hospital in Pechersk neighborhood in Kyiv. Soldiers from across the frontlines were being treated there, and you wanted to ensure the most comfortable conditions for them in that abnormal heat wave weather. The social media community raised the necessary funds in just one day. The AC units were installed.

Olena drives her small car all over Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, delivering humanitarian aid to the villages that suffered under the russian occupation. She also catered to 120 soldiers and 250 civilians on the frontlines. Vegetables, tinned food, cereal, 500 liters of petrol. It was enough to satisfy a weekly demand. A full-scale war has been raging in Ukraine for 5 months, though.

Oleksiy is a professional photographer. He is now taking photos of the damaged civilian infrastructure. He took his latest photos in Vinnytsia that suffered the missile attack on July 14. As of July 15, 23 people, including three children, were reportedly killed in the russian shelling of Vinnytsia downtown.    

It remains to be determined how many facilities of civilian infrastructure have been destroyed. Back in March 2022, when the all-out war just exploded, the number topped 3,500.  

The students taught to ask the right questions give a clear answer that represents each of the 24 regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea: “І’m Ukrainian.”

Svitlana Stretovych: A portrait in uniform. July 12

“Up to 700 thousand people have been mobilized for the Armed Forces,”
Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, reported.

The portraits of soldiers fighting in previous wars came down to us fictionalized or white-and-black.   

1.Paul Bäumer is 19.

Just like all of his classmates, he volunteered for military service during World War I. Paul is given a short leave to go home. He feels uncomfortable in civilian life, finding too many things unfamiliar and strange. His life in the military camp seems more familiar and comprehensible. His father was looking forward to his son’s leave, so he could show his friends how handsome Paul looked in the uniform.    

This literary protagonist is remembered not so much by his appearance but rather by his feelings and thoughts.    

We would hardly remember any distinct characteristics of the soldier described by Remarque, except for his military uniform.

2.A black-and-white photo showing a young soldier and his friend.

In 1942, he claimed he was a couple of years older — only so he’d be eligible to go to the war. He served as a machine gunner and sustained a knee injury. He often told the story of how he fled from the military hospital and pushed on the pedals of his bike as hard as he could to join his comrades on the frontline.  

During the soviet advance through Europe in 1945, he reached Berlin. Later, the soviets arrested him and sentenced him to 25 years in prison. He was given amnesty after ten years, though.    

“It’s so weird,” a friend of mine says. “My grandpa’s story sounds just the same. He was also arrested after the war and spent ten years in prison until the Thaw.”

3.He is sitting across from me. In his pre-war life, Sashko was a businessman. He has two children from two different women, with a big age difference: his son is 21, his daughter — 1.  

He and his best friend volunteered to fight.

Before the war, he wore a trendy hairstyle, his hair longer than most men wear. He invested his money in real estate and never spent too much. A few months of war took him to the ‘ground zero.’ To the place where you can see your enemy using a thermal camera.

He says that the time spent at the ‘ground zero’ gave him a second birthday.

“They just talked to us on the radio and warned us about the shelling. We hunkered down in the basement. Once outside, we saw that the building where we stayed was half-ruined… And then you return to Kyiv and see all this slow life… And you feel like going back to your fellows where all that action is going on.”

On September 4, Sashko will turn 44. His third child is on the way. This time, he will welcome the baby in his uniform.  

Tania Kasian: Eight minutes on the beach. July 12

Maria’s City, a city by the sea, Mariupol… A city the whole world is talking about.

Mariupol sits on the Azov coast, and we, locals, never needed to go to Crimea for holidays, since we always had our very own sea. Shallow, salty, grayish-green, and only sometimes transparent—but it was ours. I went to the seaside in summer to eat corn on the cob, pick up jellyfish, and build sandcastles. I went to the seaside in winter, when the sun was setting over the horizon, painting the sky and the frozen surface of the sea into every shade of pink. But I will not go there this summer. And I do not know if I will go there in winter, either.

I have recently learned that my friend’s mother died on that beach. She and her husband were walking along the coast, exhausted, when she suddenly stepped on a landmine. Her legs were blown off in the blast, and her husband was thrown by the blast wind. For eight minutes, she was dying in his hands, begging him for water. She managed to take only one sip. He was kissing her face until the end. For eight minutes…

What do you feel in those eight minutes when you are lying on the beach, the blood running out of your body, mixing with the seawater? Anger? Shock? Hatred? Fear? I do not know because she is no longer here to answer that.

And what do you feel in those eight minutes when you watch a person you love take her last breath right before your eyes? Pain? Helplessness? Rage? Confusion?

He carried his wife all the way back home, having no idea what he should do, as the shelling wouldn’t stop. Rockets, bombs, bullets… A scorching hell! Fearing for their lives, his neighbors hunkered down in the bomb shelter and refused to help him bury her. But he did not want to bury his wife in his yard, so he walked away. He headed to the cemetery.

The shelling continued, but he did not care: all he wanted was to properly bury the woman who was his lifelong partner. Out of despair, he yelled at the invisible enemy hiding behind their weapon: “Kill me! Just as you killed her!” In the end, he buried his wife in a grave he dug out with his own hands.

It is a story of just one family from Maria’s City. There are thousands and thousands more. Someone had their eight minutes on the beach, others fifteen seconds under the rubble of the Drama Theater or hours in burning buildings. For each of us, the war is fifteen seconds, eight minutes, the eternity that all test our strength and resilience. Humanity, decency, and love, too. And admit it—Ukrainians have passed this test.  

Oksana Stomina: From the unsent, or letters into captivity. July 14

To my husband…

You and I write these letters to one another. Clean and clear.

About cherry stars, not cannons, tanks, or checkpoints.

About a cozy nest underneath the pines; happiness and victory.

About love. What would we do without it?

And only a bit about where you are now and how I feel without you.

We keep writing these letters, throwing them up in the sky.

We keep writing these words, dropping them into the water.

Since we don’t have any other entrance or exit…

Nor any other address—no street, no house, no town…

Rhymed voices will build a bridge between us.

Only Mars or Venus are farther from me than my addressee.

So… I kiss your forehead and leave it on paper.

                                                                                      a sad July, 2022

P .S. “Prisoners of war shall be allowed to send and receive letters and cards. If the Detaining Power deems it necessary to limit the number of letters and cards sent by each prisoner of war, the said number shall not be less than two letters and four cards monthly, exclusive of the capture cards […].”

Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, article 71

Currently, the russian federation does not comply with these rules of the Geneva Convention.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. July 15

During the past few weeks the social scientist in me has asked whether it is right (moral) to dehumanize the enemy? Whether we shouldn’t sympathise with the families of russian soldiers who have lost their lives fighting a war launched by their psychopathic leader…

And then yesterday, they fired rockets at the city of Vinnytsia — 21 dead including 3 children (one of the youths was the brother of our daughter’s friend from Plast).

Today the russians destroyed the campuses of two universities in Mykolayiv that I visited only last year: MNU (the former pedagogical institute, turned classical university) and the Mykolayiv Shipbuilding University.

Since 24 February over 2000 schools have been damaged by russian artillery and rockets. 216 educational institutions have been destroyed completely. 351 children have been killed; 649 have been wounded by shrapnel.

Through the windows of our house, everyday we see Ukrainian airforce pilots flying eastward. Their bombs and missiles have addresses: russians who have invaded our peaceful country, who aim to kill us.

Ukrainians did not start this war. But we will finish it!

There can be no mercy. The deaths of the innocent must be avenged.

We have a war to win!

#ThoughtsfromKyiv

Taras Prokhasko: When the animals eventually start talking. July 21

A long time ago, my grandpa would tell me some tales and explained what should never be done when you are in a predicament. By the way, he believed the most dire situation to be when there is uncertainty in time, when the time matter that is extending to infinity – when you are away from home, detached from the usual lifestyle, from places and people including.

He said there was no way to go too deep into your memories about how it used to be and transform them into the dream about how it would be again the same way. Even in favourable conditions, memories shall be regulated like the flame in the bonfire or in the petroleum lamp. They have to make you feel warm and give you light rather than scorch and make you blind. Anyway, memories are not meant to be perceived as the future. The power of the past is in its passing, that it amalgamated into the memories that now serve as construction material for dreams and for another alternative reality, rather than as a casting mould for the future products.

Grandpa had a certain experience of mental yoga. Having left his home in summer 1943, saying a short good-bye to his wife and daughter, he returned through the bullets, combat traps, interrogations, criminal inmates, prison beds, thousands of random non-accidental men and women, dozens of thousands of kilometers in different climate and time zones, the multitude of beatings hitting into the most painful points, as late as in autumn 1956. With another wife and her teenage son. Generally, he was lucky to be able to return to the place he started from. To the place he yearned for, without letting himself to yearn. He abandoned the dream of homecoming for not such a long time but still long enough to be close to infinity. To be able to last through the span, he had to make himself believe and accept that all those bullets, prisons, beatings, lockups, and pain were his current normal everyday life.

My practice was slightly different. When I found myself in the infinity of a rather mild army life, also with rather abstract officially determined two-year long deadlines, I made a resolution not simply to return but at least not to forget the principles of life that I considered appropriate and normal.

However, over that time, I have never been tormented by the expectation of all of it coming to an end. I started imagining what the people I knew and loved could be doing at a certain moment in time. This way, I degraded the concept of “here and now” in two opposite directions. The “now” was utterly narrowed. To several seconds, to the speed of thought and imagination which cannot be actually followed any other way of transfer because the mandatory, compulsory, and irreversible linearity would always come everywhere (even the verbalization inside your mind shall be avoided, only the images, only the overlapping of images of different origin).

On the other hand, the “here” loses all boundaries. It is precisely due to the hyperextension of the “here” that the miracle in question can be possible. The setting is not only about the microdetails of the locus where you stay at the moment. The setting includes all locations where all the people you know and imagined stay. It resembles a sort of a hyper-telescope piercing into the universe. Things are happening everywhere. Everyone you could imagine by their smell, voice, moves, morphology, and cytology are doing at that moment whatever is imaginable for you. You may miss out but you can never make a mistake because all errors are valid within the range of one second only.

Now, my exercise can manage several thousand people at a time. At this point of time, they are doing a plethora of various things in so many different places filled with the unique sets of microdetail. They feel so many things that I can hardly manage to strike the overflowing chord with everything that could be imagining inside me. But this is exactly what becomes the very much now and the strongly here. Vibration connects, every time doing something that has never happened before. And that will never ever happen again.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. July 28

News of the day: 20 missiles were reportedly launched early this morning from the territory of belarus. Explosions have been reported in Chernihiv region and in Vyshhorod, a town on the northern outskirts of Kyiv. Residents of Kyiv’s Obolon suburb slept poorly this morning.

It would seem the russians have decided to return to military action in and around Ukraine’s capital. Having had their ground troops beaten back in March-April, they are now resorting to terrorism with long range missiles. This is senseless because territory (+hearts and minds) cannot be captured from a distance.

And any attempted ground assault would surely end in more russian humiliation. Captured russian tanks and heavy equipment are a pertinent reminder of the futility of their mindless plan to occupy Ukraine.

Today, the Ukrainian authorities reported that in Poltava region alone, 11 russian tanks have been recovered from Ukrainian farmers. More will be towed away if they try invading again.

We await news of the gradually intensifying Ukrainian counterattack in Kherson region. Underground resistance fighters and western-provided weaponry has made russia’s withdrawal from that region (or massive defeat) just a matter of time.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. July 29

This morning the Olenivka correctional facility in russian occupied Donetsk oblast was destroyed in a rocket attack. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Ukrainian forces did not target Olenivka — the prison was destroyed by the russians themselves.

The valiant defenders of Mariupol who in late May were ordered by President Zelensky to surrender “to preserve their lives” were held by the russians in Olenivka.

According to russian media, 53 are now dead; over 130 were wounded.

A couple of days ago I wrote a brief note for Canada’s National Post in an effort to raise awareness of the fate of one of the prisoners in Olenivka: Arseniy Fedosiuk, a graduate of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and a sergeant in the Azov regiment.

Please pray for Arseniy and for all the brave Ukrainians who defended Mariupol. They deserve to be home.

A Ukrainian POW just wants to return home to his wife; following the attack on Olenivka, his fate is unknown.

The Olenivka correctional facility where Fedosiuk is being held was targeted by rockets earlier today

russia has been waging full-scale war in Ukraine for five months. Media attention remains high, but reports from the frontlines are gradually becoming eclipsed by other stories that affect the daily lives of global audiences.

For those of us in Ukraine, and for those closely following russia’s ongoing war, the name “Mariupol” has been etched into our memories. Mariupol — technically, “the city of Mary” — has come to symbolize the resilience of Ukrainians. Yet these days, Mariupol and its valiant defenders seem to have been forgotten.

Before the russians began their onslaught, Mariupol was home to over 400,000 inhabitants. For over three months, the city resisted an unprecedented onslaught of russian artillery, infantry, rockets and aerial bombardment. It was eventually lost as a result of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s order to “preserve life” — to surrender.

One of the lives supposedly “preserved” was that of Arseniy Fedosiuk — a 2012 graduate of the prestigious Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, whose master’s studies in history were interrupted by the 2013–14 protests in Kyiv’s Maidan square, and then by russia’s invasion of the Donbas and Crimea.

In 2014, Fedosiuk volunteered to fight the russian invaders who were fostering separatism in the Donbas. Six months into the war, he found himself near the town of Ilovaysk, where Ukraine’s volunteer forces first engaged russian regulars in battle. Over 400 of his comrades perished.

This year, Fedosiuk again faced russian forces directly: in Mariupol, as a sergeant in Ukraine’s Azov Regiment. In March, he was wounded. The shrapnel in his leg was never removed, but the wound healed itself.

After the order to cease fire, Fedosiuk was taken prisoner. For the past two months, he has been held captive in the Olenivka penal colony in the russian-occupied Donetsk region. According to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the Olenivka correctional facility was recently reorganized by the russians into a “filtration camp.” Its detainees are regularly tortured with electric shock and day-long interrogations.

Several of Fedosiuk’s badly wounded comrades were returned to Ukraine a month ago in a prisoner exchange. Yet despite being promised a swift release, Fedosiuk continues to be held by the russians. Last week, Fedosiuk was allowed to speak briefly by phone with his wife, Yulia. This was only the second conversation they’ve had since he was taken prisoner in May.

The eastern city of Mariupol — “the place where Ukraine’s sun rises everyday” — was defended by Ukraine’s most valiant sons and daughters. During the spring, they diverted russia’s forces away from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and other key centres, which helped change the course of the war.

At the start of the war’s sixth month, russia continues to ravage Ukraine. Last week, rockets were fired on civilian targets in Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv and Dnipro. Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, has been bombed almost continuously for the past five months. The war grinds on, with new atrocities and crimes reported daily.

On July 29, the Olenivka correctional facility where Fedosiuk has been held was targeted by rockets. Although russian sources claim the prison was destroyed by Ukrainian forces, credible sources report that there were prison riots by Ukrainian POWs reacting to torture, and that the russians resolved the issue by destroying the facility. russian officials claim that 53 Ukrainian POWs were killed in the rocket attack, and another 75 were wounded. It is unclear if Fedosiuk is among the casualties.

Amid the endless destruction, amid the stories of valour, resilience and bravery demonstrated daily by Ukrainians, we must not forget the courage and devotion of individual heroes. Ukraine, and its defenders like Fedosiuk, must not be forgotten by Canada and other western allies, so that this war can be ended and people like Fedosiuk, if he is still alive, can be returned home.

#ThoughtsfromKyiv

The editorial “rule of small letters” or the “rule of disrespect for criminals” applies to all the words related to evil, like names and surnames of terrorists, war criminals, rapists, murderers, and torturers. They do not deserve being capitalized but shall be written in italics to stay in the focus of the readers’ attention. 

The programme “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” has been created by joint effort and with the financial support of the institution’s members of the Cultural Business Education Hub, the European Cultural Foundation, and BBK — the Regensburg Art and Culture Support Group from the Professional Association of Artists of Lower Bavaria/Upper Palatinate.

Authors: Svitlana Stretovych, Tania Kasian, Oksana Stomina, Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Taras Prokhasko 

Translators (from Ukrainian): Hanna Leliv (Svitlana Stretovych, Tania Kasian, and Oksana Stomina’s essays), Svitlana Bregman (Taras Prokhasko’s essay)

Illustrators: Victoria Boyko (Svitlana Stretovych, Tania Kasian, Oksana Stomina, and Mychailo Wynnycky’s essays), Yuliya Tabenska (Taras Prokhasko’s essay), and plasticine panel by Olha Protasova

Copyeditors: Yuliia Moroz, Terra Friedman King

Proofreaders: Iryna Andrieieva, Tetiana Vorobtsova, Terra Friedman King

Content Editors: Maryna Korchaka, Natalia Babalyk

Program Directors: Julia Ovcharenko and Demyan Om Dyakiv-Slavitski