May 2-9, 2022 — Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Oksana Stomina, Taras Prokhasko, Volodymyr Yermolenko

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 13 continues to present the series. You can get acquainted with the previous collection here.

Myсhailo Wynnyckyj: Thoughts from Kyiv. May 2

Freedom and agency: Finding meaning in war

I feel strongly that the phrase “Kyiv is the capital of freedom” represents accurately what this war is about. It also provides a powerful vision for the country that we are to build when the war ends.

Freedom is a fundamental value. Historically, the word emerged as a rallying cry for those who had experienced slavery, serfdom, constraints on movement, assembly, speech, creed… Over the past three centuries many have written of the contrast between “negative” freedom (freedom from) and its “positive” meaning: freedom to. In time, with the spread of respect for human rights, the discourse has shifted to the need to expand positive freedom — a task taken up with fervor by the institutions of the European Union.

Fundamentally, humans are free when they have “agency.”

The Ukrainian version of this English term is “subyektnist” (subjectivity) — a logical contrast to “objectivity,” meaning to be an object of someone else’s will. A person/group that possesses “subyektnist” (or “agency”) has the ability to act, to be heard, to wilfully affect events.

Whether we call it agency or subjectivity we are referring to the same thing: one’s ability to deliberately (positively) enact one’s will: to consider facts, weigh emotions, judge according to one’s values, counsel with others, and then to act with minimal constraint.

Eventually, I’m sure, Kyiv will become the Capital of Freedom. We will rid ourselves of the invader whose aim is to negate our freedom, and we will build a new Ukraine where agency is maximized. That vision will require not only a change in how we build the new Ukraine, but also a change in each of us.

During the Maidan protests, many argued that the revolution was about Ukraine’s “civilizational choice”: to be part of the russian or European “worlds.” Within the next few weeks, Ukraine’s European choice will be validated (finally) in the form of EU candidate member status. Ukraine will become formally accepted into the “European family” where (apparently) the values that many Ukrainians have fought and died for have been institutionalized. But what are these values?

Simple answer: freedom.

More complicated answer: individual and collective agency, and mutual respect for the agency of others. In other words: the ability and desire to make decisions and act upon them, and recognition of the right (and obligation) of others to do the same.

Eight years ago on the Kyiv Maidan, this value was represented in the word “dignity.” Our demand was to have our personal and collective dignity recognized by our own government, by the international community. Today, we talk about other things: our right to exist as Ukrainians, as human beings… The words have changed, but the end goal is the same. We want to be free.

War changes discourse. Certainly, the way we use everyday words, and what we mean by them has changed. My former student Oryna Stetsenko illustrated the point in a recent FB post with the example of “being safe”: “In general terms, ‘being safe’ for many Ukrainians now means being thousands of kilometers away from home… with a single backpack or with a suitcase, with no job or with a remote one, with no friends or with at least one or two… At least no rockets overhead.”

Words represent our reality. The widely accepted theory of linguistic relativity suggests that the structure of a language affects the worldview or cognition of its speakers, and thus the perceptions of people are relative to their spoken language. Presumably the reverse is also true: changes in worldview (particularly during times of extreme stress) will affect language, discourse, vocabulary.

War inevitably pushes us away from practices that are considered “normal” or “civilized.” The atrocious images and stories of inhumanity from Bucha and Borodyanka, compounded by those from Mariupol, leave no mistake: We have left normality a long time ago.

In normal times we “felt safe,” demanded “freedom” (to, rather than from), and viewed “Europe” in very different ways than now.

In normal times, one of the most important things a person can do is to plan. Lately, I have been asked by multiple friends and acquaintances, what my plans are for the future. For the first time in my life that question leaves me dumbstruck. Friends who have left Ukraine have commented that the most stressful aspect of displacement has been the inability to plan. For those of us in Ukraine, the problem is equally prevalent — perhaps more so because “being safe” means so much more.

Without safety one cannot plan. Without a plan, one cannot effect deliberate agency. Without the ability to plan, one cannot be free to act.

Until planning becomes impossible, one doesn’t realize its importance. Now its centrality to the human condition has become supremely evident. Specifically — to plan, not just to dream.

We dream of victory. We dream of peace. We dream of healing. We dream of making Kyiv the Capital of Freedom and of Ukraine gaining membership in the EU (and NATO). But can we really plan anything?

As humans we are free to dream (always). Agency means being free to act on those dreams: to plan, to deliberate on the pros and cons of variants, to weigh choices against values, and then to adopt a course of action, and then to act without constraint.

Watching the daily press briefings about lost or liberated territory, about weapons shipments, and about the destruction caused by the russians in Ukraine, it is easy to lose sight of what this war is really about. We are fighting for our freedom: for the ability to make deliberate choices and act upon them.

Amid the destruction, horror, death, and constant bombardments we must not lose sight of our purpose. It is what makes us human. If we lose this purpose, the war will cease to be about us; we will lose our agency, our chance to gain real freedom. We may preserve our territory, but we will lose both our individual and collective “subyektnist.”

“Freedom is worth fighting for!” That phrase must remain substantive to our cause, and not merely a slogan.

God help us!

Oksana Stomina: It is not about material things — it is all about spiritual ones. May 5

It is not about material things — it is all about spiritual ones… For days, I did not hear anything about Zhenia, or Evgeny Sosnovsky. Back in Mariupol and later on, after I managed to escape the city, I checked his Facebook page over and over again, called him, texted him, and asked everyone I knew about him. Nothing. I was terribly worried, aware that Zhenia was under a double threat — as a resident of Mariupol and as a zealous photographer documenting historic events in our city’s life. I imagined him moving around Mariupol under the relentless shelling to document the crimes of russian troops and the heroism of Ukrainian fighters, and I was terrified even to think about what would happen if the occupiers detained and questioned him. I prayed for him silently, but I had no idea that while I was hurrying to the volunteer center or delivering supplies to our soldiers, one person in Mariupol did an incredible thing for me. For me and for all the children from Mariupol.

Zhenia tried…to save my books.

I assume that Zhenia was trying to save not only books but also some local souvenirs — as artifacts of the happy, fulfilling life all of us in Mariupol used to have; as a part of Mariupol itself. Before February 24, you could buy all of it at Вежа – Vezha Creative Space. Seeing their doors thrown open by a blast wave, Zhenia decided to rescue the most precious things, hiding them in his own house.

Zhenia couldn’t do it, though: his house, shelled by russians, burnt down just like the homes of thousands of other residents of Mariupol. But this heart-rending story will stay with me forever.

Do you know how one feels hearing that someone else was trying to save their books from bombs? Moved and happy.

But it’s not about books. It’s all about people whose stories save me from losing my dear Mariupol. My dear Mariupol is made of wonderful people. Like Zhenia.

P.S. Going back to the books. I hope — no, I am sure! — that the main book in this series, “Mariupol’s Homecoming,” will come out very soon!

Taras Prokhasko: We’ll have things to recall. May 5

In a story I will try to share, I am mostly interested in the two following things. They are highly private, disregarding the fact that such intimate aspects slowly but surely weave the rope of mythology. In fact, this is what builds up the common history.

I wonder what my brother’s memory retained. We are both over fifty. Although the age difference does not seem major in historical context, two years in early childhood is a big enough difference in the pocket size where the mythological balls could roll down. On a related note, in equal measure with childhood storytelling, we would receive a big deal of fragments from the so-called Greek mythology. The binding of the material added to what we heard was a certain pile surface that the good tennis balls have.

There’s another thing I am interested in. How can I ensure, and what types of mythological balls from my childhood would roll out of me and down to my young kid? And regardless of the entire century passing, she is of the same age as my brother and myself were back then. And as was the one who would tell us her childhood stories from the same age.

In our childhood, Mimi (that’s how we baby-talked her) was only a dozen years older than us today. But she had many more advantages. She had the time, possibility, patience, willingness, and talent to take many hours and tell various tales and stories to her two fraternal grandchildren. Moreover, she lived through the two world wars at a rather active age. Besides, the First World War was around when she was in the same early childhood.

In summer, 1914, her mother left her for a short vacation stay in a village between Horodenka and Horodnytsia, on the Dniester River, where her sister was married to a local priest. The girl was already five years old, and one could leave her already, and the sister was caring, and there were so many different things to attend to in Lviv, although summertime. Her husband, the baby’s father, was in America. The eldest son went to join his dad, he was quite obstinate, and nobody knew what would come out of it. The younger one was doing his studies in Karlsruhe. There were also two elder daughters. The little one could well stay with her aunt.

Then, the war broke out. From all angles, it looks almost like a special operation. Besides, from every quarter, it caused brain-sick enthusiasm of the victorious patriotism. Is it OK that the child stays with you for a longer time? – the postal service still functioned well. As a matter of fact, it continued later, too. One of the World War wonders. Almost like the telephone connections that have not been killed yet.

Meanwhile, the front line was approaching to a little kid on the Dniester-river shore. moskals were rushing to liberate Galicia, a gem of the perfect empire. Certainly, our troops, the emperor’s royal troops, were holding the defense lines. Dniester was symbolic, after all. From that point on, my brother and I listened to the audio series started, revealing the observation of a little girl in a big war.

Today, she would have been called an insider. Since she lived in a priest’s house, by far the only solid house in the village, she stayed near the command HQs. The supply services have been operating in the same way for several centuries now, following the same tested scheme of taking troops to their billets. The priest’s houses would always be occupied by officers. Some kind of command staff. Some type of operational unit: they would have different scale maps all around, a communications hub, with the wiremen on the porch, with cables attached to the fruit trees in the garden. The homestead had sandbags around, the trenches, a small cannon, and machine guns in the firing positions estimated by nobody knows who. Seeking to pretend there were hardly any blind spots.

What is most important, over those several years of the pre-school vacations, the intact (thank God) priest’s house had hosted officers other than the two major adversaries. There was something that built our mythology. For, on the russian side, there were the horrendous kacaps, who did not understand where they were but only wanted eat and drink; Kuban Cossacks in the marvelous white sheep-skin coats who would sing Ukrainian songs to guitar and kept making the sign of the Cross in front of sacred images and Shevchenko’s portrait; moskals with Kalmyks from the savage division, when young girls needed to be hidden in the cellars, and who were searching for Ukrainophiles Mazepa supporters, who burnt the books, roasted killed animals outside, and when retreating, filled their huge sacks with luxury items such as gramophones, curtains, rolls of fabric, lumps of butter and sugar; and cut off with their sabers the hands of the villagers trying to fight back their foodstuff.

There were also our troops. The good Czechs who helped comb the cattle. The dreadful Magyars who severely beat all Ukrainian people accusing them of aiding the enemies. Romanians who were searching for tzuica played dance music to everything they could and seduced girls without direct force. And Germans who severely punished their officer’s orderly for unintentionally spilling some hot cocoa on the young child’s ear.

Later, Mimi had an amazing experience in the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s. But in the 1970’s she would tell my brother and me two types of stories only: about her five-years-old self and about our Europe that has been witnessing such stories for several thousand years now.

Volodymyr Yermolenko: A wounded country. But the moment the war recedes, it comes to life again. May 6

Our Renault brought humanitarian aid to the village of Ploske, Brovary district. We went from house to house, handing it out to those who were most affected. Natalia, the village librarian, helped us with this. She knows everyone, everyone’s addresses, everyone’s names, everyone’s stories.

In Ploske, russians were staying for two weeks. Two burnt-out tanks near the school are still there. The school, unfortunately, was also damaged. There is another burnt-out APC.

Lots of destruction, but people are already reconstructing houses. Some are patching their roofs, some are putting up new fences. Some houses, unfortunately, are beyond restoration, but others are being rebuilt.

The russians were “living” for some time in Natalia’s house too, and left a total mess behind them, just like everywhere else. This chronic mess is what our neat and hard-working peasants still can’t get over. To them, it’s a kind of empirical clash of civilizations.

As they departed, the russians left a few people tortured to death… “There are your people down in the basement.”

Natalia’s house was somewhat damaged; her car was burned out. A few projectiles still remain in her garden. They won’t explode anymore. She’s thinking of ways to make use of them in the household.

Velyka Dymerka, the central village of the community, has suffered more damage. In some streets, one in three or fourth houses is in ruins. It is striking how wealthy and neat our villages and towns are. The road through VD is perfect, side streets are also better than in Kyiv or Brovary. What a contrast with what these bastards did. Many houses have turned into skeletons of themselves. Many have only the first floors left. Like headless horsemen.

The newly built Chernihiv highway from Brovary is still perfect. Despite the tank battles. But the houses in Skybyn, a village next to Brovary, are in ruins… It hurts so much to look at them.

We brought humanitarian aid from the Brovary RMA. Everything is simple and based on personal contacts. Interaction between the authorities and the community the way it should be. We came, offered, responded, and were given aid to distribute.

The war failed to make it to Brovary stopping some 3–4 km short of it. The heroism and intelligence of our troops have saved hundreds or thousands of lives.

A wounded country. But the moment the war recedes, it comes to life again. In the villages all the fields are tilled, tractors are working. People are smiling.

Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Mychailo Wynnyckyj: Revising history — nothing new for russia. May 9

putin’s speech on red square on the occasion of the May 9 “Victory Day” celebrations did not mention Ukraine or Ukrainians even once. Donbas and the term “our territories” was repeated multiple times, but the name of the country that russia is currently invading — supposedly in an effort to rid it of “neo-Nazis” — remained unspoken. Reality retouched. Unsaid and therefore non-existent.

Apparently, the present can be retouched as effectively as the past. Multiple generations of soviet citizens were indoctrinated with a narrative of World War II that ended with the famous photograph “Yegorov and Kantariya Raise the Flag over the Reichstag.” For decades, this image was presented as an authentic portrayal of valiant red army warriors announcing their triumph over the Nazis in the very heart of Germany. In fact, like many soviet representations of the past — and their kremlin regurgitations in the present — history was faked, retouched, and its Ukrainian connection removed.

The photograph was taken by Yevhen Khaldey, a native of Donetsk (formerly Stalino) who shot several versions on the roof of the Reichstag on 2 May 1945, several days after street fighting in Berlin had ended. In the original version, the russian officer steadying the soldier with the flag was caught wearing two wristwatches which had obviously been looted from Germans during the red army’s advance. Apparently, nothing changes in russian military practices: stealing “souvenirs” from conquest is considered normal: be it in Berlin, Bucha, or Borodyanka…

The image with two wristwatches was retouched by the photographer in the final print version of the widely reproduced image. Khaldey also “burned in” smoke into the background of the print in order to add emotional fervor: according to the official narrative, the soviet flag should have been raised in the thick of valiant battle.

In fact, this was a lie. Other photos taken that day by Khaldey from the roof of the German legislature show no background smoke. The street battles in Berlin were over by the time the photo session was organized.

The identity of the soldier holding the flag was also faked. Apparently, when the doctored photograph was shown to stalin, the dictator asked who the two central figures were. When told that the officer was russian and the soldier with the flag Ukrainian, stalin was said to have emphatically underscored that there were no Ukrainians on the roof of the Reichstag on victory day.

For stalin, and for putin seven decades later, soviet “victory” was to be russia’s victory.

During his speech on red square today, the russian president emphasized the “multi-national” composition of the russian federation, the valor of russians, and their multiple allies in World War II in the war against Nazism. He tried to draw parallels between yesterday and today.

There are three obvious problems with this narrative.

First, today (unlike in WWII when the US equipped the red army through “Lend-Lease”) russia stands alone in its war against Ukraine. In the present, the soviet union’s former allies are siding without exception with russia’s enemy and victim. Not much valor in that, but the kremlin doesn’t seem to notice.

Second, russia’s enemy (Ukraine — the country that putin does not mention) has done nothing that even approaches the horrific atrocities of the Nazis against whom the kremlin supposedly rails; it has not attacked russia, nor does Ukraine pose any threat to russia or russians. Nevertheless, putin frames the current war as a repetition of russia’s supposedly “victorious” confrontation with the Nazis over seven decades ago.

Thirdly, equating “soviet” with “russian” in the context of World War II twists reality, and represents a deliberate fabrication aimed at de-humanizing Ukrainians to justify the kremlin’s current aggression. Between 5 and 7 million inhabitants of Ukraine lost their lives during the Nazi occupation of their land. Ukrainians made up the vast majority of red army troops who liberated Ukraine from the Germans in 1943–45.

putin’s narrative is fake — both yesterday and today. It reflects a long history of fabrication emanating from the kremlin. It serves to justify that which cannot be justified: the eradication of an inconvenient people who persistently claim their own identity — one that is different from russia.

The parallels between putin’s denial of the existence of Ukraine as a separate nation, and hitler’s repudiation of the rights to life of Jews are more than obvious. What is less obvious is that putin is continuing a long-standing tradition of manufactured narrative commenced and perpetrated by stalin.

If there is anything meaningful that is to come of this war, it should be an assertion to never again allow the negation of truth. But then we’ve heard “never again” many times before…

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 to be capitalized but shall be written in italics to stay in the focus of the readers’ attention. 

The program “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: Mychailo Wynnyckyj, Oksana Stomina, Taras Prokhasko, Volodymyr Yermolenko

Translators (from Ukrainian): Hanna Leliv (Oksana Stomina’s essay) Svitlana Bregman (Taras Prokhasko’s essay), Halyna Bezukh (Volodymyr Yermolenko’s essay)

Illustrators: Victoria Boyko (Mychailo Wynnycky & Oksana Stomina’s essays), Yuliya Tabenska (Taras Prokhasko’s essay), Nastya Gaydaenko (Volodymyr Yermolenko’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