Morale is high

The Russ­ian in­va­sion of Ukraine began on Feb­ru­ary 24. Since then, the sever­ity of war has been ev­i­dent in all its di­men­sions: thou­sands of civil­ians dead, mil­lions of peo­ple hav­ing to leave their homes and com­pletely be­sieged and de­stroyed cities, such as Mar­i­upol in south-east Ukraine. De­spite this, many Ukraini­ans are con­vinced of their strength and be­lieve that they will be able to with­stand the on­slaught of the Russ­ian army. This is the case of two young men who have no doubt that their coun­try will de­feat the Russ­ian in­vaders.

Jour­nal­ist Vi­tali Tkatchuk spoke to our sis­ter pub­li­ca­tion, La República, from Kyiv. Prior to the con­flict, he worked as a sports jour­nal­ist for one of Ukraine’s old­est agen­cies, Ukrin­form. The war has turned every­thing up­side down, and Tkatchuk has now started to re­port on what is hap­pen­ing in his coun­try. “We have to tell the truth to the Ukraini­ans. I work from home, I’m safe here,” he says, ex­plain­ing that Kyiv is under full con­trol of the Ukrain­ian army. How­ever, he added that Russ­ian bomb­ing was con­tin­u­ing and that many civil­ians had been killed and build­ings de­stroyed. “All Ukraini­ans are now de­fend­ing the cap­i­tal: both the mil­i­tary and civil­ians who are part of the vol­un­tary de­fence force [peo­ple who re­ceived weapons vol­un­tar­ily to de­fend the coun­try]. Check­points have been set up at the en­trance to Kyiv, and the Armed Forces and Ter­ri­to­r­ial De­fence are guard­ing the city. Civil­ians are hid­ing in bomb shel­ters and the un­der­ground sys­tem,” he said. Tkatchuk re­flects on the mil­i­tary’s abil­ity to re­sist. “Our re­sis­tance is strong for many rea­sons. Firstly, be­cause dur­ing the eight years of con­flict our army gained ex­pe­ri­ence in de­fend­ing Ukraine in the Don­bas re­gion [to the East]. Sec­ondly, com­pared to 2014, our army has im­proved in qual­i­ta­tive terms (our equip­ment, weapons, etc). Thirdly, we have mo­ti­va­tion: we know why we are fight­ing. In ad­di­tion, Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Ze­len­sky has be­come a leader who in­spires the en­tire na­tion – even though with­out him we Ukraini­ans would still fight to the end. We have shown that the for­mi­da­ble Russ­ian army is a myth, so we will win.”

The ques­tion of whether they ex­pected this at­tack by the Krem­lin is al­most an oblig­a­tory one. Tkatchuk says yes, they had been ex­pect­ing it for months. “The sit­u­a­tion in the Don­bas was crit­i­cal be­cause of the con­stant ac­tions of the Rus­sians and their mer­ce­nar­ies. The large-scale in­va­sion be­came ap­par­ent when Rus­sia with­drew a large num­ber of its troops abroad on the pre­text of ma­noeu­vres. From then on, it was clear to me that the at­tack was just a mat­ter of time.”

Alek­sandr Oleinik is a young Ukrain­ian who ar­rived in Barcelona a few weeks ago. He spent a month here last au­tumn after walk­ing the Way of Saint James [Camino de San­ti­ago]. Oleinik could not have imag­ined that his life would turn around a hun­dred and eighty de­grees. This young man ex­plains that he has al­ways en­joyed trav­el­ling, and be­cause he has his own dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing busi­ness, his work has al­lowed him to work from dif­fer­ent parts of the world. A few weeks be­fore the Russ­ian in­va­sion, he had trav­elled with a group of friends from his home­town of Odessa to Thai­land and Sri Lanka. From there, they kept track of the in­for­ma­tion they re­ceived. “We knew the Rus­sians were close to the bor­der. We learned that the US em­bassy was mov­ing from Kyiv to Lviv. On Feb­ru­ary 24 we re­ceived the news that Rus­sia was in­vad­ing Ukraine... It’s re­ally hard, be­cause we know every city that’s being bombed,” he ex­plains. “Every morn­ing, every lunch, every din­ner we went on­line to get all the news and find out what was going on,” he adds. “The trip was sup­posed to con­tinue for an­other week, but we de­cided to get back near to Ukraine, but with­out en­ter­ing,” he said. “We chose to be in Eu­rope be­cause it’s a good place to be able to help our coun­try from abroad. Some friends went to Poland; oth­ers to the Nether­lands,” he added. “If it weren’t for the in­va­sion, I would have re­turned to my flat in Odessa to work on­line, as I al­ways did, but now that’s im­pos­si­ble. I can’t be a sol­dier ei­ther be­cause I have vi­sion prob­lems,” he ex­plains. Oleinik thinks that he can be more use­ful to Ukraine in the eco­nomic sphere, work­ing and help­ing via so­cial net­works, than going to his coun­try and en­list­ing in the army. “I have no mil­i­tary train­ing, I have never even picked up a weapon,” he says. He now lives in a flat in the cen­tre of Barcelona that he found through a Ukrain­ian woman who has been liv­ing in the Cata­lan cap­i­tal for years. The com­mu­nity is doing every­thing it can so that com­pa­tri­ots who ar­rive find a place to live these first months. His mother does not want to leave her coun­try, for the time being at least. “I talk to her every day. I al­ways talk to her about leav­ing but it’s her de­ci­sion,” says Oleinik.

The two young men’s anger is pal­pa­ble when the name Vladimir Putin is men­tioned. “What he’s done is crazy... We didn’t ex­pect it to be a real war, like World War II,” Oleinik says. For his part, Tkatchuk be­lieves that “Putin is con­stantly lying.” “None of the ar­gu­ments he has for at­tack­ing Ukraine make sense. And 70% of Rus­sians sup­port this war. They have killed peace­ful Ukrain­ian civil­ians and razed dozens of cities. They de­serve all the sanc­tions.”

in­ter­na­tional ukraine cri­sis