The will of ordinary citizens is suppressed, “patriotism” is sustained by blood and terror, and the killing of men has become commonplace.
Photo: REUTERS
For over a year and a half, life has been divided into “before the start of the New World Order and after.” One and a half years have passed since the bloody special operation in Ukraine, where, in fact, the main life of the author passed – in the city of Kiev, which from here, from the Russian outback, it is impossible to look at. without pain and shuddering.
Leo Tolstoy as a mirror of the Russian-Ukrainian enmity
In just over a year, the author acquired citizenship of the Russian Federation and left her family in Ukraine. Was she a conscious choice? Rather, yes, of course, but it is also impossible not to worry about what is happening today in Kiev, which has turned into a stronghold of the obsessed, throwing almost the entire male population of Ukraine into a meat grinder. The country, which gained its independence without much effort, today is forced to lose vast territories, turn millions of Ukrainians into refugees and, in its stubbornness to resist Russia, find itself on the brink of an abyss. It is not possible to boast of military successes on the fronts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, so the authorities have to fight with monuments, street names and with all the cultural and historical heritage that has united us for many years.
On the eve of Independence Day, Ukrainians tear down the letters of the name of the Leo Tolstoy metro station, but at the same time they are in no hurry to abandon the metro built in the USSR, and even use it as a bomb shelter…
Memory is an unpredictable thing, and today, on the eve of the Independence Day celebration, I remembered on this occasion a young man who was traveling with the author in the compartment of the Moscow-Kiev train (exactly a few days before the cancellation). of railway communication between countries) and it reads “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy, whose name they want to erase forever from the cultural code of Ukrainians, as well as by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
– Well, do you like the book? – Then he asked his travel companion: “Very much. I even make bookmarks. Tolstoy is a genius, ”the young man replied with a little pathos. And I involuntarily thought: “But I wonder if this guy is alive now, whose soul was shaken by Lev Nikolaevich? Or maybe he serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine or died somewhere near Bakhmut?
Ukraine celebrates another anniversary of independence
Photo: REUTERS
Mariupol – the city of Russian glory
Last summer, a friend told me her personal story. Her 70-year-old brother spent a month and a half in the Mariupol basement, barely surviving during the battles for the city.
– There was no communication with Grigory for a month and a half, and then, when our people took the city and communication with Grisha appeared, I did not recognize him, – says Elizaveta Ivanovna. “My brother lost 14 kg, and on the video he looked like a swarthy old man, with a huge beard, very emaciated, with sunken eyes, either a prisoner or an old monk,” he then listened with horror to the story of an old man. women. Her brother, who miraculously survived, was evacuated to Russia with many refugees from Mariupol last summer.
“She lived with me for almost half a year, until the psyche recovered,” the woman shared the experience with me, wiping her tears with a handkerchief.
– And now, where is your Grisha? A friend then asked.
– I went to Mariupol in the spring. There he and my nephew got a new apartment with a view of the sea.
Live and rejoice, but no one knows when and how these terrible wounds will heal. Not only Mariupol, the city of Russian glory, is being rebuilt. So our sacrifices were not in vain.
do not come back
– My mother is from Zhytomyr and came to Russia to study, – another Russian woman tells me. – She sculpts dumplings and cooks borsch in such a way that one plate will not be enough. A real Khokhlushka – says the woman not without pride and asks me a rhetorical question: “Why do they hate us so much? she asks herself, referring to the citizens of Ukraine. Therefore, an apparently simple question cannot be answered immediately. There is something irrational in this hatred, which has always been inside the heterogeneous and sick Ukrainian society, and since 2014 everything has been spilled and burned, and we are leaving. Today in Kiev it is dangerous to say that you have relatives in Russia, although there are also desperate supporters there, like a simple guy from Kiev who set fire to 13 VSE cars due to hostility towards the Ukrainian army…
I recently went to a bike shop to ask the price of the bikes. The saleswoman was given the word “Where do you look, not there?”. I asked him: “Do you seem to be from Ukraine? The woman raised her eyebrows in response and answered in the affirmative. It turned out that she comes from the Zhytomyr region, where all her relatives now live and, most importantly, her nephews are the children of her sister, who is now serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The seller’s husband turned out to be from Smolensk, whose relatives also live in Ukraine, near Zhytomyr.
– You know, a dark-haired Ukrainian woman confessed to me in a low voice with a kind of spasm in her voice, in Zhytomyr and the villages it is very scary. Every day there are coffins, funerals, all the time there is a search for the missing. Our women are almost all workers in Poland, and these are widows or distraught mothers who have lost their children.
You are not going there yet, to this kyiv. They break it there. He lives in Russia. Nothing threatens you here – summed up the saleswoman of the bicycle shop …
And despite the unwillingness to fight, the Ukrainians are forced to obey.
Photo: REUTERS
“For the sake of the people, are you willing to kill people?”
The Independence Day celebration will take place in Khreshchatyk, where the Ukrainians will deposit Russian military equipment, destroyed during the battles for Donbass. What else can they do? Now the Americans are accustoming the Ukrainians to live by their ideas of democracy, so that even the press service of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for foreign countries was headed by a transgender person. And despite the unwillingness to fight, the brutalized military commissars fleeing in the trunk of a car abroad from conscription, Ukrainians are forced to obey. The will of ordinary citizens is suppressed, “patriotism” is sustained by blood and terror, and the killing of men has become commonplace. In kyiv, on Independence Day, they approved the project of a gigantic military memorial cemetery. Did Ukraine, which became independent more than 30 years ago, dream of this? “Stay away from Muscovites,” many Ukrainians said more then, not assuming such a terrible scenario for the collapse of their republic.
What else can they do?
Photo: REUTERS
A friend wrote from kyiv on the eve of the holiday: “We try not to leave the house again. We do not take our phones with us. Mercenaries run around the city, a lot of different rabble is heard, and English is heard everywhere, but Russian is hardly spoken. All restaurants are open, where you can order pork “Death to Muscovites.” I don’t know how you can eat it so as not to vomit – the woman writes in Telegram. Very tired of alarms and sirens. Where to run? We are hostages of the insane. The correspondence is carefully removed.
The center of kyiv has been closed for a week and there are continuous traffic jams throughout the city. While the Russian army fights for the Donbass, Ukraine joins Poland, the entire West. President Zelensky has turned into a professional beggar and a bored crybaby in a green sweatshirt and baseball cap. While fierce battles are raging in Rabotino and UAVs and drones are flying into Russian territory, in Ukrainian prisons there are journalists, bloggers, pacifists, just pro-Russian citizens, identified as enemies of the Ukrainian people and collaborators: “Beat the Russian You can’t go wrong”…
Now in Russia the cult TV series “17 Moments of Spring” is broadcast, in which Pastor Schlag asks Stirlitz in bewilderment, not knowing that he is a Russian intelligence officer: “So you kill people for the good of the people?” And it’s not about Ukraine? Never underestimate Nazism. He is capable of being a many-headed hydra. Here is such independence.
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