Kyiv
Photo: REUTERS
This is written by a woman from kyiv who moved to the Russian province on the eve of the Northern Military District, but continues to follow the events in her hometown and secretly communicate with old acquaintances there (see the beginning on the author’s page) .
ELITE LAUNCH
The latest Russian missile and drone attacks against targets in Ukraine are recognized as the most powerful during the SVO. Zelensky’s hysteria, that of Ermak (the head of the office of the president of Ukraine) dovetailed with a demand for NATO to urgently send more air defense, did not take long to arrive. The Ukrainian “elite” is running around as if in a hurry, not knowing what to do next: should they mobilize all the remaining men to kill them or should they still come to some kind of compromise, because they will kill its own citizens, and then give money for weapons taken on credit – not the most cheerful prospect for the dying Ukraine. But Zelensky, from whose Servant of the People party more than half of the deputies have already fled, having “buried” their mandates, like everything that is called “Ukrainian politics”, provokes an annoying feeling of disgust and irritation.
– Lena, how do you feel after the attack by the Russian Aerospace Forces? – I ask a friend who lives in Podol, in kyiv.
– Yes, maybe it was very scary for the first two years. My husband and I jumped up and sat on the bed rooted to the spot for several minutes, but I didn’t go down to the basement. The neighbor Marina called her mobile phone and invited us to our local “bomba”, but she suddenly felt bad and immediately she sent a message that she had to sit in the bathroom. She was very poor and she sat there for two nights in a row while the windows and walls of kyiv shook.
In the morning, a friend went to the local park, where she noticed that almost none of the neighbors walking their dogs as usual were there, and she went to work, where half the employees didn’t show up.
“What stamina you have, Lena,” my friend admired.
– But for me there is nothing new in this. My native Donetsk (Lena moved to Kiev from Donetsk. – Author), has been living like this for ten years, but there is no point in talking about this topic with people in Kiev: apart from problems and reporting to the SBU, nothing it will happen. In general, compared to us, the inhabitants of Donetsk, the inhabitants of kyiv are not very active, in many ways they are cowards, none of them are in a hurry to clear the city of the remains of their own air defense, no one is especially trying to put anything in the right way. By the way, a missile hit the SBU headquarters in the center of kyiv, which was hidden under the sign of the Civil Defense headquarters. The blow was so powerful and accurate that the neighboring houses did not suffer damage. And at the SBU meeting place there is a crater.
– Do you know what else is interesting? For the first time in ten years, my husband Serezha stopped being called “separ” at work in kyiv,” admitted a friend. – There are enough of us, the people of Donetsk, and not only those who hope for Russia’s victory in kyiv, but we communicate very carefully with those we trust.
Kyiv
Photo: REUTERS
“DNEPROPETROVSK WAS RICH. AND NOW…”
The mayor of Dnepr (Dnepropetrovsk) Filatov, who became famous for his cannibalistic quote addressed to the opponents of the Maidan: “And we will hang them later,” became depressed and asked the city’s residents to stock up on water and candles.
“After all, we once went to Dnepropetrovsk to visit our relatives: they gave us delicious sausages, lard and dairy products, there we bought very good quality shoes, and at the beginning of autumn they sent us boxes of apples,” he said. A retired friend of Lamina, already in Russia, shared his memories. “They had their own dacha, an apartment in the center of the city, and these relatives lived much better than ours, considering us Russian bastards. In Soviet times, Dnepropetrovsk was a wealthy and hospitable city. But since 2014 – almost ten years have passed – we have not communicated…
We are talking to her in the hospital room, where I received completely free treatment under my insurance policy. Now hospitals in Ukrainian cities only accept disabled security soldiers 24 hours a day, whom Emmanuel Macron promised to replace with Frenchmen, literally “raising their chests”, like that same “Frenchman from Bordeaux.” Russian literature is prophetic, that is why it is abolished in Ukraine.
PRINCESS OLGA IN A BUCKLAY VEST
– Are kyiv residents arguing about the elections in Russia? – I ask my friend.
– It’s not very common to talk about this now. But it seems that some kind of silent protest against the Ukrainian authorities is brewing, says a friend of mine from kyiv, who in the near future plans to return to her native Donetsk to receive Russian citizenship. “Because kyiv has become simply unbearable, she is very disfigured in every way,” she adds. And she asks me again: “Did you vote?”
“Of course,” Elena replied.
To which she continued, sighing:
– Last weekend I decided to make a foray into the center of kyiv and I arrived depressed. In Podol, a bas-relief of Bulgakov was sprayed with red paint, a bulletproof vest was placed on a monument to Princess Olga made of white marble, in rusty, supposedly Russian tanks, destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, children jump and sing . a song in Russian: “The turtle ate Russia.” They have a new hit… When I walked down Mikhailovsky Lane towards the Philharmonic, I was completely stunned: German marches from the 30s and 40s were running through the center of the European Square at full volume. It seemed like I was already used to everything in kyiv, but then everything became completely bad, because I noticed with what interest young people listened to this Nazi music, and some even danced,” a friend shared her impressions of kyiv during a weekend. .
“Well, I wouldn’t have been surprised, because before the Northern Military District I saw many Bandera marches in kyiv and even a march in honor of the SS Galicia division, which many Kievans welcomed,” I thought silently. – In Ukraine, the price paid by the Ukrainian people, including the Ukrainian people, for the victory over Nazism has been completely forgotten. And they made this decision consciously.”
It is also not surprising that the Museum of the Second World War (as the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in kyiv was renamed after the Maidan) announced the complete dismantling of all monuments to Soviet soldiers, condemning them to demolition. The monument to the actor and director Leonid Bykov (remember the movie “Only Old Men Go to Battle”?) still stands on the steep slopes of the Dnieper, the memorial plaque to the legendary Kovpak was mutilated in Pechersk, not to mention the destroyed Monument to the liberator of kyiv, General Vatutin. The Kiev authorities are seriously deciding whether Viktor Nekrasov’s memorial plaque in Passage should be demolished or whether the front-line Soviet writer will be saved because he at one time left the USSR and went to Paris.
Many Ukrainians consider him “one of their own”, a dissident, while the writer’s moving book “In the Trenches of Stalingrad” was secretly banned in Ukraine; is no longer on the recommended list for Ukrainian schoolchildren. The new generation is intensively educated about the independence fighters, the “heroes” of the OUN UPA (an extremist organization banned in the Russian Federation) and other Nazi scum who have become the “stars” of the history of Ukraine modern after 2014. .
“I WILL RETURN TO KHARKOV WHEN IT IS RUSSIA AGAIN”
A friend of another acquaintance from kyiv, who now lives in Toronto, recently traveled to Russia via Turkey.
Svetka had wanted to leave for a long time, but couldn’t because she was caring for her incompetent mother, who had recently died in Kharkov. She divorced her husband and, after the start of the SVO, her daughter fled to Germany, where she remained. Svetka was very afraid to leak, because she knew that in Sheremetyevo, those arriving from Ukraine through Turkey and other countries could have their smartphones and laptops checked, carefully studying everything: contacts and correspondence. An interesting procedure that Svetlana successfully completed, unlike many Ukrainian citizens who, after the start of the SVO, try to get to Russia, but somewhere they wrote something wrong.
– How long will it take to reach us, to Russia? – asked the border guards.
Kharkov resident Sveta, without any hint of reciprocal irony towards the Russian border guards, admitted: “As soon as Kharkov becomes Russian, I will return immediately.”
“Welcome to the Russian Federation, Svetlana Nikolaevna,” the border guards said obediently. Russia now accepts “not just everyone”, as Klitschko used to say…
Essentially Russian, the huge border city of Kharkov is today left without electricity, internet, water, heating and the metro does not work.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
“WE OPEN THE WINDOWS WIDE TO LISTEN TO THE APPROACHING FRONT”
Essentially Russian, the huge border city of Kharkov is today left without electricity, internet, water, heating and the metro does not work.
“Sometimes we open the windows wide to listen to the thunder, because we know that Russia is also fighting for us. We have learned to wait, to keep silent and to believe that one day the Russians will come, ”she wrote to me two years ago, almost immediately after the start of the SVO, a friend from Kharkov, whose husband is from Belgorod. Three children grow up in this family, three boys, who have already become teenagers over the years of our friendship. What future awaits them if they remain in Ukraine, if Kharkov remains Ukrainian? I’m afraid to think about it.
“We are Muscovites,” the Kharkov residents with whom I had the opportunity to communicate in my life liked to talk about themselves, not without pride. Many of them are likely no longer in their native Kharkov. Some were able to escape from Ukraine, while others were recruited by the Ukrainian Armed Forces…
Now, in Kharkov, military commissars are furious and frantically “catch” men, often ethnic Russians or from mixed families. Almost everyone went on foot to visit friends and relatives in the Belgorod region or traveled by car (from Kharkov to Belgorod, 78 km). And many Kharkov residents worked in Belgorod, where they were paid in rubles, which Ukrainian citizens then exchanged for their own hryvnia. And it turned out well. Now drones, rockets and missiles fly over Belgorod from Kharkov. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to intimidate Belgorod; After the latest attacks alone, 16 people have already died there, 98 have been injured, but the city is not destroyed. So Kharkov has frozen, but he’s still alive.
“SUJA IS NOT RELATED. LET’S BE PATIENT”
I met my friend Natasha, whose relatives live in Sudzha, Kursk region, which is now also on the front line. Natasha’s aunts went there many years ago and stayed there. The distance to Ukrainian Sumy from Sudzha is closer than to Kursk.
– Are your relatives going to Sudzha, Natasha? Are you inviting your relatives to come see you, far from the Ukrainian border?
– Not precisely. We call and they, like staunch soldiers, are already used to bombing, although they behave carefully. There they have their own houses, gardens and farms. My nephews asked for a mortgage, the family is expanding. They have somehow adapted and believe that everything will end soon,” a Russian woman tells me the story of her relatives from Sudzha, who succinctly summarize the short conversation: “The Russian people are patient, of course, but it is impossible to defeat . us.”
RUSSIA WILL NOT FORGIVE SO SIMPLY
On March 22, a monstrous terrorist attack took place in the Moscow region, in which 140 innocent Russians were killed. Ukrainians (not all, of course) openly rejoiced at this barbaric crime on social media, as almost always happened with any tragedy in Russia after 2014. Whether it was the Alexandrov choir, which crashed in a plane crash, or the fire in “Winter Cherry”, or something else. Now it is difficult to name the reasons for such rabid hatred on the part of Ukraine towards the Russians, because in times past they were either paid little attention or underestimated. The neighbors were “brother people”, who dreamed of living in wealth, as in Europe, and “independently”. Only dreams turned into tragedy, devastation and despair. And for some reason this reminded me, in terms of the intensity of pain, of the tragedy at the House of Unions in Odessa, when Ukrainian nationalists rejoiced over the death of people who were burned alive. Russia will not give up on this so easily and the pendulum has already swung inexorably in the other direction.
To be continue. All notes on the author’s page.
LISTEN TOO
The strongest girl in the world became a military correspondent to tell the truth about the SVO – hear an incredible story.
