We hear more and more often that the conflict with Ukraine will last a long time.
Photo: NOTICIAS DEL ESTE
IT’S BETTER NOT TO LIVE WHERE THEY STICK A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK
Galina Dmitrievna, a 70-year-old pensioner who knew my parents because she worked at the post office, is always interested in my mood when we meet. Her younger sister lives in Odessa, where she came on assignment after the Moscow Construction School:
– She was the youngest in our family. She studied poorly and there was a ten-year difference between us, and I pressured her all the time, I helped her with her studies. Of course, we always came to Odessa to visit her, and the youngest from Odessa also came: she brought dried bulls, grapes and fruits. And we help her a lot with money. They knew there was poverty there. After 2014, our relationship went completely wrong.
The sisters had not seen each other for almost ten years, but they still called each other by phone until February 24, 2022, but now they have stopped doing so.
– Why do you think your sister doesn’t communicate with you? After all, you are family…
– What should we think about? He considers us enemies or despises us. Both her and her husband. We don’t even know how her children are, are they alive? But I think if they had died at the front, she would definitely have called them. “I didn’t change my phone number,” Galina Dmitrievna was having a difficult conversation.
– How are you? – the woman is interested in my condition.
“It is not easy, Galina Dmitrievna, my soul is heavy,” he answered sincerely.
– Oh my dear. It’s difficult for everyone right now. Understand. But it is better to have a bad time than to live where a knife can be stuck in your back,” the pensioner sensibly summarized.
Russians are people in many ways: unsentimental, simple, as a rule, they say what they think, without cunning.
WHAT ELSE IS UKRAINE THINKING?
A banner advertising the Azov Regiment (an organization banned in Russia) was posted on the kyiv municipal administration building. Do you want to relive something? In Russian captivity, the Azov people are completely peaceful.
Another of my new acquaintances, an employee at the local library, told me that last summer she came from Mariupol with two children, a cat and a dog, because her apartment was completely bombed and her husband was killed.
– Have you received a housing certificate from Russia? – I asked a resident of Mariupol.
– Yes, they even built us an apartment in a new house, but we still don’t dare to return. Who knows what Ukraine will do next, although this is already our Russian region,” the woman admitted in a frank conversation.
She doesn’t want to remember the horror she suffered while sitting in the basement for more than a month, and the fear for her children has not left her, like many refugees. It’s painful to hear all this.
New houses in Mariupol
Photo: REUTERS
Also painful in the summer was the news of the death of a 15-year-old girl in Crimea, who went to see the sunrise and was killed by an American projectile fired by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. An episode of the ’53 movie Cold Summer came to mind, where a bandit at dawn kills a girl who would like to live and live. Like this, back, like Bandera.
WHEN A MUSCOVITE HAS A WESTERN WIFE
A local guy I know, a window replacement specialist who replaced the glass in my parents’ old apartment, has three close friends who are Muscovites. All three are married to Ukrainian women and all three wives are from western Ukraine, where the women’s parents live. They all have three or even four children.
– How do you communicate now with your Ukrainian relatives? – I asked Maestro Antón.
Zelensky’s counteroffensive did not work
Photo: REUTERS
– Yes ok. They talk mainly about children, prices, diseases… But there is no problem between them. One of these friends of mine is actually a career military man and was even in the Northern Military District area. He loves his wife and has no intention of getting a divorce. It is true that Ukrainian women are very worried about the possibility of seeing their parents soon,” Anton told me about life.
In fact, it is not customary for Russians to find out their nationality and, for political reasons, file for divorce.
We hear more and more often that the conflict with Ukraine will last a long time. The elderly housemates sigh: they wish they could live to see victory. However, the majority remains optimistic and believes that everything will end very soon.
“Zelensky’s counteroffensive didn’t work,” says a housemate in a conversation with me. He himself is an athlete, a strong man with defined muscles, father of three children. He adds that he will surely go to defend Russia if he mobilizes.
I walked past the local military registration and enlistment office. Behind the fence on the street side were a man in his fifties and a young woman with a huge belly, who was in the final stages of her pregnancy. After a while, the guard released a young man of about 20 years old through the fence with papers in his hand and a passport.
– Dima, what’s wrong, what do you have? -His father or father-in-law and his pregnant wife shouted in one voice:
– If everything is fine. Now I have the contract.
And the young woman literally threw herself on the boy’s neck. The father-in-law looked into the distance for a moment, stepped aside, lit a cigarette, put it out, and urged everyone to move on. The family got into the car.
“I WILL WAIT, OUR KIDS NEED MORE PROSTHESES”
While walking in the park, I ran into another friend who I hadn’t seen in a year and she didn’t call herself.
The woman noticeably lost strength and began to walk worse. We walked slowly and talked about Ukraine, where Zoya lived with her military husband in the distant 1970s; There was a Soviet military unit there. She recalled that in those years some Westerners called the wives of officers “katsapki” and committed all kinds of evil, even though the military camp was guarded.
“Oh, how I worry now,” the old woman admitted. After all, my grandson may end up in SVO and I need surgery to replace the knee joint. At the Pirogov Institute in Moscow, where I went for consultation, they told me that there was a delay in the fee and that the joint was not ready, because artificial joints are now mainly for injured children and that is why their order has been delayed,” he shared. Zoya. . – I watch all the programs about Ukraine and sometimes it scares me very much. Sometimes I even imagine that a NATO soldier is kicking me out of the apartment.
– Zoya, what are you saying? Russia will protect itself from any NATO; I support the pensioner as best I can.
– Yes, yes, of course, I’m getting old, I’m imagining stupid things. And the fact that we have to wait for the joint does not scare us: children need it more,” reasons Zoya. – We always did nothing but help everyone and Ukraine was always treated kindly. But now everything is done in an adult way and we can make concrete changes,” said Zoya, the military man’s ex-wife, with more confidence. However, as we know, there are no ex-wives of military personnel in Russia.
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