May 6, 2022 #Antytvir: Sofiya Turchenko

Flash essays from the collection “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” tell about the insights, experiences, and beliefs of Ukrainians, that 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 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 17 continues to present the series. You can get acquainted with the previous collection here.

This essay was written in 2022 for Antytvir, a writing contest for teens. It is an educational project by Mystetskyi Arsenal at the International Book Arsenal Festival. Its goal is to promote creative writing among high school students and create a platform for expressing yourself in a non-standard way. The organizers designed this project in 2020 and 2022 to support Ukrainian youth in highly stressful situations by allowing them to write and make their voices heard. Cultural Hub translated into English, illustrated, and added these texts to the “Wars. Ukrainians. Humanity” programme as a special series of wartime writings.

Sofiya Turchenko, 15 years old
On the threshold

War stands for great pain and losses. It affects everyone and does not leave any single trace of the former normal life, just the memories of the past. There are no winners in any way, just those defeated. The greatest loss during and after the war is human life no one can ever give back: children cannot hug their parents who perished under the shelling, and parents cannot hug their children; women cannot make their husbands who bravely defended their Motherland resurrect, while mothers cannot make their sons resurrect. I like one Ukrainian saying that describes the current situation: “War eats people and washes them down with their blood”.

Over my sixteen years of age war has already affected me twice: in 2014 and now, in 2022. When I was exactly twice smaller (I was just eight), my life was stirred since I was born in the city of Donetsk. I could not even think that such all-embracing death that spares nobody, for whom everyone is equal, could enter my home, my native city. But everything changed within one single day. Back on May 25, 2014 me and my family lived a happy, carefree life, went for walks, planned our future, and were getting ready for the school-leaving ceremony. But that “tomorrow” settled everything — May 26, 2014. It was then that the battle near Donetsk airport started. For all residents of the city of Donetsk war started on that very date; that day divided the life into “before” and “after”. Time stopped. Studies at school stopped, children’s laughter disappeared from playgrounds. Explosions were becoming more frequent and loud. Realization of the fact that it was all happening to us did not just fall, but came as a bomb on us. We would not believe it, but in that way the new reality came of which absolutely all civilians living in the city of Donetsk became hostages.

Only memories were left from the previous life. We went away, left our house and relatives in the late summer of 2014. We were accommodated in the city of Mariupol, close to Donetsk. I went to my new school there, and everything was fine. I hoped it would go on like that, but there was a shelling in the city suburbs. I was at school then. The shells were not flying above my head, but the explosions could be heard well. That is why all children were picked up from school home by their parents. And already after those events, already in October 2014, we moved again, from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia. That meant a new start of life. We did not know anyone — that was a new city, new people, new life, new school, and new friends.

Zaporizhzhia became my second home. It was there that a new page of my life, new dreams, and new expectations started. We went living on there with my family, and the terror of the war was gradually leaving us, the wound of the events that had happened and were happening in our native city started healing. I remember and I will never forget my native Donetsk the way it looked in the summer of 2012 when the European Football Cup (Euro 2012) was held there: a large and miraculous city, roses in blossom, merry and happy people, many tourists and foreigners. That is what it, no matter what, will always remain like in my heart.

But now Zaporizhzhia has captivated another half of my heart. That is my second home around which dark clouds of the war and deaths are gathering. The second date I will remember forever is February 24, 2022. That “tomorrow” came again, everything changed again, I felt worried in my heart. The day before I was thinking that I would be writing a test paper in history and was getting ready for it, how I would get a good grade and would be happy about that. But it so happened that the evening of February 23 was the last happy and peaceful day in the life of every Ukrainian. The most awful thing happened. The war broke out.

On the twenty-fourth of February I woke up when my mom and grandma were going to their workplaces, but everything was not as usual — there was some tension in the air. The mother said that the airports of different cities were hit by missile strikes, that is why she was afraid of going into the street and going to her workplace. Then friends started writing and giving calls. Different words came, but they all asked one and the same thing: “What is happening? What has happened? I feel scared”. I could always control my emotions, that is why I tried to calm them down as I could. My main phrase during the war, said to each friend and relative, was as follows: “Everything will be fine”. I could not even imagine that war would approach me again with its stealthy gait and would hit my quiet and happy life on its back, that is why in the morning, while getting ready for going to school, I was calming myself down by saying that this is just a training exercise for our army, and nothing bad can happen. But, unfortunately, I was mistaken. It is unbelievable but that was true — the war broke out. I entered the page of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in social media and saw how tired he looked. Mister President said that russia had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and martial law was introduced across the whole territory of the country.

That is when I finally realized: that was it, that was the end of carefree life. It’s not that we had not been warned, but nobody had really expected this, it was impossible to believe that such an awful thing could ever happen in the twenty-first century. Ukrainians would not believe it. But it appeared that all those who were pessimistic had been right. The worst thing started. Both in 2014, and now I often heard one phrase from my mom: “This could not have been seen even in the worst nightmare”. Not a single Ukrainian believed that war would approach everyone’s houses. That morning turned the pages and closed the books of our peaceful life, opening up and starting to write new stories about our fight. We started living like in movies. But these were not movies about love and happiness. Thrillers and horror films are the genres of movies about our life. While the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are the superheroes from movies “Revengers” who defend the world, all good and life.

In 2014 my brother was just a baby, that is why he does not remember anything about Donetsk and the war. But now he is eight, just as I was back then. I did not want him to see the terror of the war, to hear the explosions and to be hiding in the corridors as I once did. But now he is also “the child of war”. Each child in Ukraine now has this status. Each of them has heard the sound of air alarm, each of them has seen his/her parents worried and not knowing what to do. These labels will stay with them throughout their lives.

War has affected each of us. It does not matter in what way: morally or physically. We have reconsidered our values, our attitude to the whole world and directly to one country that has brought pain and death into our lives, into our land. I always wanted to travel across the world, but to live and work in Ukraine, while now this wish has become stronger. I want to help rebuild the country after our victory. And victory will come soon. Te good always wins over the evil.

I came to understand once again that family is the most important thing, and one should spend more time with relatives. And now, while we still have time, we have to speak to each other, maintain our family since every minute, every second may be the last one.

Stability in life is a dream during war. We want not to have to care whether a shell hits the house today or not, whether evacuation is arranged or not; whether tomorrow comes or it never comes again. We want to live, and not to exist. I want to be concerned about my test paper at school again, I want to walk in the streets with my friends and not to see people with machine guns, I want to travel across Ukraine, taking new roads, and visit the most beautiful places. But, unfortunately, this is not possible in our reality now.

When something awful and unexpected happens, the brain switches to the “shock” mode. We act the way it is necessary for us to act in order to survive. Then basic emotions get back: fear, despair, denial, etc. Euphoria comes first with some people. Mood changes are a normal thing during war. Psychologists have analyzed and presented to Ukrainians a special cycle of emotional changes: optimism, inspiration, excitement, euphoria, anxiety, denial, fear, depression, panic, distrust, despair, faith, hope, optimism. That is what every Ukrainian experiences. The main thing is to let each emotion out. The swings of mood are something absolutely normal, but if you feel happy, you need to reflect this emotion, for example, in a smile. One cannot be keeping everything inside.

During these two months of the war I have come to realize that one cannot be reading the news all day long. In that way we just lead ourselves to panic, and that is dangerous now. During hostilities people need sober mind. To act in accordance with the situation. One cannot be reading one hundred Telegram channels with the news and remain calm. One or two official channels with the most important news will be enough. Also, some other relatives start panicking and telling, due to this, that everything will be awful, that you need to rescue yourselves immediately. You should calm them down, since panic will not lead to anything good. It is also important to solve problems as they arise. Not adding any problems in your mind, with no imagination, since that will lead to emotional instability.

Many Ukrainians who are now in the rear feel desperate since they cannot help with anything or it seems to them that they do too little. But each of us can do something for victory: to be a volunteer, to make camouflage nets, to cook or get food for soldiers, to hold an information war. Each action is important in this difficult time. It is scary in the frontline, there is no place for feeling any blame there, but this emotion keeps demoralizing people in the rear. You cannot allow these feelings to flood you. Since if a soldier feels strong fear, he will not be able to perform his mission, he will just be petrified and may die. If Ukrainians in the rear feel strong guilt, they will not be able to work in a normal way. One should be getting back to ordinary life step by step. The rear is a very important component. Each serviceman will defend us more bravely and better if he feels a strong rear behind his back. We should not allow the economy to fall. That is one of our tasks.

On the twenty-fourth of February Ukrainians became one strong invincible organism, and each of us is its cell. We have got united and we are fighting for our freedom, peaceful sky, and happiness in our homes. And we will win. It just cannot be otherwise. The frontline and the rear have to work in unison. There is no unimportant activity. To make coffee in a café, to cook pizza, to create online courses, to make memes — all this is extremely important. Even if you just smile, that already improves the mood of the people around you, and they will start doing the same. When this smile reaches our defenders, they will survive.

Our cities-heroes are sacrificing themselves for everybody’s sake: Mariupol, Hostomel, Kharkiv, Bucha, Irpin, Kherson, Volnovakha, Okhtyrka, Chernihiv, Mykolayiv. I want to express my gratitude to you for your bravery and resilience. You are strong, you will stand and overcome everything, and we will help you with this! Mariupol is the city that hosted our family in the summer of 2014, became a safe haven for us. But now it’s all in ruins, and this hurts me a lot. The house of my uncle has been destroyed; the trade centre with the tastiest pizza of my childhood is no longer there. A bomb was dropped on the drama theatre near which we used to walk. In spite of the large inscription “CHILDREN” there. Many people died in the shelter under the ruins. The invaders are committing atrocities in our land and won’t stop. But history will record everything, and punishment will reach all those guilty.

Now I am in Zaporizhzhia, at home, but it has changed a lot, it has become a real fortress. We are a frontline city. Each day is like on a gun powder box. We are grateful to our defenders since it is still quiet in our city. Sometimes I feel guilty that I am living a rather quiet life here, while other cities and towns around Zaporizhzhia are suffering. I feel scared as to what comes next. But I am trying to change my suppressed mood with a smile, and it helps. We should live one and try and do simple, routine things. In that way we will find the sense of life, and days will stop being grey. Be happy about simple things. If it is sunny outdoors, look out of the window or go to the street, and smile at it the way nature does it. If it is raining, don’t be sad, since a rainbow will appear in the sky afterwards. Also, for you to feel good, you can just do something interesting. For example, I draw pictures by numbers, read books, or watch movies.

The most important thing in this difficult time is to learn since we are the future of the Ukrainian nation and culture, and we will have to rebuild our Ukraine and represent it in the world as a strong and bravest country. Learning is, probably, not what one would like to do during the wartime. Since many people perceive school and university as the place where they do what they don’t like. But that is wrong. Learning is extremely important both now, and in the future. The main thing is willingness, and teachers will always support you. For example, the teacher in charge of our class has been organizing regular online meetings for our class after February 24th. We call this process “the 10C class sittings”. There we all together tell how our day was, what new things have happened, we support each other. We even arranged some thematic meetings where we discussed a specific topic. For example, “Hours in Paris”, “Hours in Hollywood”, “Hours in Tokyo”, “Car Hours”.

That is all extremely interesting, and it distracts us from the sadness brought about by the war. This has made our class even better united. We know almost everything about each other and we have become like relatives. Our class supervisor is a very creative person that is why we always had a lot to things to discuss thanks to her. She did not allow any of us to be staying at home and being sad. And I will not be mistaken if I undertake the responsibility and express our gratitude to this incredible teacher on behalf of the whole class.

Learning is one of the most important things now. It both distracts us from the war for at least an hour, and allows us to develop ourselves. As far as I know, almost all educational institutions have now switched to online studies in Ukraine. And that is very good. It’s a pity that most probably we will not be able to be back to school this year, we will not have this last atmospheric week when all the grades are already there, the textbooks have already been given back to the library, and you are just spending time with friends and teachers. But now there is a great number of online services, and we keep and will keep in contact with my friends using them anyway.

Many foreign higher educational institutions really feel for us, that is why they arrange free-of-charge studies for us. For example, Sorbonne. The University of Paris allocates a certain number of state-funded places for Ukrainians. We will have a chance to study there, but on one condition: after the end of the war students will go back to Ukraine to rebuild it. And also a great number of free-of-charge online courses are available for Ukrainians. For instance, American online University of the People opens all its courses for Ukrainian students for them to be able to continue their studies. The University informs: “To give Ukrainians hope for the better future after victory, UoPeople also grants 1,000 scholarships for students from Ukraine, including the ones who have fled the country, for them to be able to continue their studies”. This means that absolutely all roads are open for Ukrainians. We can study at any place in the world, and then come back home and help our country restore itself and become even stronger.

I and many other people cannot support others in difficult times, they just don’t know what to say. But psychologists say that we think that must be something special, extraordinary, but, in fact, it is sufficient just to say: “I am sorry this has happened”, “I am with you”, “I support you”, “Everything will be fine”. These are rather simple words, but they help. The main thing is not to ignore a person.

I think each of us has at least one acquaintance who has left his or her house in Ukraine and gone abroad. Personally I have about ten of such acquaintances. Most of them left since they felt scared, while some of them were trying to avoid strikes. It is very difficult to leave one’s home and to go somewhere. Many people are going into “nowhere”, and some have acquaintances in the European countries. I have never thought that I will have fewer friends left in Ukraine than abroad. They tell me how they cross the border; how difficult it is to start their life in an unknown country. Some of my friends had to stay at the border for more than twenty hours. That is really exhausting. Then they had to look for some place of accommodation. We are grateful to volunteers for helping Ukrainians with stuff, documents, and accommodation in such complicated times. They all have to get adjusted to the environment, conditions of life and to attend foreign schools. A major complexity related to living in other countries is the language barrier. But Ukrainians are capable of learning even all the languages of the world if they want to. And even abroad they can help us win, the same as in Ukraine. Volunteering, money raising for the army are just some elements of what can be done. Victory will be ours since we know what we are fighting for.

There is an interesting quote from Albert Einstein: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”. I agree with this statement. With each new war the society shows that it has not learnt anything. Why should we be constantly waging a war? Why can’t we come to an agreement? Why are civilians often affected? Why the organizations that are supposed to secure peace do not secure it? These questions can be asked for ever, but we will never get any answer. It just does not exist. Even one hundred years have not elapsed after World War II while we are on the battlefield again. Ukrainian children suffer again. Some of them have not yet even managed to utter the word “mom”, but have already heard the sound of “Grads” and shells. And some of them will never say anything and will remain children for ever. I cannot even imagine what people who lived in the period of World War II feel like now. They saw this terror at the beginning of their lives, and now they feel, hear and see this at its end.

War, war!

Again those bloody rivers!

The roar of guns, the sound of sabers.

And graves again, and orphans, cripples

And of deserted ruins sadness

By Oleksandr Oles’

How is it to be a teenager and to mature in the conditions of war? The only word that clearly delineates the answer to this question is “difficult”. War persecutes my childhood and my teenage years. Back at the age of eight life showed me that it can be not just happy and merry; that you have to be thankful to heaven that today you wake up, that you can study, work. Now it is only morally difficult, since there are no active hostilities in Zaporizhzhia. War does not ask what we want, it just makes it binding for us to mature sooner, to learn to be responsible, to appreciate life. This bird of death makes adults out of children and does not allow them to enjoy beautiful, carefree and joyful childhood. Teenagers throughout the world can live a quiet and happy life, walk and be happy with their friends and relatives, but Ukrainian children are deprived of this chance since the enemy has come to our land without any permission and wants to take our freedom, our heaven, sun, air, culture, and language.

Throughout the whole history Ukrainians have been fighting for their right to existence, it’s high time that we finally got it for ever. Our nation will stand by the end. Until our hearts keep beating, they belong to Ukraine, and nobody will ever take our home, our country away from us. It is now that many Ukrainians are coming to realize the importance of the Ukrainian language, national memory, the people important for our Motherland. We are fighting in order to go to the streets in embroidered shirts after the victory and to sing all together the State Anthem of Ukraine under the peaceful and free sky.

Each of us is standing on the threshold. One side is our past life, the threshold is war, and then comes our future. One morning can change whole life. We must remember our past, but we should let it go, otherwise it will take us to non-existence. The only thing that is important is today and our safe future. Unfortunately, our people are divided into “ours” and “aliens”, “friends” and “enemies”, but one happy day war will come to an end. Everybody will get back home, we will be rebuilding our Ukraine, and everything will be fine! Glory to Ukraine!

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.

Author: Sofiya Turchenko, 15 years old

Translator (from Ukrainian): Halyna Pekhnyk

Illustrators: Nastya Gaydaenko and plasticine panel by Olha Protasova

Copyeditors: Yuliia Moroz, Terra Friedman King

Proofreader: Tetiana Vorobtsova, Terra Friedman King

Content Editors: Maryna Korchaka, Natalia Babalyk

Program Directors: Julia Ovcharenko and Demyan Om Dyakiv-Slavitski