The Ukrainian resistance to the Russian evil has many dimensions. The first and most important is the frontline. I don’t believe that we can talk about any cultural, economic, or diplomatic fronts. There is only one front. That is where the Russian enemy is killed, and where our defenders die and suffer horrific injuries. But war and death that follow it permeate everything in the public life of modern Ukraine.
Ukrainian poet and soldier Yaryna Chornohuz once shared with me a terribly astute observation about her own experience: “We have learned to live at peace with war.”
Unfortunately, I think this can be said not just about Ukrainian military servicemen and women, but about all citizens of Ukraine.
War invaded our peaceful life and changed it forever. Russians kill and torture civilians, rape Ukrainian women, deport and attempt to russify our children, destroy our homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, theatres, and other cultural institutions, destroy Ukrainian books, steal museum collections. This is a genocidal war against the Ukrainian people. The Russians are not only physically exterminating us, but they are once again trying to destroy our history, our language, our culture. This war leaves terrible scars on all aspects of our lives. We will never be the people we were before the full-scale invasion. But I believe that we will exist, despite the Russians’ desire to erase us.
Our weary faces
Our faces are filled with pain and exhaustion. Our eyes carry a muted sadness, but also the hope for victory over the Russian enemy and the peaceful life after it. Our lips wear a bitter smile. Behind our hardened cheekbones lie the contours of our invincibility. The Russians cannot defeat us. A criminal horde of mindless slaves cannot defeat a community of free people. We feel for them not so much hatred as disgust. Contrа spem spero. Hopeless, I still hope. This title of the poem by the genius Ukrainian poet of the fin de siècle period Lesya Ukrainka speaks to us through the centuries.
Hope must defeat grief and sorrow even in a hopeless situation.
We will defeat the Russian evil, and will live in peace and harmony on our own land.
Our destroyed homes
The Russians are destroying our homes. They are targeting civilian areas with missiles. The Russian scumbags are driving around our occupied cities on tanks and shooting at houses and schools. They destroy because they believe they’ve been granted a free pass to do so without consequence. Those pitiful Russian monsters, who have always languished in slavery, are trying to impose their disgusting Russian world of death on us in this perverse way. In the deoccupied Ukrainian cities and villages I often hear the same horrific story from the locals. The first thing the Russians establish when they come is a torture chamber. They don’t hide it. Everyone must know where the torture chamber is located. Suffering, horror, and pain are the inherent features of the Russian world of death. Destruction and violence are the main features of the perverse Russian Life.
Our fresh graves
Russia is the grave of humanity. The territory of Russia is the land of death and hatred towards life. The Russians try to spread this horror beyond the borders of their failed empire. They fill our earth with graves. We are burying our heroes. In every Ukrainian city, town, and village there are many graves of people who died in the war with Russians. We don’t know the exact number of the victims of the Russian aggression, because the Russians torture and kill, then dispose of the bodies of the murdered and tortured Ukrainians in the reeds, bushes, forests, and fields. They also leave behind the bodies of their own soldiers on the field of battle, because the human life means nothing to them, and the body of a soldier is nothing but useless garbage.
Our children experienced war
The Russians kill our children. Our children, our future, are killed by missile strikes. The fates of the children not murdered by the Russians have also been broken. Our children will carry the horrible experience of war throughout their entire lives, and, unfortunately, they will pass that on to their children as well.
Лишень заради наших дітей ми маємо перемогти Росію. Усі російські злочинці мають бути покарані. На нашій українській землі має бути винайдена протиотрута російському світові смерти. На жаль, вона готується з нашої крови та наших сліз.
Та ми прагнемо не помсти, а миру та справедливости.
Translation — Liubov Kukharenko
§§§
[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework “European Renaissance of Ukraine” project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]
