A cold spring in Ukraine

When Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov declared that the second phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine had begun, rockets fell on Mykolaiv Zoo. Two of them hit the buffalo enclosure, but did not explode. We can only be happy with the poor quality of the Russian ammunition. It sometimes saves people’s lives, and sometimes animals too.

The Ukrainian soil has already been seeded with grenades and rockets – often planted deep into the ground. They will explode every now and then and remind us of this war.

In some ways, the Russian aggression against Ukraine is predictable, but in others it is strange, almost bizarre. The famous jazz pianist Nikolai Zvyagintsev was killed in the battle for Mariupol. He was a soloist with the Donetsk Philharmonic Orchestra. He was killed by the Ukrainian defenders of the city for fighting on the side of the Russian forces. Musicians of the orchestra were given an army uniform, a machine gun and the assignment to become soldiers. Did they have a choice? Hard to say. But we’re talking about musicians who decided to stay in the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, which has been fighting Ukrainian forces with Russian encouragement and support for eight years now.

There are also surprising recruits in Ukraine, but of a different nature: fourteen players from professional club FC Prykarpattja Ivano-Frankivsk and their coach enlisted in the army, along with their coach. They are now being trained. They will not go to the front until they have acquired the necessary skills for combat.

Kiev is increasingly resembling a beehive. Every day about thirty to forty thousand people return. There are sometimes tens of kilometers of traffic jams on the available approach roads to the city. The Zhytomyr highway from the west has also reopened and they are nearing completion of the construction of a temporary bridge over the Irpin River. Already, motorists who are already back in the city realize soon enough that they have to switch to bicycles and electric scooters. There are so many roadblocks in the city and there is a line everywhere. Driving through the city from south to north, you have to stop more than once, show your papers, open the trunk and answer questions. Cyclists and scooter riders are left alone.

Vegetables in flower boxes

I still regularly call my friends, my brother and the neighbors in my village. The villagers have already planted potatoes. Now they plant onions. Soon they will sow carrots and beets. Where there is no war, roaring tractors sound everywhere. It is sown like mad. The government has asked people to plant vegetables and grain on every available piece of land. This year, a large area in Ukraine will not be used for agriculture. In the east and south, the Russian army sows dead instead of wheat. The government has therefore announced the ‘Victory Gardens’ campaign and called on the people to grow vegetables instead of flowers in the window boxes on the balconies.

“When are you coming again?” my neighbor in the village asks. “It’s so sad without you!” “Not yet,” I say.

I myself planned to plant jalapeño and pasilla peppers this spring. It is good that I was able to give some of the seed I had to friends and I know that they have already planted this in pots at home. I am far from home. But someday, and I hope soon, I will again plant peppers myself in the garden around my house in the village.

Whenever I speak to my neighbor Nina in the village, she asks: “When are you coming again? It’s so sad without you!” “Not yet,” I say.

I really want to go back, enjoy a sunny spring – it’s so beautiful in the village at this time of year!

Nina’s husband, 70-year-old Tolik, has decided not to shave again until the war is over. Nina says he now looks like an Afghan mujahideen. “Please send me a photo!” I beg. “He doesn’t want to be in the picture!” she replies. “Well, at least send a picture of your cats and dogs.” When we lived in the United States for nine months before the war, we often video-phoned each other. Then Nina walked across the yard and showed me her chickens and roosters and her dogs and cats, and the lilacs that had just hatched. Now she’s turned off the internet to save money. Food prices have risen, but her pension has remained the same – about 150 euros a month. All that remains is the mobile phone connection.

Sometimes I get the impression that Nina spends more on food for the dogs, cats, chickens and roosters than on food for herself and Tolik. At the same time, she regularly gets angry with the cats and dogs, but never with the chickens – even if they refuse to lay eggs, she takes no offense. Nina sometimes yells at the two roosters. They are very combative and often pull each other’s feathers. But Nina’s roosters are small, not like the mighty rooster like an eagle away from Mariupol that has recently become famous on social media. His name is Tosha and was evacuated along with his elderly owner from a village near now devastated Mariupol. The 85-year-old grandmother had to leave her whole have and keep it for what it was, but Tosja couldn’t leave them behind. “We survived the Russian bombs together! Neither of us had anything to eat for weeks! How could I leave him now?”

Flights without a suitcase

Recently I went away from Ukraine for a few days. There is still a tent town for Ukrainians at the Bucharest train station. According to my Romanian friends, the first refugees from Ukraine did not want to be called refugees and told them not to sleep in tents. They arrived with suitcases and started looking for a hotel themselves. They were only busy with their onward journey – to Italy, Croatia, Austria.

The next and much more powerful flow of refugees was very different. They were happy with all the help and thanked the volunteers continuously. They tried to eat less free food, afraid that others might not have enough. What really struck my Romanian friends was that these refugees had no suitcases! Many arrived with large plastic bags full of clothes and shoes. It was pretty clear that they had never had to think about luggage before. Some had a travel bag, few had a suitcase.

I immediately assumed that these refugees had to come from the Donbas. The inhabitants of the towns and villages in the Donbas region rarely travel, especially as tourists. In the event of an economic crisis, they went to buy food or clothing in the nearest large city. And they always traveled with large plaid canvas bags that closed with a zipper.

Some had a travel bag, few had a suitcase. The inhabitants of the towns and villages in the Donbas region rarely travel, especially as tourists.

Those bags, which fit a small diesel generator, were not only popular in the Donbas. Western Ukrainians also used them when they went to Poland to sell power tools and buy clothes and cosmetics, which they then sold in Ukraine. Such tourist-traders were once called ‘bag carriers’, then ‘commuters’ and later ‘business tourists’. I remember my own parents taking such a brave but unprofitable “business trip” to Poland in the late 1980s, hoping to sell electric irons and buy crystal wine glasses in return. There were still a few in the box when we came to clean up the flat after their deaths. This period of Ukrainian history seems so far away now.

Tatar-Mongolian hordes

I feel something medieval about this forced displacement of hundreds of thousands, even millions of people. This happened earlier when the Tatar-Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan attacked the territory of present-day Ukraine. Even then people had to drop everything and flee as far west as possible. The West has always saved the people who fled the East. And now the incursion of the Russian hordes is once again driving the Ukrainians to the West. But the refugees keep looking back – physically or emotionally. They want to go home, even if their house is no longer there.

At the beginning of the war, the Russian army managed to take a number of towns in the south without shelling or destroying houses. There are still many civilians in these cities. Only those who did not wish to live under occupation have fled. The rest stayed and some joined pro-Ukrainian demonstrations. The Russian army scares them with machine-gun fire over their heads. They are photographed and filmed by FSB agents. Local collaborators are helping the FSB identify the activists’ names and addresses. Then the activists are taken for questioning. Some of them don’t come back. The Russian flag hangs here above all city government buildings. The occupiers have introduced the ruble, forcing local entrepreneurs to re-register their businesses in accordance with Russian law. Local farmers are forced to send early vegetables to Crimea. In Crimea, Russian TV crews film a local market and claim that Kherson farmers bring their crops to the annexed Crimea.

Statue of Lenin

One of the first cities captured by the Russian army was Henichesk, in the Kherson region. There, the Russian army has erected a statue of Lenin in front of the town hall. They must have brought it from Russia along with the tanks on the same train. I am trying to find a logical explanation for the appearance of a statue of Lenin in Henichsk. Perhaps the thought is to trick the locals into thinking they are back in the Soviet Union. Or is it some kind of joke from Putin, who recently said that Ukraine was invented by Lenin? Just like in the Soviet Union, in front of all state institutions should be a statue of the ‘founder of the state’! But why isn’t there a statue of the Tatar-Mongol Genghis Khan in Moscow in front of the Kremlin or even inside the Kremlin? After all, he was the man who signed up for the practical organization of the tax system in his principality of Moscow and other Russian principalities. He was the man who instilled in the Russian mind the belief that the people should live in fear and that people should be severely punished or killed at the slightest sign of disobedience or dissent.

One day Kiev will donate a statue of Genghis Khan to Moscow.

Almost daily I discover new parallels between the events of the 1918-1921 civil war in Ukraine and what is happening now. Then the Bolsheviks destroyed everything Ukrainian to Sovietize Ukraine. And now the new Bolsheviks are bringing a statue of Lenin and destroying everything Ukrainian to Russify Ukraine.

But Ukraine has its own history and culture, which it has always paid dearly. Ukraine will resist to the end. And I will not lose hope that Ukraine will win and that maybe not this year, but then next year I will be able to plant peppers again.