标题: 2022.03.01 乌克兰的血腥历史从未远去 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-3-4 05:53 标题: 2022.03.01 乌克兰的血腥历史从未远去 EYEWITNESS
Meatball soup and Molotov cocktails: a dispatch from Ukraine
In the western borderlands Ukraine’s bloody past is never far away
Mar 1st 2022
BY WENDELL STEAVENSON
We crossed the border from Poland to Ukraine at dusk, the orange sun falling behind blue woods. Dorohusk was not as jammed as the three other border crossings between the two countries, where there are reports of tailbacks on the Ukrainian side up to 50km long. The refugees, who include African and Indian students and workers, arrive in Poland exhausted and mute, having walked for hours.
There were 18 of us in a small white van. Most of the others were Ukrainians going back to help, to bring out relatives or to fight. They were grim and perfectly determined. We bent over our phones, scrolling the news: the terrible bombardment of Kharkiv; no breakthrough in the peace negotiations. I watched a video showing a column of Belarusian army trucks heading east from Brest along the Ukrainian border. According to Google, that’s only a couple of hours drive from us. In this way we crossed over from peace to war.
We were met on the other side by Vladimir – Vova in the diminutive – a Ukrainian who served in the French Foreign Legion for ten years. He’s one of those people who pop up in wartime, a fixer for international journalists, humanitarian aid, volunteers coming to join the fight. He had a shiny suv, a driver and a Kalashnikov in the front seat. I’ve no idea what his regular job is. And as Karen, a friend and colleague travelling with me, said, “I’m not gonna ask”.
The weight of history These photos, taken in the Donbass at the end of 2021, show Ukrainians, young and old, preparing to fight
Vova hefted our bags into the trunk. He was jolly and slight and sharp. Ludmilla, his wife, and their two small children had gone to Poland on the first day of the war. We could stay at his house in the kids’ room, no problem. But first, if we were hungry, he would take us to his mother-in-law’s home for some supper.
The countryside was flat and open. As night fell, we could see barricades by the side of the road, made of parked trucks and tractors. Checkpoints at the entrance to villages were manned by local units of the Territorial Defence forces. Municipalities have organised volunteers and issued them with guns.
Oksana, Vova’s mother-in-law, who works as a passport inspector at the border, welcomed us warmly. She set our boots on the radiator to warm, made tea and fed us meatball soup with potato and dill.
She joked that her long, lacquered nails would be good for clawing at the Russians
Footage on the tv news showed orange flashes against the smoking grey blocks of Kharkiv. I admired Oksana’s nails, elegantly long and lacquered in plum. She made a joke that they would be good for clawing and scratching at the Russians when they came, but I could see how frightened she was. Several bags of food and blankets were ready by the door, in case she had to flee.
“Who could imagine this? In 2022?” She shook her head. Her brother, she said, had brought his wife and children from Kyiv and then gone back to fight. Territorial Defence forces were making Molotov cocktails – except Ukrainians in these parts are avoiding the reference to Stalin’s foreign minister and have changed the name to Bandera smoothies, after Stepan Bandera, a controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader who became an ally of the Nazis.
Then Oksana began to talk about her family. Her grandfather’s sister had been arrested in 1933, aged 15, for giving bread to children during the Great Famine and sent to a gulag in Kazakhstan for ten years. Her grandfather had fled to Moldova when he was denounced during collectivisation in the late 1920s and early 1930s, then returned after two years to find his fruit orchards had been ploughed up. She was telling us these things, said Oksana, because she wanted us to know that it was the communists who had brought war and suffering to this place. Now Putin wanted to turn back the clock and impose it all over again.
History is treading heavily over this land again. Vova toggled and swiped and sent messages and took calls. The voices of the news anchors on the television were strained and urgent. I noticed one picking nervously at the cuticle of his thumbnail.
Ukrainians have changed the name of Molotov cocktails to Bandera smoothies
Oksana had begun an email to a friend, a teacher in the Russian city of Novosibirsk, with the greeting “dobry den” (“good day”). She added that she could hardly bring herself to write that platitude. She showed me her friend’s reply: “Oksana, I sympathise with you with all my heart. And all the Russians support you…People write from all over the country. If only they could resist and hold on to something. Nobody wants to go to war.” “It’s not the fault of the Russian citizens,” said Vova, looking up from his phone, “it’s the fault of Putin.”
Ludmilla, Vova’s wife, called from Poland. The little ones missed their father. Yes, the Poles were so kind and helpful: “They even brought toys for the children, they bought clothes for the children. But it’s hard you know, my daughter said to me: ‘I forgot my toy, can we go home and get it?’” Ludmilla had also written to friends in Russia who then repeated the official line to her: we are there to help the Ukrainians, the Russian armed forces are not targeting civilians. “I was pissed off. I started sending them pictures and videos of the fighting. They told me they were just photoshopped. They don’t know what’s happening. Their television doesn’t show them.”
We ate our soup very gratefully. There’s too much history here.■
Wendell Steavenson has reported on post-Soviet Georgia, the Iraq war and the Egyptian revolution. She is sending regular dispatches for 1843 magazine from Ukraine
PHOTOGRAPHS: GUILLAUME HERBAUT / AGENCE VU / CAMERA PRESS
