Simon Nielsen 4/11/23 Simon Nielsen 4/11/23

‘Justice must prevail over brutal force’: Oleksandra Matviichuk in Dialogue with Anne Applebaum

In order to comprehend the events of recent months, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On March 24, 2023, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian NGO awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, held a conversation with Anne Applebaum, an American historian, writer, and journalist.

This conversation is supported by the US Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Oleksandra Matviichuk and Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum: A couple of months ago, Oleksandra and I were talking about the interest in human rights issues that is now being shown by those outside of Ukraine specialising in war crimes and human rights violations. You said to me that it was a pity that it had taken this war for people to become interested, that it was hard to get people to focus on what was going on in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and even on what Russians were doing in Syria. That has now changed. What is your impression of the human rights community’s attitude towards Ukraine? How did the conversation about human rights in Ukraine change over the last year?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: As a human rights lawyer, I have been applying the law for many years to defend people and human dignity. Now, together with my Ukrainian human rights colleagues, we are working in circumstances in which the law does not work at all.

The problem lies not only in the fact authoritarian regimes are building stronger and more centralised verticals of power, suppressing the freedom in their countries to the size of prison cells. There is also the fact that political forces that are openly doubting the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are gaining power even in well-developed democracies.

The generation which knew the price of freedom, the rule of law, of democracy, which fought for these values and for a chance to build a system based on those values after the Second World War, is gone. Modern generations are consumers of those values rather than producers. Because these generations are not fighting for these values, they do not understand their real meaning. For years, the populations of those democracies were willing to trade them for economic benefits, comfort, or an illusion of safety.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is not only a war between two states, it is a war between two systems: authoritarianism and democracy. Ukraine is a great example of people fighting for their freedom and democratic choice. This, I hope, will provoke a change of attitude towards these values in modern democratic societies.

Anne Applebaum: Do you think the war has had this impact already? When speaking to people in Europe and the US, do you detect this understanding?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I think this is a question for a sociological survey, and I am not sure such research even exists. In informal conversations not only with human rights defenders in different countries, who have always been on our side but also with diplomats, politicians, members of governments, and experts of leading analytical think tanks, I witness an attempt to rethink the importance of human rights as a value. For decades, the voice of human rights defenders was not heard. Governments, even those of well-developed democracies, used to base their political decisions on economic benefits or security issues, especially the ones related to external policy.

For decades, Russia has been persecuting its own civil society, jailing journalists, killing activists, and dispersing peaceful demonstrations. Other countries just closed their eyes to that. They continued to shake Putin’s hand, build gas pipelines, and make business as usual with Russia. It is only now that they are starting to understand that, having benefited from this policy in the short-term perspective, they have failed in the long-term one.

Anne Applebaum: Over the last twenty years, a lot of the international institutions that are formally supposed to deal with human rights, particularly within the UN, were deliberately attacked, degraded, and undermined by autocracies like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea. All of them sought to have a place on the UN Human Rights Council, to become so-called counterbalancing voices inside these institutions, and tried to shape the language that was used. Do you think that these institutions, especially in the UN, can be rescued or do we need a different kind of organisation? The best idea I have come up with is creating more ad hoc institutions, which would deal with a particular issue at a particular time, instead of long-standing organisations based in Geneva or New York that can be easily undermined by their members.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: When I say that human rights defenders are doing their job in a situation where the law does not work, I am talking about the fundamental question: how are we, people of the 21st century, going to defend people and their human dignity? Can we rely upon legal instruments, such as international law and the whole infrastructure of international organisations, deliberately created to defend international law and force the norms into practice? Or can we rely only on brutal force?

This is not an abstract question. The entire international system of peace and security could not stop Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Putin tried to convince the whole world that democracy, the rule of law, and human rights are fake values because they could not protect people during the war. He tried to demonstrate that a state with a strong military potential and nuclear power can dictate its rules to the whole world and even forcibly change internationally-recognised state borders. And we must respond to this claim. This is not just the Ukrainians’ problem. It is a problem for the whole world.

I believe we have to start a fundamental reform of the international system of peace and security. It was built after the Second World War by the victorious state and provided irrational preferences to others, and it just does not work anymore. For example, on 28 April 2022, when the UN Secretary-General came to Kyiv to meet President Zelenskyy, a Russian rocket hit a residential building in the Ukrainian capital, killing Vira Hyrych, a journalist and our colleague.

Our responsibility is to build a new system, to restart these existing mechanisms. We must be able to effectively protect people from authoritarian regimes in wars, we must provide human rights defence and security guarantees, whether or not we live in a country with strong military potential or nuclear power.

Anne Applebaum: Let me ask you about one institution that has recently made a big step in the right direction, which surprised me. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an indictment of Vladimir Putin. Why do you think that happened? What impact will it have?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I think this decision was historical, and not only because Putin has become a wanted man in 123 states. It is the first time in history the ICC issued a warrant against the current head of the state which is a member of the UN Security Council and has a strong nuclear potential.

The ICC plays on the side of democracy and demonstrates that the rule of law is more important than military potential. Regardless of who you are, if you committed severe international crimes under the jurisdiction of this court, it will persecute you. Justice must prevail over brutal force.

The decision on Putin’s indictment will have its impact both in the short- and in the long-term perspective. In the long term, his destiny becomes more and more clear. Throughout history, authoritarian regimes collapsed and their leaders, who had thought themselves untouchable, did appear in front of the court. Even when the countries did not want to cooperate with international justice, they had to do so, otherwise, they would have become isolated. Serbia with Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić is a great example.

Coming back to short-term results, there are still countries that are far from the context of what is going on or have very close economic or other ties with Russia. Even in the countries supporting Ukraine there still are politicians who want to return to business as usual with Putin. Now all of them have to take into account the fact that Putin is an officially suspected war criminal. Countries that claim to build their external policy on the rule of law cannot afford such behaviour.

Anne Applebaum: Down the line, if we come to a moment when Russian political power begins to change, I can imagine it being very convenient for the future Russian government if they will need something to do with Putin. They could send him to Dubai, Beijing, or The Hague. Of course, it can also play both ways. For instance, it gives Putin extra incentive not to lose his power.

I would not also underestimate the nature of the particular case, the deportation of children, and the naming of the woman who is head of children’s policy in Russia. This case is very clear, it is what the Russians have admitted to, and they are not denying or hiding it.

Would you expect the ICC to add other cases or do you think this sets a sufficient precedent?

Oleksandra Matviichuk: It is very clear to me why the ICC has started with this case in the first place. The International Criminal Court has stated before that children’s rights were its priority. In the official press release, the prosecutor said that other cases will be added as well. We can only predict what they will choose.

I do hope they will take on the case of deliberate attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine. The International Commission on Inquiry on Ukraine has recently named those attacks crimes against humanity.

Every one of us has to work hard and help the ICC to see the broader picture. This war has a genocidal character. Attacks on energy infrastructure are a part of the genocidal policy imposed by Russia against the Ukrainian nation. Putin says that Ukraine as a state has no right to exist, that there is no Ukrainian nation, no Ukrainian language, and no Ukrainian culture. Russian propagandists interpret it more clearly, saying that Ukrainians should be eradicated. We see the implications of this policy in reality. With any genocide, there is a need to prove the intent to eliminate, partially or completely, a group. You do not have to be a lawyer to understand that the elimination of an ethnic group does not necessarily mean killing all its members. One can forcibly change people’s identity and the whole group will disappear.

Ukrainian children were not just illegally deported. They were put into reeducation camps or forcibly adopted into Russian families. There was an effort to teach these kids that they were Russians. In the occupied territories, Russia facilitates ethnic cleansing by prohibiting the Ukrainian language and history, deliberately exterminating the local Ukrainian elite, persecuting activists, local deputies, priests, artists, journalists, and volunteers. Altogether, it makes up a complete picture of Russia’s genocidal policy against Ukraine.

Anne Applebaum: As you, of course, know, the word genocide was invented by a lawyer from Lviv, Rafał Lemkin, who shared Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian identity. His original definition included exactly the categories you just described.

After the Second World War, we developed a very narrow idea of what genocide was based on the horrific example of the Holocaust, which was an attempt to physically destroy the Jewish nation. We stopped seeing that the original definition was actually wider than that. One of the outcomes of this war might be a reexamination of the meaning of this word and a deeper understanding of what it is that Putin is doing in Ukraine. Post-World War Two, people decided that genocide was something very rare, something that could happen only in a context of a world war, a once-in-a-century event. In reality, we have seen several attempts at genocide since then, and we see some happening right now.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: I totally agree. As a lawyer, I know that law is dynamic, it is not something conservative or unchangeable. We have to develop legal mechanisms which would be effective in the new circumstances.

This war is the battle for truth. In this battle, Ukrainians have a sense of urgency. For us, time resulted in numerous deaths on the battlefield, deaths and suffering of the people both in the occupied territories and in the deep rear. This is a task that must be completed jointly by the whole international community. It is a problem that cannot be solved within national borders or national standards.

Anne Applebaum: There is now quite a lot of resistance to the idea that these kinds of ideas can be universal. And this is also the result of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian pushback against the international system. They argue that there is no such thing as universal values, they are Western, colonial, and imposed by the Western democratic world.

Talking about Ukraine in the broader context of other crimes does not take away from the uniqueness of what is happening in your country. It might even add to it. This is the problem being faced in different ways, by different people, in different parts of the world. It is more extreme and violent right now in Ukraine, but it is a human problem that we all need to think about. Ukrainians have done very well in making that argument and putting it back to the international community. It is not a local conflict; it has a deeper and wider meaning, and the results of it will be felt in other places.

Oleksandra Matviichuk: There are lots of things which have no limitation in the national borders. I often tell people the story of children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko. How his family hoped until the very end that he would be found alive in Russian captivity, like thousands of Ukrainian civilians; and then, when his body was found in a mass grave under the number 319; and how difficult it was for the family to accept this. This story of the children's writer, his family, his struggle for freedom, and of his human dignity is understandable to everyone I am talking to, regardless of their citizenship, nationality, ideology, political views, religion, the colour of skin, or social status. First and foremost, we are all human beings. That is why lots of things are universal for us, like human solidarity. I know from my own experience that when you cannot rely on legal instruments, you can still rely on people. Massive mobilisation of people in different countries can change our world for the better and do so much quicker than the UN intervention ever would.

Simon Nielsen 3/14/23 Simon Nielsen 3/14/23

‘I was astonished by the fierceness of people’s desire to stay’: Dave Eggers In Dialogue With Yuliya Musakovska

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On February 16, 2023, Ukrainian poet Yuliya Musakovska held a conversation with the American writer and publisher Dave Eggers. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is suppoerted by the US Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Dave Eggers and Yulia Musakovska

Dave Eggers: I first met Yuliya in Lviv in December of 2022, when we were visiting Ukraine with a delegation from PEN America. As we are approaching the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion, what is your state of mind? Are you more optimistic now than you were at this time last spring?

Yuliya Musakovska: It is a pleasure to continue the conversation we started in person in Lviv.

Today we did not have enough sleep. Another massive missile attack on Ukraine took place during the night, and we were woken up by the air raid alarm at 3 a.m.

When the full-scale Russian invasion started, we were shocked. Up until mid-April, we felt quite abandoned, as if we could only rely on ourselves. Our day-to-day reality consisted of work and helping our friends, the army, and people in need. It was just a matter of survival, and it still is. Back then, the world was watching and testing whether Ukraine could really hold off the Russian invasion and trying to decide whether they should give us weapons, or it would all just be a waste. This was my feeling at the time, I remember it very clearly.

It has been an emotional rollercoaster when the joy of liberation of territories was followed by harrowing discoveries of atrocities committed by the Russian occupiers. Mass graves, torture chambers, and the deportation of children. The entire world was shocked. Was it the atrocities committed by the Russians that have moved the world, or the ability of Ukrainians to take back our land and fight off the enemy with the little weapons we had at that moment?

We have realised that the war is not going to end soon. This is not a sprint, but a marathon. However, now we feel the support. Getting military help was critical for Ukraine’s survival.

We are determined. We must win because there is no other choice. This is a matter of survival. Now we are more confident in ourselves, in what we can achieve, and in those who stand with us and support Ukraine.

Dave Eggers: You have travelled around the world since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion and spoken about your experience. What were the misperceptions and false narratives that you were trying to correct?

Yuliya Musakovska: This is a very interesting and complex question. The main thing was calling this war “Russia’s war”, “a conflict”, or just “the war in Ukraine”, when the oppressor is being left out of the equation – as if it is not at fault, as if it does not exist.

Another thing was the idea that all Ukrainians wanted to leave the country. This is very hurtful because all those who are leaving have the hope to return home – of course, if they have a home to come back to. Leaving the country under such circumstances is not like going on a vacation or travelling to visit your family. It is a completely devastating reason to leave everything behind.

There are also many efforts on Russia's side to spread propaganda. Some media outlets, even if they are sympathising with Ukrainians as victims suffering from the aggression, often repeat the narratives about this war being “US-financed”, about how giving weapons to Ukraine is “prolonging” the war, and how we should sit down and negotiate with Russia and then the peace will come. They say that without knowing the historical background of our relationship. The fake narrative of “brotherly nations” is also somehow inserted into people’s minds. Now it should be obvious to everyone that there is nothing in common between Russians and Ukrainians, and [that] the main difference is the set of core values that we do not share.

Of course, the idea of the “greatness” of Russian culture is still present, and somehow it is not conflicting with the events of the Russian war in Ukraine. These two things exist as two separate entities, and this is really infuriating. Our diplomats and cultural activists have been doing a lot of work on the cultural front. A recent example is the Metropolitan Museum of Art renaming Edgar Degas’s Russian Dancers to Dancers in Ukrainian Dress. Should have been Ukrainian Dancers, but it is still progress. We are trying to reclaim the artists who have Ukrainian identity at their core, like Ilya Repin and Ivan Aivazovsky. There are so many examples of this cultural appropriation.

There is still a lot of work to be done here. As long as people are open and willing to listen, we will try to explain and convince them. To take back what is ours.

Dave Eggers: That was the point of our mission. PEN America’s delegation came to Ukraine in December 2022 to highlight cultural erasure as a weapon of war. The key part of the Russian strategy is to pretend that Ukrainian culture as a distinct entity never existed and should be subsumed again.

It was very interesting to see the fierce determination on the part of everyone we met to reclaim, reidentify, to make sure that Ukrainian culture was distinguished clearly. We visited the National Museum of Ukrainian History in Kyiv and talked with one of the guides there about her own efforts to educate, one by one, people who have been coming to the museum since 2014. She felt like it was her responsibility, person after person, school group after school group, to tell this story and to clarify things.

She also drew an interesting distinction between generations. Those of you who grew up after the independence seem to have a more fierce and clear sense of Ukrainian identity than the generations before, who grew up under Soviet rule. Can you talk about this generational divide?

Yuliya Musakovska: I would not say that the difference is purely generational. Of course, the younger generation is more active, but this is just natural. I think this difference depends mostly on the experience that one’s family had during the Soviet occupation. Those who were persecuted by the Soviets, their families and relatives, and those who took part in the liberation movements would not see surrendering to Russia as an option.

Both sides of my family had horrible experiences during Soviet rule. Russia has always been seen as a potential enemy. My grandmother’s entire family was deported as ethnic Ukrainians at the time of exchange of ethnic groups between the Soviet Union and Poland during the Second World – it was easier for the Soviets to control the monolithic ethnicity on the lands they had occupied. My father was forced to quit university because of his avid interest in foreign languages and Western culture. There are zero positive sentiments about the Soviet past in my family. My grandfather, who is still alive, was born in Armenia and served in the Soviet army during the Second World War because he was forced to. He is 95, and he clearly says that Putin is a crazy maniac who must be stopped.

On the other hand, some people were part of the system. Some of them, unfortunately, passed this nostalgia for the Soviet times to the younger generation. Sometimes we hear younger people, who have never lived through Soviet times, saying how nice it was back then, how ice cream tasted differently, sausages were cheap, and everybody was just nicer – simply because they heard it from their relatives. Those who know history know why sausage was cheap: it was because millions of people were doing slave labour on collective farms for the Soviets.

At the same time, many people vividly remember Gulag and the Holodomor, the great artificial famine inflicted by Stalin. If you think about the percentage of the generational divide you were talking about, maybe, the majority longing for the Soviet past is, indeed, among older people. But the majority of the older generation is not like that. There are many stories of senior citizens donating their life savings to help the army, and older ladies volunteering to cook food or knit socks for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. They do everything they can. So I really would not divide it by generation.

Dave Eggers: When we met the deputy mayor of Bucha, she told us that most of the residents that had stayed during the occupation were older people; they simply refused to leave. I also kept meeting people whose grandparents and parents were still living in Mariupol. They refused to leave because this is their home.

During our visit, we toured many sights, including a little town called Yahidne, where the Russian troops came to set up a base to attack Chernihiv. They took hostage about 350 people, and they kept them in a basement of a school for about a month. Twelve people died during the occupation. The groundskeeper of the school showed us the site. I remember other journalists saying, “This story has been told many times, we do not need to tell it again”. I personally did not know this story. I came back to the US and told it to people, and no one I knew had heard it. So I decided to write about Yahidne again in a longer piece that I am finishing now.

The Western media is so driven by new stories. How do you tell the world that we need to continue to remind everybody about what happened, especially in the early days? How do you keep people from forgetting all these atrocities and war crimes?

Yuliya Musakovska: I think this phenomenon of “Ukraine fatigue” appeared pretty early. We started hearing about it last summer, just a few months into the full-scale war. But this is our reality. This is what we are living through. And this is the truth.

Reaching outlets and people with this news is becoming more and more difficult. But I think, once you start telling really personal stories and you reach the audience on a human level, the conversation becomes completely different. That is why I used all my vacation time last year to travel and talk about Russia’s war against Ukraine.

As witnesses, our role is to testify. This work may be systematic and boring, but we have to continue doing it. Telling personal stories of different people who have changed their lives completely, artists and writers who have abandoned their craft and went to serve in the army. We have no other choice but to keep repeating and explaining why it is important not only for Ukraine, and what would happen if Ukraine falls. Many people do not realise that the failure of Ukraine’s struggle for independence and freedom will have a horrible meaning to the entire world. It will signal other authoritarian states that they may act as they wish.

We are not fighting just for our own freedom, we are defending not just our own land, we are the shield that prevents evil from spreading further.

Dave Eggers: This is where storytelling is important – to make sure that these stories are told in many different venues, are told very personally, and from new perspectives. Ukrainian writers have to continue finding new ways to awaken audiences and make people feel what it’s like, and tell stories of people who cannot do it themselves.

Starting from 2014, but especially in the last year, how has your own writing been? Do you ever find your own fatigue, a time where you would like to write about something other than Russian aggression?

Yuliya Musakovska: As you mentioned, reaching people emotionally can be very effective, and poetry is a great tool for that.

I had not been able to write in the first few weeks of the full-scale war. And then, when I started again, the first poem I wrote was in English. I just couldn’t find words to express what was going on in Ukrainian.

I started writing about Russia’s war back in 2014-2015. There was this feeling that the war was not going to end in the east of Ukraine and in Crimea; a looming threat for the entire country persisted.

Since the full-scale invasion happened, I have not felt as if there is something else to write about at this moment. I do not write a lot, but when I do, I write about war.

War affects the way we see things like love, family, and friendship. They do not disappear, they continue to exist, and we appreciate them more than before – because every day may be our last one. Even if we write about those things, it is still through the lens of war.

There are lots of books written for children about the war. A great example is Children of Air Raid Alarms by Larysa Denysenko. It has already been translated into various languages. There is also a seemingly child-ish book by Oleksandr Mykhed, Cat, Rooster, Cupboard, which is not a book for children but it is composed that way. It is based on the events that happened in Borodyanka in the Kyiv region.

Dave Eggers: I was very moved when I was there for the funeral of children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko. I felt very shattered by his death and the way he died. I felt a kinship with him in terms of what he wrote about.

What I have been trying to get across in my essays from the trip is how incredibly high-functioning Kyiv, Lviv and so many cities in Ukraine are. It is astonishing that the restaurants are working, the concerts are taking place, the subways are always full, and life is going on. There is unbelievable resistance in everybody’s determination to continue living, and living fully, despite this existential war.

When you travel in the West, do you find that people understand that life is going on in Ukraine?

Yuliya Musakovska: I am telling people about that, but they mostly think that everything is somehow damaged or broken. I can feel it in my daily work. My day job is in IT. The first days of the full-scale war were very challenging because we had to keep our business running, and we were getting tons of messages from the clients asking what was going on and how everything was functioning. After a while, they realised that nothing has changed from our side, and we continued to deliver what we have been delivering before.

When you were planning your trip to Ukraine, what were your expectations? Have they changed after you visited Lviv and Kyiv?

Dave Eggers: I did expect a war zone from border to border. I did not expect, pulling into Lviv, to see busy traffic, hotels, and generator-powered lights downtown. Life in these cities is going on. Restaurants are working, grocery stores are full, and you can buy whatever you want to. This surprised everyone back in the US. On the border with Poland, we saw an endless line of supply trucks coming to Ukraine. I found this incredibly surprising and inspiring.

I interviewed many people, perhaps too many to even write about, but I was astonished by the fierceness of people’s desire to stay, especially younger people that I met, students, PhD students, people that have been working on anti-corruption measures before the full-scale invasion started, agencies that were working in the east of Ukraine to create stable local administrations to resist the Russian colonial takeover.

It has been almost three months since I left, and I am still unpacking everything that I saw and everybody I talked to. I was very sad to leave Ukraine because I loved my time there so much, as grim and shattering as it was to see the sites of mass graves, Yahidne, the bridge in Irpin, the destroyed neighbourhoods, and to meet people who had lost their loved ones. It was alternately shattering and inspiring.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 2/27/23 Simon Nielsen 2/27/23

‘The fight for justice is what drives us now’: Oksana Lutsyshyna In Dialogue With Arundhati Roy

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On February 10, 2023, Ukrainian poet and writer Oksana Lutsyshyna held a conversation with the Indian writer Arundhati Roy. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is suppoerted by the US Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Arundhati Roy and Oksana Lutsyshna

Arundhati Roy: I would like to ask Oksana to give us an update. What is happening in Ukraine right now, after almost a year since the war started? A lot of the conversations I saw about it were held between Ukrainian writers and either Europeans or Americans. The part of the world where I am, however, has a very different magnetic field of how things are looked at.

Oksana Lutsyshyna: I was in Ukraine in December. I visited Lviv and Uzhhorod, which is where my parents live. I did not see anything even vaguely resembling defeatist attitudes. Literally everyone, from writers and publishers to people you meet in the city, like taxi drivers, were talking about how Ukraine is standing up to Russian aggression. That is the most important thing to me.

I have also seen how much more interested people are in literature, culture, and history. Everybody is catching up on what they had not learnt at school, because many generations of Ukrainians studied the Soviet version of history, which, of course, was not covering the real dynamics between Russia and Ukraine.

All in all, Ukraine is standing strong. How does the situation look from the outside?

Arundhati Roy: When I hear Ukrainians talking about Russian colonialism, it echoes with what I hear on the streets of Kashmir.

In some ways, things are so different, even in terms of how this war is being perceived here. First of all, the country of Ukraine is being invaded by the former coloniser. On top of that, huge world powers are involved in this war.

India has a very old association with Russia, economic and otherwise. Last month, a well-known reporter from the New York Times arrived in India and came to see me. He was not familiar with the country at all, but he was going to write a piece on India’s stance on the war in Ukraine. I wondered why this particular reporter came. In the past, he has written in support of Modi. His piece turned out to be really supportive of India’s current position – India cannot afford to go against Russia. Ninety percent of the weapons we have come from Russia. Right now, India is importing many times more crude oil than it used to, refining it and then selling it to the West. There are so many business deals going on. I am interested to see where all this is going.

Oksana Lutsyshyna: That is interesting to hear. In the United States, where I live, the only perspective to look at Ukraine is, naturally, that of the West that America embodies.

In my opinion, seeing this war just as a conflict between Russia and the West is an example of a very Eurocentric, somewhat colonial thinking, which seems to dismiss that there are other parts of the world with completely different views on the situation.

In your essays, you say that India is not a country, it is a continent. It has a completely different political stance.

Arundhati Roy: Just before Covid, I went to Lviv. Meeting my publishers and translators was a wonderful experience. Like many people of my generation who grew up in India, I had never visited Eastern Europe before and never thought that I would travel there.

In Kerala, where I grew up, we had communism. I was brought up with different kinds of propaganda. Hearing about the Vietnam War, we supported the Vietnamese. One was never allowed to say anything about Stalin or what had happened when he was in power. Initially, the Communist party was furious with The God of Small Things because in this book I was talking about the caste system and how communists did not understand it.

I was wondering, do states as entities actually have values at all? I don’t know. In 2002, after the Gujarat massacre, Modi was denied entry into the US after thousands of Muslims were slaughtered on the streets. However, the Indian market is huge, so the situation changed when he became the prime minister. You could slaughter whoever you want, and you would still be welcome, and people would still hold rallies for you.

It is very important to know on the ground what is being done to Ukraine and Ukrainians, to know the history of your country. Ukraine suffered tremendously from the 1932 Holodomor famine, and it has been through so much. When all these narratives are placed on top of it, from the outside it is very hard to extract moral order from it. Other than to say that one stands with the Ukrainian resistance today.

Oksana Lutsyshyna: Absolutely, I hear you. We have been working hard all this time to dispel the propaganda. Even before the full-scale Russian invasion and the invasion in 2014 of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the illegal annexation of Crimea. These events have been inseparable from exporting Russian culture; it was somehow engrained in it. It was very difficult to make the world see what was going on, what the empire is all about, how it stands now.

Dismantling these Russian master narratives is a huge task because it is already written as history, of literature in particular. Nowadays even those who teach and study Russian literature admit this. But then, when people say they are ready to read Ukrainian literature, we realise that a lot of it has not been translated, and some of it has been a mystery even to ourselves due to repressions in the Soviet times banning and killing the authors. In the 1930s, Stalin attacked Ukraine in all possible and impossible ways. Apart from exterminating people, he also decimated the intellectual circles. It was a simultaneous attack on everything Ukrainian.

Arundhati Roy: When I first came to Lviv and then to Poland, I was so taken away by the angle against the Soviet Union and communism. I personally do not call myself a communist at all, but the left has done some good work in India. In your case, however, this aversion was not a matter of policy. For you, communism is a piece of old legacy you want nothing to do with.

Since you are in the US, I would like to ask you this: do you see Trump coming back to power? If he does, how will it affect things in Ukraine?

Oksana Lutsyshyna: I hope not. I am afraid to even think about it. I think it will have bad consequences for Ukraine because of Trump’s ties to Putin. Every day a new scandal is unearthed about another highly placed official being somehow connected to the Russian power circle. It looks like this corruption has reached an unprecedented scale.

I know about Trump’s ties to the Indian circle too. I think he visited India, didn’t he?

Arundhati Roy: And put his arms around Modi, while Muslims were slaughtered in the streets of my city. But even during World War Two, when England and Germany were at war, businessmen were still making money.

Sometimes I watch Fox News and other right-wing channels; I read Kissinger and Jeffrey Saks. These people, whom you need to watch carefully, have been speaking about how the war in Ukraine cannot be won, that it needs to have a negotiated settlement. What do you think about that?

Oksana Lutsyshyna: Sometimes I hear it even from my friends who come from other countries.

I don’t think I am ready to negotiate, and neither is Ukraine. Any negotiations will come after victory, so we say. I wanted to quote Serhiy Zhadan here, a Ukrainian writer, who said ‘Without victory there is no justice’. I agree with that. I know that this fight for justice can be a somewhat idealist, and some might even say unobtainable, idea. But the fight for justice is what drives us now. We are not ready to consider any negotiations.

‘There is no peace without justice’, Zhadan adds, and I agree with that too. The conversations about peace are often masking the same view on Ukraine that has been around for centuries. You are a smaller country, you have to let go because you are not going to win, Russia is too big and too powerful. And that is not something that is on our agenda right now.

Arundhati Roy: When in 2002 the Gudjrat massacre took place under Modi’s administration, I used to think that if you just tell people, if you describe how women were slaughtered, how pregnant women had foetuses taken out, how people were burned, chopped up, and killed, everybody would get so shocked that they would do something politically. In fact, since then we have seen the opposite happening. People have rallied behind the murderers.

When you look at people in Kashmir… You know how the Japanese started growing square melons so that it is easier to stack them? The Indian government is doing that to human beings at gunpoint. There is no press, no Facebook, nobody can say anything. And most people in India don’t even want to. Anyone who dares to speak gets put into jail or lynched on the streets.

Just like you, we say that whatever happens, we will not be on that side. We may go down, but we do so on our terms. So I hear what you are saying.

Can you tell me how Ukrainian refugees are doing in the various countries they are in?

Oksana Lutsyshyna: Well, here we see the issue of women’s rights. Women are thrown into supporting their kids on their own. Whatever career or aspirations they have, all of it has to be put aside. That is what I see among my friends.

I know that lots of people are in Poland. I visited some of my writer friends there on my way to Ukraine. They are reasonably okay, but their husbands are in Ukraine. Many people have their loved ones on the frontline, and they worry about them constantly. In the meantime, these women dedicate themselves to their kids. They have to sacrifice progress in other areas because they have to take care of their immediate family.

In other countries, some Ukrainians are having trouble trying to explain to the locals what is going on. And people do not necessarily understand them – Russian propaganda is still strong. They want to help Ukraine, but still seem to be unsure of what is going on.

I was actually present at your talk in Lviv that you mentioned. I have read your books and I admire your trajectory as a writer. In times like this, what are the prospects of fiction? Do we have to employ other forms of writing?

Arundhati Roy: I am someone who tries not to generalise and tell other writers what they should do or how they should do it. In my case, when I wrote the Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a large part of it was about Kashmir – a place where you cannot tell the truth, except in fiction.

Right now, I keep telling myself that I should not talk about what is going on in India because that is not the point of this conversation. But it is all just so traumatic. You said that I keep writing about war: here, in India, peace is war.

Writing is the only thing you can do to stay sane. That is the only valuable motivation for me.

Oksana Lutsyshyna: That is true. For this last year, I have not done any kind of writing that would qualify as fiction. It just wasn’t possible.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 2/16/23 Simon Nielsen 2/16/23

We Become What We Do

“In critical situations, the essence of a nation is comprised of its citizens’ deeds. If, at the very beginning of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, from common and unprivileged ones to the very elite, had taken to their heels instead of taking up arms, we could have only dreamt today about the liberation of Kyiv – or even Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi.”

This essay was written for the PEN Ukraine project “Dialogues on War”, supported by the National Endowment for Democracy of the U. S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Artem Chapeye

A few days ago, my younger son got a rather severe cold in Germany. As, fortunately, he is eight, he’s already outgrown the possibility of children’s stenosis. Until the age of five, though, the mildest respiratory disease or, even just a mild deterioration in air conditions might have led him at least to need an inhaler with hormonal drugs, or an emergency call at the worst. I remember one smoggy night in Kyiv when my wife and I were awakened by the sounds of our child choking. Every minute, I went to the balcony to peer into the darkness and watch for the doctors coming through the reddish fog. Luckily, the ambulance arrived quickly: the swelling of our son’s throat was gone after the required injection, and he fell asleep. Yet neither my wife, nor I, could hardly sleep again that night, shuddering out of fear for his life.

For the rest of the time, my son’s health was good enough: concern over him developing children’s stenosis would never become a sufficient reason for me to obtain a legal postponement of military service. Yet I suspect several years ago, this might have meant that, instead of enlisting voluntarily in the army as I did in 2022, I could become one of those men frightened to get a subpoena if they ever left the house. My wife also says she would not have dared to stay abroad raising two children all by herself at the time.

Whereas I can perfectly imagine myself behaving differently under other circumstances, I no longer judge those frightened to leave the house before sunset. I have a few such acquaintances. One of them has serious stomach problems, not mentioned, though, in his personal file. Another one must be there for his wife to help her with their babies. The third one has hemorrhoids and prostatitis, which are not much of an argument for a medical exemption either.

It is far more difficult, however, to maintain a positive regard towards those who drink beer with the inscription “Heroes Never Die” on bottle labels (sad but true) or flag-waving ‘patriots’ who sing “Vova, go fuck’em at once, we’ll help you, you smart ass!” (the line from a popular song) from Courchevel with a champagne costing several thousand Euros in hand. It’s hard to tell if they have ever been of any help from their perch at the luxury ski resort, but still, that’s not the point. The point is that I am not the least happy, of course, to have turned from a pacifist to a serviceman in my forties, but at any rate, I am happy to have made the only right choice when I found myself under these circumstances – circumstances of which I had no control over. A bit wicked, maybe way too sarcastic and sometimes depressive, I am very proud anyway that my deeds align with my beliefs. I’m proud that my fear and loathing – if I do have these feelings at all – are turned against the enemy solely. I regularly meet civilian men who cannot distinguish between chevrons and therefore dread all servicepeople, fearing them to be enlistment officers.

I could have ended up like that myself - since in 2014, I felt the same fear towards both sides, too. I became even more anxious after the Ukrainian side had once mistaken me – a journalist – for an enemy fire spotter and interrogated me using considerable force, as is usually done in times of war. In an hour or two, they figured everything out, let me go and even made an official apology. But the unpleasant resonance of such an incident has nevertheless remained with me til 2022. Though today, at the very least, I clearly see who’s to be feared and who’s always on our side. But this is not the point.

Nonetheless, the comforting feeling emerges that you acted in accordance with your beliefs. Sometimes I have used an occasion to recount one of the key episodes of my life. A stranger who hosted me and my family for dinner on February 24 seemed to personify ‘the Ukraine’ – that is to say, the authentic Ukraine I used to write about before 2022. By the night, he was summoned to guard the local checkpoint; later he got wounded in the fighting for Bakhmut. It was then when I realized that this war was going to fall primarily on the shoulders of common and unprivileged people – as every war does. So, I said to myself, here’s a choice for you, public intellectual. What will you become? A leftist who named both his sons in the honor of Ukrainian national fighters, only to flee the country at the most crucial time of its history? Or a philosopher who would not just take advantage of his privileges, but rather share the fate of the common people, those whom he was fond of talking about for so long?

As I’ve said before, I do not judge those who acted differently. I have regard for different circumstances and human characters. Though, of course, it’s the nearest people that become even more dear and close nowadays – at least due to the shared experience. One more thing that has proven to be clearly visible in this year of the full-scale war: it’s not people’s beliefs but their deeds that matter most.

Among my military acquaintances there is, for instance, an openly gay man and an ardent homophobe. There is a faithful Christian believer who speaks to Jesus personally in his deep meditation, and a belligerent atheist who remains so even in the trenches, even when under shelling, contrary to the classic stereotype. There are, by the way, speakers of both the Russian and Ukrainian languages as well. Furthermore, there are ethnic Russians born in Russia: they deliberately came to Ukraine to fight on our side against ‘fags’ (it seems like even gays in the army use this word to denote the enemy). And since I’ve mentioned Russians on our side, I cannot but recollect a sensitive antithesis. Like so many others, I have an assmonkey relative who, on the contrary, was born and bred in a Ukrainian-speaking Galician family but left Ukraine for Russia as a grown-up. Guess what outrages him after Bucha, Mariupol, etc.? The monument to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army squadron commander Mykola Symchych, opened in Kolomyiia. “What’s going on there with you?!” he wrote to me after a year of attempts to commit genocide by Putin, whom this ex-Galician supports today. He did what he had done for years, and he became what he had become.

The same that applies to each individual is, of course, true for communities as well – including even such big and illusive communities as nations. I remember my young self at school very well: my classmates and I ridiculed our supposedly miserable and woeful nation as it was described in storybooks. Recently, my elder son began to study Ukrainian history (unfortunately, online). “The history of a heroic fighter nation,” the abstract of his schoolbook says. It turns out that we have somehow not just rewritten our present selves but also redesigned our self-image from the past.

In critical situations, the essence of a nation is comprised of its citizens’ deeds. If, at the very beginning of the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, from common and unprivileged ones to the very elite, had taken to their heels instead of taking up arms, we could have only dreamt today about the liberation of Kyiv – or even Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi. My children could have been taught to become those assmonkey relatives. And who knows how many more people could have been deported, exiled to Siberia, and slaughtered by Russia.

Wait, looks like I’ve totally forgotten about ‘Mother Russia’. Frankly speaking, it was disgust towards the Russian Federation as a society that I felt after the first hateful attack was over, whereas now it is nothing more than a kind of empty sorrow. The reason is that Russians are changing simultaneously/inversely to us or, I would rather say, they are taking root in their beliefs in accordance with their deeds. We are turning from a nation expected to flee and fall in three days into a nation that has to be persuaded to ‘reduce its maximalism’. At the same time, Russians are turning into a nation where the vast majority of citizens are happy about attempting to commit genocide, because it’s only genocide and imperialism that justifies their existence, while the tiniest minority there experience searing shame. And this is also the consequence of many individuals’ deeds, the choices they have made. This is something that will remain for generations: the need to either hide the fact that you are Russian, or stay away and make excuses. ‘God-fearing people’, and those with only the slightest capacity to think, could only help but be ashamed.

The reason is that you become what you do.

To crown it all, I will add, in the hope of diluting involuntary pathos, that I would love us to become a nation like, for example, the Swiss or Swedes. Or maybe New Zealanders, as far as I can fancy them.

Sadly, history did not allow for that.

Translated by Anna Vovchenko

Edited by Joel Keep

Simon Nielsen 2/15/23 Simon Nielsen 2/15/23

‘One of the things that I found so striking coming to Ukraine was the resilience of the people’: Christina Lamb In Dialogue With Maria Tomak

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On February 2, Ukrainian journalist, researcher and head of the Crimea Platform, Maria Tomak, held a conversation with the British journalist and author Christina Lamb. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

The Crimea Platform is a new international consultation and coordination format set up to develop the initiative put forward by President of Ukraine and aimed at improving the effectiveness of the international response to the ongoing occupation of Crimea, responding to growing security threats, increasing international pressure on the Kremlin, preventing further rights violations and protecting victims of the occupation regime, as well as achieving the main goal – deoccupation of Crimea and its return to Ukraine.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Maria Tomak and Christina Lamb

Christina Lamb: Where are you now, Maria? How is the situation there?

Maria Tomak: I am currently in Kyiv. This is where our institution, the Crimea Platform, is based. It should be located in Crimea, however, it is not possible due to the Russian occupation. I hope that we can come back there as soon as possible, as this is the main goal and focus of our work.

The full-scale invasion caught us in Lviv but we returned to Kyiv after a month and a half. The situation in the capital is not as bad. The power supply is more stable now. However, the situation differs in every city in Ukraine. The closer you are to Russia and the territories it has occupied, the worse it gets.

Crimea is the focus of our day-to-day work. This territory has played a very dramatic role in the current situation. Occupied by Russia in 2014, it has since been turned into an isolated military base and has served as a springboard for the large-scale attack. As we speak, just a few days prior to the tragic anniversary of the full-scale invasion, there are talks about another probable Russian attack on mainland Ukraine that can happen in February. The escalation is already taking place in the eastern parts of the country. Russia is accumulating more weapons, vehicles, and military personnel there.

Somehow, we have gotten used to this. Every single person in Ukraine is affected by the war, either directly or indirectly. We learnt how to live during the war, but we are working hard for it to be over.

Christina Lamb: Reporting on life during the war is one of the things I find the most interesting. Millions of people are trying to carry on with their lives: they are still going to work, bringing up their children, and looking after the elderly. Often the women are the ones doing that.

One of the things that I found so striking coming to Ukraine was the resilience of the people. Hearing air raid alarms going off is quite unnerving and yet most people just carry on with their day because they have gotten used to it.

For you personally, what has been the hardest moment in this war?

Maria Tomak: For a long time, I used to work as a human rights defender, journalist, and researcher. One of the most difficult things for me is finding myself not only an observer, but also a victim of the war. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion, we could go to the frontline in the east of Ukraine and then come back to our relatively safe places. Now we do not have this safety anymore. We are not observers, we are parts of this traumatised community.

Having met you online, I got the impression that you are an extremely positive person. How did you manage to remain positive after everything you have seen as a reporter?

Christina Lamb: It is a little different for me. It is not my country that is at war. I can always fly away.

Often I go to really bad places. I see people doing terrible things. But I also see this incredible heroism of ordinary people. I remember being in the old city of Aleppo, reduced to dust by the Russians. The locals were still trying to live there with no power and no water. It was freezing cold. The women were pulling down the bits of the window and door frames to burn for heat, making pancakes for their children from just a bit of flour and any green vegetation they could find. Seeing this really incredible human spirit in the most difficult situations actually makes you more positive. From what I have seen, people can survive horrible situations. We are probably all stronger than we think we are.

Maria Tomak: We have been witnessing the heroism of ordinary people since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. I think it is very important to bring Crimea into this conversation. Lots of people there are using different means to protest against the full-scale invasion and the violence Russia has been committing in Ukraine. Women end up being persecuted for wearing a blue and yellow manicure. People are prosecuted for launching WhatsApp groups about the war. We see hundreds of similar cases all over the peninsula. That is what makes me optimistic about the future of Crimea.

Christina Lamb: This is really interesting because we do not get much information about what is happening in Crimea. Do you talk to a lot of people there?

Maria Tomak: I am proud to say that, out of all state institutions, ours remains closest to Crimea. Part of our team comes from the human rights and NGO movement, and that has been our essence throughout the years. We are in touch with the field and it remains very important for us now because it allows us to understand what are the main concerns there, what are the people thinking there, and how we can help. It has become especially challenging now when the full-scale invasion has started.

The time has come for Ukrainians to take responsibility for our state. Throughout our history of being colonised by Moscow in one iteration or another, the aversion to the state has been growing among Ukrainians because it has always been extremely repressive and oppressive to us. And Ukrainians used to fight the state. But now it is the time to take matters into our own hands because there is no alternative.

Christina Lamb: Ukraine has become the name. Everybody knows Ukraine. So many people in the UK have Ukrainian flags and wear Ukrainian colours. This brand will be very powerful in the future because it symbolises standing up to aggression. We all feel that you are fighting this war for us. If you were to lose, where would the Russians go next?

I am sure you are aware of the discussion about possible peace negotiations in the future. Some talk about leaving Crimea to Russia as part of the deal. Even General Milley, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the other day that the return of Crimea in 2023 was unlikely. How do you feel about that?

Maria Tomak: This is a complicated conversation to have. Before the full-scale invasion and at the very beginning of it, you could barely find any publication on Crimea in the international media. After the liberation of Kherson, those who were sceptical about the capabilities of Ukraine started to understand that at some point Ukraine might try to liberate Crimea.

Still, many publications claim that Ukraine should stay away from the peninsula. It has to do with the genuine belief of many people that Crimea, I quote, ‘has always been Russian’, and the perception of Crimea through the Russia-imposed lens. Even the West absorbed it somehow.

In reality, it has always been home to Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea. Prior to the first annexation by Russia, they comprised 90% of the local population. This perception of Crimea is almost non-existent. Instead, there is this imperial and colonial understanding of this land, a perception created by Russia, and it has to be decolonised. It is a challenge for us. In my daily work, I see that this perception is translated into policies and decision-making. The debates around Crimea and providing Ukraine with weapons that can help liberate it are shaped by those narratives. That is why the Crimea Platform is important. Crimea is, to the large extent, underestimated. It must be rediscovered and decolonised.

Christina Lamb: I think in the West everyone feels quite clearly that Crimea was occupied and annexed illegally by Russia. There are a lot of discussions now about why nothing was done at the time. Things might have been very different.

We all reacted with great shock at what Russia has done in Ukraine. I look back and think about Russia’s crimes in other places, Syria, for example, that I covered as a journalist. Yet, we have never put all those things together. Looking back, we see a very clear trajectory of what Putin was trying to do, and there were various points where the West could have intervened but didn’t. I guess, he just assumed that nothing would be done this time too. Putin must have been absolutely shocked to see the resolve of NATO to do something. I know it’s not as much as people in Ukraine would like, but it is getting there. There has been tremendous unity.

Maria Tomak: Ukraine is currently trying to open itself also to the Global South. You worked there a lot, you must know the narratives and the way people think. How can we talk about the war against Ukraine with people in the Global South?

Christina Lamb: I have just come back from South Africa and Zimbabwe, where the Russian foreign minister has been on tour recently. Unfortunately, a lot of countries at the very least are ambivalent about what is happening, but they do not support the West. Many of them are anti-Western and anti-colonial. To you, Russia is a colonial power. To them, it is standing up against the West.

I spent a lot of time in Pakistan. Imran Khan, then the prime minister of Pakistan, was the first person to go to Russia after the invasion. Afghanistan is also an interesting case. You would think they’d support you and be anti-Russian, given the fact that they were under Soviet occupation. And yet, Afghanistan is very close to Russia now. I think the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ rule applies here. They see Russia and Iran as standing up against the West.

I am sorry to see countries like South Africa, which knows a lot about oppression, and India not standing up against Russia. A huge part of the world is trying to not be involved, and some countries actually support Russia.

Maria Tomak: And what about British society? I think that the Western countries were quite surprised by the fact that Russia still has those imperial ambitions. Before February 24th, anyone saying that Russia was still an empire would be considered marginal. However, now it is normal to talk about it. How does it resonate with British society?

Christina Lamb: I am sure you know that there is a big movement of reassessing colonialism. This movement, however, is assuming that colonialism is something strictly Western, and does not look at the Ottoman Empire or the Russian Empire, and what Putin is doing right now. He is very clearly trying to recreate imperial Russia. A lot of this is fed by this resentment that he has, thinking that Russia is not being treated as the great power as it should be.

Maria Tomak: I think it is also important to highlight the role of women in this war. This topic has been the focus of your books and research. Probably you also looked into it while reporting from Ukraine. I must say that before the full-scale invasion sexual violence did happen, but not to such an extent.

Christina Lamb: There were cases in the east of Ukraine, but it wasn’t discussed as much.

I have written a lot about rape in war. In 2014, I was reporting on what happened to the Yazidis taken by the IS fighters in Iraq into Syria, who were kept as sex slaves. I met one girl who had been traded twelve times between the men. She told me she felt like a goat. Those stories were absolutely horrific. Many of those girls escaped, although some are still missing. And they told their stories, but nothing happened. One of the things I find hardest as a journalist is getting a message from somebody who had recounted their awful story saying, “I told my story. What difference did it make?”

Before, I used to think that my job was just to tell the world that those things were happening, and then others would do something about it. Then I started looking into why nothing was being done.

Around the same time, I was going to Nigeria a lot, where in 2014 more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram. Talking to people there, I found that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of girls have been kidnapped. And again, after getting out, they were telling their stories. But nothing was happening. In 2017, I was in Bangladesh where the Rohingya people were fleeing Myanmar. People were sharing their horrible experiences and nothing was happening.

I started to become very angry about it. Initially, I just wanted to know why no one was doing anything. Rape is a war crime. How come the ICC in twenty years of its existence has only brought to justice one person? Because of that, I started researching and collecting stories from women in many conflict zones. Of course, I looked into history. In particular, the sexual violence that Russian soldiers were committing against women in Berlin during the liberation at the end of WWII. People did not talk about it afterwards, because rape is the one crime where the victim is often made to feel like they have done something wrong. Women felt ashamed and a lot of them committed suicide.

When some of the Ukrainian women activists with whom I stayed in touch started telling me that sexual violence was happening in Ukraine as well, I initially could not believe it. I thought, surely, in 2022 the Russians are not doing the same thing again. But, sadly, as they were driven out of Irpin and Bucha, we could go in and talk to the people and hear the stories. We still do not really know this in Ukraine’s case, but was it a deliberate policy of the Russians? Was it used as a weapon of war or was it the indiscipline of the people they sent to fight? We still do not know and we may never find out.

Maria Tomak: I think it is very important to underline that these types of crimes are very complicated. Time should pass before people are ready to talk about it.

Nevertheless, I also believe that no one talked about sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers because Russia was perceived as a power which overcame Hitler. Talking about the crimes of Stalin and the Soviet regime was unacceptable. And it is really unfair. Only now various governments are acknowledging that the Holodomor in Ukraine was a genocide. That is extremely important for Ukraine now. It all comes together, the current crimes of Russia and the former crimes of the Soviet empire.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 1/11/23 Simon Nielsen 1/11/23

‘Russia is using culture to hide its crimes’: Sofia Cheliak In Dialogue With Margaret MacMillan

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On December 15, Sofia Cheliak, a Ukrainian cultural manager, translator, TV host, and programme director of Lviv BookForum, held a conversation with Margaret MacMillan, a Canadian historian and professor at the University of Oxford. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On December 15, 2022, Sofia Cheliak, a Ukrainian cultural manager, translator, TV host, and programme director of Lviv BookForum, held a conversation with Margaret MacMillan, a Canadian historian and professor at the University of Oxford. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Margaret MacMillan and Sofia Cheliak

Margaret MacMillan: I am very conscious, as I look at Sofia, that I am sitting comfortably in Oxford, my lights are on, I expect them to remain on, I can go to the shops, I can live my life as I normally live it. You are living in Lviv, in a very different world, where there is much more uncertainty. What is that world like? How did it change on the 24th of February last year?

Sofia Cheliak: My world has changed greatly and very fast. On the day missiles hit Lviv for the first time, I was on my way back home with a huge package of books, ready to be shipped to the London Book Fair. I was quite scared, but a dark joke ran through my mind: It would be very easy to identify my body because of all the books lying around.

Living in war is quite uncomfortable, especially since the blackouts have started. But we do not even think about that anymore. Our friends in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who are fighting for us now, are experiencing much worse conditions day after day, night after night. Our life now is all about scheduling, trying to catch moments when the light is on, and squeezing some work in those time frames.

The war has taught me to be closer to people. I opened my home for those escaping from the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, as well as the Kyiv Region. The people who were staying at my home were extremely kind and polite; they tried to help me as much as they could.

We started sharing our emotions openly because we knew that anything could happen in the following moment. Without hesitation, we started letting people know that we love them and care about them. On the contrary, we have developed great hate and disgust towards our enemy. In my opinion, this feeling is very natural, and we just cannot stop this anger, however hard we try. Living under constant attacks, undoubtedly, changes your behaviour. Staying in Ukraine can be uncomfortable right now, but I suppose this is still the best time of my life. I am seeing the best in people. I am feeling their love. Knowing that everyone is ready to help anyone at any given moment is priceless.

Margaret MacMillan: It strikes me very much what you are saying about the ways in which war based on brutality, violence, and death can bring out the best side in human nature, just as it can bring out the worst side. Maybe it is too soon to tell, but can you see how Ukrainian society has changed?

Sofia Cheliak: Since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, I had a feeling that the whole country shared the same mood we all had during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. We believed in what we were doing. Our common aspirations for our future empowered us and brought us together. The unity we have right now is unique.

Many Ukrainians are currently engaged in volunteer work. People are raising money for expensive things, such as drones or cars for the Ukrainian army. They are trusting strangers with their own money, and volunteers use donations to buy the necessary stuff and post photos as proof. Something like this could not have happened twenty years ago. Right now, we believe each other. All of us became a part of a big network.

How did you feel on the 24th of February?

Margaret MacMillan: I spent my life studying international relations, and I spent a lot of time studying war, so you would think I’d be more prepared. I think I had gotten used to the idea that Europe was never going to have a major war again. Most of us had. We thought that Putin was bluffing. We should have noticed, of course, what he had already done in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, and parts of Ukraine. It reminded me very much of the attitude of Europeans in 1914, right before World War One. They felt that Europe had made extraordinary progress in the 19th century, became so prosperous and powerful, and largely peaceful. It cannot be happening – this was my feeling last February.

We are approaching a one-year anniversary of the full-scale war breaking out, and I think we have gotten used to the idea. It has been a real shock, much more so for Ukraine, but also for the international system, for Europeans, and for people in different parts of the world.

You are involved in literature and the arts. How important has it been in terms of uniting Ukraine and enduring the war?

Sofia Cheliak: Books about our history are currently the most popular in Ukraine. For years, we had lived under Russian propaganda and were told legends about Ukrainian history. Right now, people are looking for real answers in history books and 20th-century literature.

When the blackouts began, Ukrainians started to read more. Soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are asking us for books, mostly Ukrainian novels, history, and philosophy. We are regularly collecting and shipping books to the frontline.

Ukrainians are very much involved, emotionally and physically, in the war. Oftentimes we do not have the opportunity to read. However, we are trying our best. We understand how little time we have, and we turn to literature.

I would like to go back to what you said for a moment. My question is about the crisis of international treaties and institutions in general. The world was trying so hard to learn the lessons taught by World War One and World War Two. Why did it not notice the new evil being born?

Margaret MacMillan: History never repeats itself completely, but there are very striking parallels. What happened in Russia, I think, is what happened in Germany and other parts of Central Europe after World War One. And that is a breakdown of the old order of society.

Hitler’s, Mussolini’s, and Stalin’s regimes relied on keeping people quiet. They also looked for enemies at home more often than abroad because it was a way of mobilising people. Putin has tried to blame the pro-democracy movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia itself on the Western influence because he assumed that they were unnatural to these countries and stirred up by the Americans or by evil forces. He promised the Russians, and this is often what the dictators or authoritarian leaders would do, glory; to become powerful again, to rebuild the Russian Empire, to gather back the lands which were ruled over in the past by Peter I and Catherine II. He thought it would help to keep himself in power. And he thought that it would be easy, and this is often the mistake dictators make. If you become the dictator, nobody tells you the truth anymore. Dictators often end by making terrible mistakes because they no longer have the capacity to make judgements.

Putin thought he would take over Ukraine easily. He had already taken Crimea, and the West had not done much about it. He had tried to detach eastern parts of Ukraine, and he had gotten away with it. The Russians assumed they would have a puppet government in Kyiv about a week after the invasion. What Putin failed to recognise is that over the years, a very strong sense of Ukrainian nationhood has been growing. Ukrainians want to determine their own fate.

About a month ago, Ukrainian writer Andriy Kurkov gave a speech in Oxford. He said that he did not want to write in Russian anymore. How common is this now? What has the war done to Ukrainians’ attitude towards the Russian writers?

Sofia Cheliak: I was born after Ukraine regained its independence. I come from the western part of Ukraine, and I have been speaking Ukrainian all my life. It is quite easy for me to speak English with you now, but I can hardly speak Russian. And I am not the only one. After the beginning of the full-scale invasion, lots of people finally understood that Putin was correct in saying that Russia ends wherever the Russian language ends. He used this narrative to justify the occupation of Crimea, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, claiming that he was protecting the Russian speakers there. Many people thought that language was not a political issue, but in reality, it is.

The same applies to Russian literature. We were taught it in school, and many Ukrainians are familiar with more than just one or two of the most famous pieces. For years we were told that Russian literature was the best in the world. Ukrainian literature, on the other hand, was presented as something rather depressing and primitive. All these years, Russia was using culture as its weapon to engage people in their propaganda narratives.

A lot of Ukrainians right now support the ban on Russian culture, as well as the termination of any contact with cultural workers in Russia. Even watching movies dubbed in Russian, hearing the Russian accent is traumatising us over and over again. Russian culture is a trigger for us.

Margaret MacMillan: In World War One, British and French orchestras refused to play any German music because for them it symbolised the enemy, and the Germans did much the same. In World War Two, people did not want to listen to the music of Wagner, which was used by the Nazis as a symbol of German culture. For a very long time, it was impossible to play any of it in Israel because the memories were so bitter. I suspect that at least for a generation there is going to be an aversion to Russian culture in Ukraine.

From all the reports that are coming from Ukraine, I see a very systematic attempt on the part of Russia to eradicate Ukrainian culture. Museums are being looted, libraries destroyed, and history rewritten in occupied areas. How serious is this? What impact does it have on Ukrainian culture?

Sofia Cheliak: We must understand that Ukrainian culture was colonised by Russia for years. For centuries, Moscow was making it very hard to write, read, and listen in Ukrainian. Maybe now is the time to use this radicalism to give our culture a chance to flourish again, and for Ukrainians to learn about it. The best Ukrainian writers were censored by Russia. For example, Vasyl Stus, who was well-known abroad, was forbidden to publish in Ukraine. He died in the Gulag in 1985, a few years before Ukraine regained independence. This is how Russian culture was influencing Ukraine – instead of Vasyl Stus, people were reading Brodsky.

Right now, Russia is attacking Ukrainian culture too. Before the full-scale invasion, we were notified that a lot of Ukrainians involved in cultural work were put on the list to be targeted. In November, we found out that Volodymyr Vakulenko, a Ukrainian writer known for his very proactive patriotic stance, was kidnapped and killed in Izium. He was tortured just for being a Ukrainian and a writer. Russian occupiers have destroyed a lot of museums, libraries, and theatres, and taken the lives of many Ukrainian people of culture. A Ukrainian conductor Yurii Kerpatenko was killed this September in Kherson for his refusal to collaborate with Russians.

Just recently we saw a photo of the Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed during the Russian airstrike in March. Hundreds of people who were hiding there were killed. To cover the ruins, the occupiers installed a banner portraying Russian writers. This is a clear illustration of how their culture acts as a protector of the regime. Russia is using culture to hide their crimes.

When the full-scale invasion happened, we understood that the world does not know a lot about Ukrainian history, especially about the dynamics of our relationship with Russia. It is largely unaware, in particular, of the extremely bloody 20th century, during which the Holodomor genocide took place. It was organised by the Stalin regime to exterminate Ukrainians. This is just one of Russia's many crimes.

Nazis were condemned during the Nuremberg tribunal. The Soviets were not, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In your opinion, could that be one of the reasons why Russia started all the following wars?

Margaret MacMillan: Since 1917, the Russian regime had a view of creating a new kind of society in which you could dispose of the living people who were in the way, and who were seen as obstacles. In a way, the Nazis did something very similar. The Jews were seen simply as people who stood in the way of their vision of the greater German people. This is very dangerous because it allows you to justify any amount of crimes.

Russia is doing something similar in spreading lies about Ukrainians. It is a way of dehumanising the enemy so that whatever you do to them is excusable. A series of Russian governments behaved like this, manipulating, moving people around and eliminating them. I do not think Stalin ever had any remorse for the millions of people who died under his rule. He simply saw them as inconveniences that needed to be gotten out of the way. I am not sure the present Russian leadership does either. In fact, I think they are annoyed by Ukrainians’ resistance. They are trying to get rid of Ukrainian history, to rewrite it in a way as if Ukraine or Ukrainian national consciousness never existed. These narratives can be very powerful.

As a result of the war, there is much more awareness in the world about Ukraine and its people today. That is something that will not be changed or forgotten when the fighting comes to an end.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 12/20/22 Simon Nielsen 12/20/22

‘We cannot lose because we will be erased’: Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta In Dialogue With Dan Ariely

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On December 8, 2022, Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, general director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal National Arts and Culture Museum Complex in Kyiv, held a conversation with Dan Ariely, an Israeli-American professor of psychology and behavioural economics. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Olesia-Ostrovska-Liuta and Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely: I am very curious about what is happening on the ground. The New York Times is my main source of information about Ukraine. How do you see your psychology and that of people around you? What is happening to resilience, hope, and comradery in Ukraine?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Thank you for this question. My main concern at the moment is having electricity. Because of the Russian missile strikes that have been happening since October, we are experiencing severe electricity shortages. Our life right now is taking place in between the blackouts. So quite a lot of organisational effort was put into ensuring that our conversation could happen.

Dan Ariely: When I got injured, I stayed at the hospital for a very long time, about three years. In the beginning, I had no thoughts about the future.

The Canadian psychologist Ronald Melzack coined the term pain people. It means that at a certain level of need, in this case, pain, people do not think about anything else. For them, there is no future. They focus solely on the challenges of the moment. Just like the situation with frequent blackouts you described, it is so occupying that it becomes the centre of your existence.

People experience two types of stress. The first one, which is, for example, stress caused by work, does not affect us that badly – it is still under our control. The other type of stress makes us feel helpless, and that is much worse. It is coming from conditions where things are out of our control. It also negatively impacts the immune system.

When one experiences stress caused by the unpredictability of the world, one tries to explain things to oneself by looking for a story in order to describe what has been going on. This opens the doors for conspiracy theories or misinformation because living with ambiguity is very hard.

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: I guess in Ukraine we did come up with an explanation, and a rather positive one. It is about our resilience and resistance. It is not the feeling of helplessness that you have living in Ukraine. On the contrary, people are very busy here, arranging their living conditions as best as they can.

Dan Ariely: This is exactly what we would prescribe against the feeling of helplessness. Whenever something is out of our control, the best solution is to try and regain at least some of it.

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Civilians in Ukraine are very much connected to the Ukrainian army. We all have many friends fighting there, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine are very much a part of our society. And they are winning, which means they are taking control, and this contributes to our collective resilience. There is also a significant level of pride manifesting itself in many jokes on social media. Humour helps us cope.

This March, during the battle for Kyiv, when Russian troops were around the capital, I noticed an interesting effect. I suddenly realised that I have many recollections from my past. They were very vivid and colourful, sometimes I even could remember smells. Because I could not imagine the future, all my energy went to imagining the past.

Dan Ariely: That is a very interesting theory. For me, resilience is kind of like an insurance policy.

Imagine a parent who goes with their kid to a playground. The parent sends the child off to play, the kid goes, plays, and comes back twenty minutes later. It means that the child has a secure attachment. On the other hand, when your kid turns around every couple of minutes to see if you are still around, you have not achieved that. Secure attachment is living with a sense that if something bad happens, somebody will catch you. We get it from our parents and the people around us.

Being in a state of war can create conditions for people to realise with greater intensity that others are there to help. When inequality increases in the country or the neighbourhood, resilience goes down because people are less likely to ask each other for assistance. They feel more alone. From this perspective, what is happening to resilience in Ukraine?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: The volunteer movement in Ukraine is probably the most significant social phenomenon right now. Everyone is doing something to contribute to our victory.

During the battle for Kyiv, when we suspended all our work at the Art Arsenal, we still had to be there and try to protect it in any way we could. Some of my colleagues felt the need to act, to care for others, so they started volunteering. Others remained physically in the museum night and day because they felt it was their duty to protect it.

This is probably the new norm in Ukraine at the moment. Many people are linked in millions of networks to help refugees and the army, and to make Ukrainian voices heard abroad. There is this feeling of secure attachment in our society. When the full-scale Russian invasion began on February 24th, many people fled to the western regions. Many Ukrainians invited complete strangers into their homes and shared everything they had with them. In my opinion, it helped people feel that we can overcome any difficulty and win this war together.

Dan Ariely: It is sad to think about how humanity sometimes shows its best face when we are in trouble. It is a beautiful thing that it happens in times of need but it is such a shame that it does not in different circumstances.

This war has been going on for quite a while now. Even though right now you are focusing only on the present, what is your prognosis for the future?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: The war had been going on for eight years when the full-scale invasion happened. People, however, are still hugely determined. They will resist as long as it takes. The Ukrainian cultural community fears that what happened to Volodymyr Vakulenko, the Ukrainian writer abducted and killed by the Russian occupants, might happen to any cultural figure and anyone socially or politically active. We cannot lose because we will be erased.

At the same time, there is a discussion in Ukraine on the failure of international charity bodies. Unlike local volunteering networks, they are often unable to help. I found an explanation for that in your book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. Someone who gets paid for doing good things does not go the same lengths as someone who does it as an act of social service. Is that correct?

Dan Ariely: Yes. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are very different. Imagine that someone asked you to help them change a tire. How likely would it be for you to help? Imagine another scenario in which someone is asking you to change a tire for three dollars. What is very apparent is that people are very happy to help for free, but they are not happy to do it for three dollars. The moment money comes into a situation, we start framing it as work. The moment we frame it as work, the boundaries become more clear. Furthermore, as bureaucracies are increasing, a person, even an extremely committed one, may be restricted by the organisation they work for. The more procedural it becomes, the less likely you are to look further than your job description. The management needs to give autonomy to people to do what they think is right.

I want to talk about the erasure of culture. A very important elusive sense is hidden here. Imagine a world in which everything about us is erased upon our death. If things worked like that, people would have much less motivation. Human psychology is not just about the moment, it is also about our legacy. The moment someone is threatening to eliminate it, the stakes become much higher. There is something much more intense about this idea of annihilating everything connected to legacy.

After having seen what you have seen about the importance of art and culture, you can re-envision it and think about what it will look like ten years from now. Is there something you would do differently?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: This year I learned that for an organisation under enormous stress such as war, it is important to focus on its mission and on understanding why it exists. This is the role of leadership. The team needs to have the freedom to act freely depending on unpredictable circumstances. You need to trust people, and in order to do so, you need to follow your mission.

Culture adds to the resilience of society. It serves as a place where people can get together and share their experiences. It is hugely important. As we have mentioned before, thinking about the future is difficult while you are in pain. However, culture helps you imagine.

Dan Ariely: What do you think about the amount of support Ukraine gets? Do you feel alone?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Well, there can never be too much support.

This is the first time in a century when we, as a society, have allies and partners, and our voice is heard. This has never happened before on such a scale.

The pattern of the Russian invasion is familiar to every Ukrainian – it has already happened more than once throughout the 20th century. The majority of Ukrainian writers who worked a hundred years ago were executed in the 1930s. There were almost no authors on our cultural scene. The entire art phenomena of the 1920s was also erased then. Members of a very important Neo-Byzantine movement called Boychukism were executed and their works, huge murals, were destroyed. When the full-scale Russian invasion started, this memory was very alive. The circle of destruction was very familiar and expected. I guess this brings us to the question of legacy again.

Dan Ariely: Do you think people are feeling more heard and supported?

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta: Yes, much more. The German parliament has just adopted a resolution recognising Holodomor, a man-made famine committed by the Soviet regime, as an act of genocide. We could not have imagined it ten or even five years ago. It is a huge change in international politics and a sign of being heard much better than before. There is strong progress in our ability to speak for ourselves, and this is something we all feel now.

When the full-scale Russian invasion started, Poland opened its borders for the Ukrainian citizens to flee the country. You could do that without a passport or any document, with your cats and dogs. This was an unprecedented sign of solidarity, and we appreciate it very much.

Of course, we need much more military support. There is a strong consensus in Ukrainian society on that. About a month ago, politicians in Germany asked me what Ukrainian culture needed to get better protection.

We need air defence systems so that missiles do not hit our heritage sites.

Simon Nielsen 12/13/22 Simon Nielsen 12/13/22

‘Russian culture comes hand in hand with the regime of oppression, slavery, mass murder, and expansive war’: Pascal Bruckner In Dialogue With Iryna Vikyrchak

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 11, 2022, Ukrainian poet, translator, and cultural manager. Iryna Vikyrchak held a conversation with the French author Pascal Bruckner. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 11, Ukrainian poet, translator, and cultural manager. Iryna Vikyrchak held a conversation with the French author Pascal Bruckner. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Iryna Vikyrchak and Pascal Bruckner

Pascal Bruckner: We had to go through the wars in Chechnya and Syria, the annexation of Crimea and Donbas, and the full-scale war in Ukraine to understand who Vladimir Putin really is. Nobody understood that Putin was an angry civil servant of the former Soviet Union and that he wanted the West to pay for the destruction of the USSR.

Putin is the hell of Russia. He is waging this horrible war on Ukraine, and at the same time threatening to attack Paris, Berlin, Munich, London, and New York every day. I think we have to take his threats seriously. The first duty we have to the enemy is to recognise him as an enemy – not as a friend who has been misled. Putin had said many times that he would invade Ukraine, and eventually, he did.

In December 2019, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, went to Russia with a team of French and foreign journalists. On his way back home, he was convinced of having reached a good deal: Putin had promised not to station troops and not to place nuclear weapons in Belarus, and to turn his troops back from Ukraine. We all know what happened later.

We must not believe a single word said by Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent. His regime and his country are an empire of lies. We cannot trust him and we have to be suspicious all the time. That was Macron’s mistake – to believe Putin, to call him on the phone more than 20 times in an illusion that these calls could force Putin to change his mind.

Iryna Vikyrchak: As a dictator, Putin enchanted Macron the same way he did with the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi. They have a very good relationship.

Observing life here in India, I see that the East and the West are entirely different civilisations. This war has proven that, in terms of values, Ukrainians belong to the West. Russia, a former empire with many nations it has been suppressing over the years, however, has become a separate civilisation.

It is said that civilisation was born when people started to bury their dead. You may have seen the pictures of how deceased Ukrainian soldiers are met in their hometowns. Entire streets are lined up with people kneeling to give the last honour to their heroes. The Russians, however, simply do not care about their deceased. They are letting the corpses of their soldiers rot, and it is the Ukrainian side that collects them when the opportunity presents itself. Even this little example, in my opinion, proves that Russia has become a different civilisation which has made a full circle and is now approaching its end. What do you think about this?

Also, do you agree with me that this war is not only Putin’s project? 95% of the population supports this war and its atrocities. Thanks to social media, we know what an ordinary Russian person thinks about it. The comments they leave are hateful and genuinely scary. The protests in Russia were never against torturing Ukrainians – they were against mobilisation when the war affected citizens personally. Putin has created the nation of Rashists, and Russian society created Putin as the dictator.

Pascal Bruckner: On February 24, I was in Switzerland reading Life and Destiny by Vasily Grossman. From the very first pages, this book enlightened me about Russian society. Establishing a parallel between Nazism and Communism, the author proves that the whole history of Russia is not an expansion of freedom but one of servitude and slavery.

Our illusion after 1989 was to believe that Russia would eventually, after a few setbacks, take the path of democracy and that there was no way to stop this evolution. This was the mistake of most diplomats and heads of state. Putin’s actions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria should have opened our eyes, but we did not want to see.

The very nature of the Russian people is not fighting for freedom but fighting to choose a new master. Many westerners are making a mistake by saying that Russia belongs to the European circle of nations. Russia will never be Europe. It will never be a democratic country.

Iryna Vikyrchak: I call it another civilisation. It is about the very basic values that make us human. Russia has always been governed differently. Russia’s oppression of Ukraine has been there for centuries, but Stalin’s crimes against humanity and his ‘methodology’ of committing war crimes are still used by Russia.

On October 10, Russia launched over 80 missiles at peaceful Ukrainian cities. They targeted important objects of infrastructure and were aimed at depriving Ukrainians of electricity and heating just on the verge of the harsh winter in order to break our spirit. Another goal was simply targeting civilians, hitting children’s playgrounds in the centre of Kyiv to demoralise the Ukrainian population. However, based on what my friends, relatives, and acquaintances thought of it, these actions have only brought more anger and courage to Ukrainians.

I have a feeling that this war happened because Russia was never fully punished for the crimes it has been committing for centuries. Russian soldiers are cruel towards Ukrainian civilians because they are guided by the feeling of impunity. They simply have the freedom to commit all the crimes. It is the same for Russia and Putin. Russia was never made responsible or legally punished for the Holodomor, in a [the] way Germany was punished for the Holocaust after WWII. This impunity, in many ways, comes from the myth of the great Russian culture, which has been constructed for centuries, consciously and consistently, by the regime.

Ukraine did not have this kind of ‘shield’. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the population was trying to survive and deal with political and economic crises. Only in recent years, cultural diplomacy and a conscious approach to building the country’s image abroad were established at the governmental level. With one poem written in Ukrainian and later translated into many other languages, we can share our ideas, values, and emotions with the world. We still have to build our shield of culture and reinforce our image of the country.

Pascal Bruckner: The way that Russians are fighting nowadays in Ukraine, especially in the first weeks of the war, is very close to what Russian troops did in 1944-1945 in Germany. Their motto was: ‘Rape as many women as you can’. They did the same thing in Poland, in the Baltic countries. Everywhere they went, Russians were raping women. One could have thought that things have changed since then, but not at all. Still, when Russians invade, they rape, kill, and steal. We have seen many examples of Russian soldiers stealing washing machines to send back home.

Iryna Vikyrchak: And toilets sometimes too.

Pascal Bruckner: Yes, or taking their body armour off to hide a computer on their stomach instead. Stealing money. And, of course, killing people. The Russian army is one of the most brutal armies in the world.

Russians use their culture in the same way Nazis used Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Many people in France have been deceived by this curtain, unable to believe that seemingly educated people can behave in such a barbaric way.

Culture is a way to reunite people, deliver a message, and, as you said, gather support. When it is used by Russia, it is just a mask to hide war crimes and totalitarian projects. Dictators might fool people for some time, but after a while, they start to wage wars – this is the only thing dictators can do.

Iryna Vikyrchak: Putin’s army is defeated on the frontline. It angers Russians, so they launch missiles at civilians.

I just wanted to tell you a little personal story. At the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, around March or April, my parents in the west of Ukraine were hosting a family from the Kyiv region. This family recalled meeting the Russian occupiers in their hometown. The Buryats, representatives of the national minority, broke into this family’s home. Early spring feels like winter in Ukraine, so it was freezing outside. The occupiers were barefoot, wearing only rubber flip-flops. The first thing they stole from this house was shoes. When they left, the family decided to escape immediately because the situation was unpredictable.

When mobilisation was announced in Russia, an interesting discussion was going on in the Russian Telegram channels. They were hoping that national minorities, rather than ethnic Russians, would be sent to fight in Ukraine. This example alone proves that Russia is a different world without any respect for its people, still doing the same thing they have been doing for centuries – exploiting the nations oppressed by Russia.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Poland. My Uber driver was an Uzbek man. I have never met an Uzbek person before and I did not know much about this country, except for a part of its more recent history. He told me that Uzbekistan, an independent country nowadays, is still considered by Russia as its republic. When the truth started resurfacing about thousands of Uzbek intelligentsia, the brightest minds who were sent to gulags and became victims of the Soviet regime, it was immediately followed by a reaction from Russia.

Open statements were made by politicians and even celebrities insisting that these claims were “anti-Russian” as if Uzbekistan was still under Moscow’s control. In the Kremlin, when they think of Russia they still imagine the Soviet Union. These imperialistic ambitions never stopped. People in Uzbekistan are still scared to say anything anti-Russian.

This is what Russia wanted to achieve in Ukraine: to oppress us, to destroy our dignity and independence, to put us firmly under the boot of the empire. But Ukrainians as a nation have been resisting it for hundreds of years. We are independent, we are promoting our culture, and we have built as much as we could given the circumstances.

I want to ask you a question about the Russian mentality. Some time ago, I coined the term Ukrainity – it encompasses the set of values, as well as cultural and historical heritage of which I am a carrier. Do you agree that there is something like that in the Russian mentality?

Pascal Bruckner: I think one of the main lessons of this war learned by the Western Europeans is to disconnect Russia from Ukraine. Until February 2022, many of us saw Russia as the epitome of the Slavic world. Now we understand that there is another side to the Slavic world – Ukrainity. Russian culture comes hand in hand with the regime of oppression, slavery, mass murder, and expansive war.

Once Ukraine recaptures all its territories and regains control over Donbas and Crimea, we might face the dismantling of Russia. Connection with peripheral republics will be broken and the empire will collapse following centuries of oppression.

In the desire to show his omnipotence, Putin achieved an entirely opposite result. The whole world now knows that the Russian army has neither decent food rations nor weapons. After all the missiles launched at Ukraine, the Russian army is falling short of ammunition. How ironic is this? The strong man is now naked.

Ukraine was the nation that triggered the global awakening of the West and showed us a way to reinforce our defences and wake up from our decline.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 11/30/22 Simon Nielsen 11/30/22

‘Ukrainians are paying for Russians’ silence and passivity with our blood and losses every day’: Tetyana Ogarkova In Dialogue With Sylvie Kauffmann

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 20, Ukrainian journalist Tetyana Ogarkova held a conversation with French journalist and editorialist Sylvie Kauffmann. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Sylvie Kauffmann and Tetyana Ogarkova

Sylvie Kauffmann: I am very happy to be able to have this conversation with you. I am told that you are in Kyiv right now. What is the situation like? How is life there today? I know that the Russian attacks on the capital have recently resumed. I was in Kyiv about a month ago and I was surprised at how normal the city looked.

Tetyana Ogarkova: Thank you for your question, Sylvie. It is an honour to have this dialogue with you.

I am in the office of the Ukraine Crisis Media Centre, which is situated in the Ukrainian House on the European Square, in the very centre of Kyiv – a few metres away from the place where one of the Russian rockets fell on October 10. Indeed, that day changed our lives a bit. For many months, we had an impression that even though the war was there, the situation was more difficult in the east and the south of Ukraine rather than in Kyiv. We still had quite a big number of air raid alerts, but they became a part of our routine. On October 10, my husband and I were on our way back from Lviv to Kyiv, and I will never forget the moment when we arrived at the railway station and received dozens of messages from our relatives. One I remember in particular was from our eldest daughter. She said that she was all right but the sound of the explosion was so loud that she thought it happened very close to our home.

We do not feel as secure in Kyiv as we used to a couple of weeks or months ago. The situation looks different. Kindergartens and schools are closed, and children are studying remotely. We are having blackouts all around the country. Nobody is safe.

In late February, there was a lot of panic and despair. Now we are living in this reality but we are not afraid. This feeling is different. It is anger combined with understanding that this is our life now and we do not have the right to panic. This is our way to resist.

Sylvie Kauffmann: I visited Kyiv briefly just five weeks ago. What struck me in conversations with people I met was that they were calm and poised. If there was anger, I had an impression that it was controlled. I felt very strong determination from the people I talked to. I know the Ukrainian mindset a little bit, but it still was striking for me.

I understand you have also been to Kharkiv recently. Just yesterday, I read a report in my newspaper Le Monde from one of our correspondents there, and the situation seems to be extremely difficult. Can you tell me a little bit about what you saw in Kharkiv and what were you doing there?

Tetyana Ogarkova: It was our third trip to Kharkiv. First, we went there in June and then in August. Our objective was to see the life of the liberated territories in the Kharkiv region, which were under Russian occupation for almost six months. We also wanted to deliver our volunteer aid – a car that we bought for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We started raising funds through our podcast, Explaining Ukraine, and Kult: Podcast with the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. We use our listeners’ donations to help our military. Why are we buying cars? Because cars save lives on the frontline. Every car lasts for a couple of weeks there, so our soldiers are always in high need of vehicles.

Kharkiv today looks much better as compared to the situation there in August. Back then, the city was constantly shelled. Nowadays, after the liberation of the Kharkiv region, missiles are still hitting the city during the night, but it is more of an exception than a rule. It does not happen every night. There are more cars and more people on the street, but life is still difficult.

Kharkiv is an incredible city. People there are extremely strong and the artistic community is very active. Artists and writers stayed in Kharkiv from the very beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, organising humanitarian aid for civilians and military aid for Ukrainian troops. Imagine this: a writer, a painter, and a cultural activist working together in the courtyard of St. Dymytriy Church, and military cars arrive there every thirty minutes to collect the aid. Military, church, and artistic community united.

Sylvie Kauffmann: So the morale is holding well?

Tetyana Ogarkova: Indeed it is. But it is different if you travel to the recently de-occupied territories, like Izyum.

I think probably everyone knows what Izyum is now. A small town in the Kharkiv region liberated back in September, the site of mass graves. We went there three weeks after the exhumation process was over. Being there was extremely hard. Seeing all the graves, feeling a great deal of sorrow. But our presence there is very important. We were trying to understand what happened, we talked to people who were responsible for burying the dead and counting the wooden crosses on the graves. Izyum is proof of the extreme cruelty of Russians towards civilians in the region. It is a place of sorrow and disaster.

In the upcoming months, people from the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region will not have any electricity or heating. They come regularly to check on their houses, do some repair work, and then they leave – to spend at least this winter somewhere in a safer place. This creates the impression of ghost cities and villages.

Sylvie Kauffmann: Where do they go?

Tetyana Ogarkova: Some of them go to the western regions of Ukraine, where they found their temporary refuge; others stay in parts of the Kharkiv region which were not occupied by Russia.

We also went to a village called Bezruky. It is a tiny village fifteen kilometres away from the Russian border. It was never occupied by the Russian army, but it was constantly shelled in March and April. There we met a family who on June 21 lost their eight-year-old girl, Margaryta.

At the moment of the shelling, little Margaryta was in the garden reading a book. It was an extremely calm day, and the bomb appeared out of nowhere and killed her and her aunt. We met the grandmother who lost both her daughter and granddaughter in a second. Their house is now empty. Margaryta’s stuff is still there. The family left. Even though the damage to the house itself could be easily repaired, it is difficult to live in a place where such a tragedy occurred.

It is a huge trauma when your house, your world, is destroyed. I do hope people will come back. But they need security, electricity, and, most importantly, time to heal their wounds.

Sylvie Kauffmann: This leads us to the issue of crime and punishment. Izyum, just like Bucha, is now a symbol of Russian war crimes. How do you feel about the issue of collective responsibility? It was raised during a discussion about the visa ban for Russian citizens in the EU.

Tetyana Ogarkova: A lot depends on the perspective, on the place from where you are talking. As a European, you think about what happened in Europe after WWI and how the defeat and humiliation that Germany had experienced led to the much greater horrors of WWII. When Emmanuel Macron was talking about not humiliating Russia, he was saying that from the European perspective.

Not a lot of Ukrainians can accept discussions like this without emotion. This is natural because people are in a lot of trauma. For us, Ukrainians, Russia represents aggressors committing war crimes every day against our people. This feeling is not abstract; it is very concrete and personal. In this war, we all have lost someone or something.

Here in Ukraine, we have quite a different perspective on the issue of the collective responsibility of Russians and the visa ban. What irritates Ukrainians? Expressions like ‘Putin’s war’ or the ‘Kremlin’s war’, which indicate that only Putin or the Kremlin commits crimes, and Russian people are innocent. What we see, unfortunately, is that Russian people do participate in this war, and millions of them are silent.

Since the start of the mobilisation, almost a million Russians have left the country. Lots of them are in Georgia, Turkey, Finland, and Kazakhstan. The problem is that we do not see these people organising any manifestations against the war. They are against mobilisation but not against the war per se. Based on sociological polls, we know that Russians either support it or are indifferent. Our attitude is not to tolerate that anymore. We understand that a lot of Russians are waiting for the moment when Putin’s regime will be over. But the problem is that Ukrainians are paying for their silence and passivity with our blood and losses every day. We are having this battle in their place.

Sylvie Kauffmann: This is a very good point. Their passivity is very close to complicity.

Tetyana Ogarkova: And what is your opinion?

Sylvie Kauffmann: I thought the mobilisation would provoke some kind of reaction. And to some point, it did. But the reaction was mostly fleeing, not fighting. I understand the fear factor, but I also agree with you on the fact that we have not heard from hundreds of thousands of Russians who left the country. They could have been active, they could have organised networks of resistance abroad. This is very important, it is something we have to analyse on our part.

It is very true that Germany was tried and Nazi leaders were tried and condemned for their crimes while the Soviet Union was not. It was a totalitarian regime, and after the Cold War, we thought that it had come to an end. That was a big collective mistake of ours.

Ukraine is a big factor in revealing this reality to the Western world. This is one of the lessons of this terrible war that we have learnt.

Tetyana Ogarkova: Here in Ukraine, we do feel that the image of our country abroad has changed. There is a lot of attention from foreign media, intellectuals, and people who are supporting us. What do you think about this development? Do you think that the EU as a formal institution which has granted Ukraine candidate status will continue along this path? Do you think French, German, and Italian people perceive Ukrainians as Europeans today more than they did a year or two ago?

Sylvie Kauffmann: Definitely. There has been a great change in the way we look at Ukrainians. In France, the Ukrainian community was not very big. So, I am not sure French people knew a lot about Ukraine and Ukrainians. Now they definitely know much more and are more interested. There is a lot of admiration and positive feelings about Ukrainians. The French, unlike the Germans, are interested in military affairs. And I think they are impressed by the way Ukrainians fight.

On the EU issue, granting Ukraine candidate status was a very logical step. But an extremely complicated procedure awaits your country in the future. When the war ends, I think we will have to find a way to accelerate Ukrainian access to the EU and its integration. There will be a lot of work to do, even in terms of reconstruction. But we think it is morally and politically right to open the EU to Ukraine because it deserves it and also because it will offer Ukraine extra protection. Ukraine is part of the European family, and we have to demonstrate it to Russia.

A big challenge awaits us in Western Europe this winter. You are facing a much greater challenge of your own – the winter without heating and electricity, under constant shelling during the full-scale war. But we are less tough in Western Europe. It is up to our leadership, our politicians, media, intellectuals, union and civil society leaders to make people understand that we also have to pay for this fight for freedom and that it will have its cost.

Simon Nielsen 11/28/22 Simon Nielsen 11/28/22

‘People feel extremely empowered. Everything depends on us’: Nataliya Gumenyuk In Dialogue With Sławomir Sierakowski

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On November 1, Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk held a conversation with Polish journalist Sławomir Sierakowski. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Sławomir Sierakowski and Nataliya Gumenyuk

Sławomir Sierakowski: We are trying to support Ukraine in many ways, one of which is sending weapons, humanitarian aid, etc. And we know that your needs are changing, especially now, when Russia is attacking critical infrastructure. What kind of support does Ukraine need today?

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Our needs are always both strategic and non-strategic. As we are approaching winter, we need power generators. They are already out of stock in Ukraine, and soon they will be in Europe too.

We are adjusting to reality, hoping that our energy infrastructure is going to be rebuilt and renewed. Strategically, I understand that it is quite a difficult task to destroy a power plant. That is why Russians are destroying transmission stations which distribute electricity. Some equipment essential for distributing and transmitting energy is already being supplied by our allies. It is very expensive, but the state, local authorities, and electricity suppliers need it to redistribute the energy. It is absolutely critical.

Winter clothes for the army are also in high demand. We have some, but there is always a need for more because of the number of people who are serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukrainians have also started buying Starlinks. Issues with electricity, as you know, are causing problems with the connection.

There was also a call from our authorities asking Ukrainians who have left the country to spend this winter abroad. A lot of our citizens came back home during the summer. Leaving for the second time is a serious decision that requires thinking through. Having an established hosting period in European countries until March or so would also help.

Sławomir Sierakowski: What you are suggesting now is a call to the European governments to take care of Ukrainian refugees, especially in winter times. I observed that financial help was stopped, and it should be relaunched to enable people to stay abroad during the blackouts.

I am trying to be concrete and pragmatic here. There are things that should be resolved immediately. Theoretical discussions about Ukraine are not the priority right now, practical issues are.

Nataliya Gumenyuk: As a citizen, I am absolutely grateful to Poland for everything Poles do for Ukraine. And I am grateful to you personally. You were the one behind the fundraising campaign to buy a Bayraktar drone for Ukraine. My next question is to you as a journalist. How do you explain to yourself and others the fact that in this war, journalists are raising funds for military aid?

Sławomir Sierakowski: I do not care at all whether it is a part of the journalist’s mission or not. Russians are killing journalists the same way they are killing other people. I have no illusions about Russia.

I think of myself as an opinion-maker rather than a journalist. I am writing op-eds and I am running the largest Polish NGO with a political agenda. I am an activist. I was never interested in a purely journalistic mission.

The thing that inspired me the most during our fundraising campaign was the support coming from the greatest moral authorities. For example, Adam Bodnar, an ombudsman whom I consider the most moral person in Poland, supported our initiative, and so did many other human rights activists.

In Poland, we do not have any illusions about Russia. The photos on the front pages of Polish newspapers the next day after the liberation of Bucha shocked me deeply. But the images were different on the front pages of the Western European press. It is not censorship, but rather a misled and misunderstood attempt at ‘political correctness’. I do hope that this war will open Western Europe’s eyes.

How would you assess the reaction of Germans, French, and other Western Europeans to the situation? Unlike them, Americans and British people never had illusions about Russia.

Nataliya Gumenyuk: I am a person who usually has limited expectations. I expect less and then get positively surprised by the result.

This autumn I am travelling very often. I take part in conferences and large-scale events of different kinds because it is my opportunity to speak. And, to be honest, it is difficult to be in cities like Berlin and Vienna – but not because life there seems peaceful.

People fail to see that in this war there is really only black and white. A lot of Western Europeans are trying to perceive this war through the clichés of all the wars in the past, while in reality, it is quite unique. It is difficult for them to understand that a lot of institutions, like the UN and the European Council, and policies have failed, and it is time to reform everything. When the institutions that are so heavily funded fail to stop the war and protect Europe, you need to change them. And it is difficult to accept for many Western Europeans.

I feel like Germany and France are still in their comfort zone. They are still treating Ukraine as a small country, choosing to deal with Russia as an empire first.

To be completely open with you, I feel like Ukraine is being asked to become this lamb that needs to be sacrificed for the stability of the world. We are pushed towards negotiations and sacrificing our country for the rest to survive. I am convinced that we are in a position to refuse. We do appreciate everyone’s help, but we want to live and we are not ready to put our lives at stake – not because we do not care about the world, but for us, this war is a fight of David against Goliath. Is throwing Ukraine into the mouth of the dragon that is Russia the only way to save the world?

War cannot be strictly rational. It is not only a newsworthy analysis. You need to be able to see that something bigger is going on here.

Recently I participated in an event attended by many European editors. I was the only Ukrainian there. At some point, they started discussing Ukraine fatigue influenced by Ukrainian refugees in Europe, and how that might lead to internal conflicts in the EU countries. While it is an important issue to discuss in the future, was it really the most relevant topic to be brought up during this event?

How are Ukrainian refugees seen in Poland after all these months?

Sławomir Sierakowski: Recently we have conducted extensive and deep sociological research focused on studying the reaction of Poles towards the pandemic, the war, and, following that, the inflation and its other economic consequences. The results we received shocked us.

Unfortunately, the resentment against Ukrainian refugees is growing. People are for Ukraine but against Ukrainians. It has nothing to do with the Ukrainian identity. It is all about how Poles deal with their problems.

Before, they would blame other Poles for their economic problems. It is an issue of great distrust people have in institutions and one another. On the contrary, in the event of an economic crisis, Western Europeans tend to blame the state or look for deeper social processes behind it. They think in a more sophisticated way. Eastern Europeans are used to blaming each other. And now they are blaming Ukrainians.

Do not get me wrong – there is no dehumanising or hate speech directed at Ukrainians. But people start believing in conspiracy theories, entirely made-up stories of someone apparently witnessing Ukrainians wanting to get services for free. These stories are also never told by direct witnesses – it is always someone's aunt or second cousin who saw that happening. But, unfortunately, fake stories always have real consequences. And this issue is not articulated in the public sphere. The media are not talking about it.

I am scared that we are sitting on the bomb here. Politicians need to talk about this, otherwise, we will have huge trouble in the future.

When Ukrainians thank us for our help, I feel confused. It is us Poles who should thank you – because you are fighting for our security too.

Nataliya Gumenyuk: Unfortunately, I think that resentment towards refugees is inevitable.

In 2012, I visited Irbid, the closest Jordanian town to Syria. Back then, everyone was welcoming Syrians and trying to help them. When I came back a year later, it was already different. Jordanians were annoyed that Syrians were crossing the border with their nice expensive cars, that the rent prices went up and that there were no more places to live. I experienced the same thing in Ukraine in 2014, when people were escaping the east of Ukraine.

You are absolutely right that this issue has to be addressed as early as possible. But there is only so much we can do. We can try to mitigate this, but it will never go away completely. This is just the reality of internally displaced people and refugees everywhere, unfortunately.

Before we conclude, I want to bring up the issue of distrust one more time. Right before the full-scale invasion, we conducted major sociological research dedicated to thirty years of Ukrainian independence. The results have shown three main issues faced by Ukrainians: distrust in institutions; lack of connection to Ukrainians in other regions of the country; and the feeling of powerlessness, that nothing depends on them.

In 2022, it is completely reversed. The extreme situation of the war raised the level of trust in the government and other people. The country became interconnected – people in Chernihiv were crying about Mariupol, and people in Odesa were asking about Kharkiv. Ukrainians started feeling for every town and loving every town. And, of course, people feel extremely empowered. Everything depends on us.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 11/11/22 Simon Nielsen 11/11/22

‘Democracy is not a gift but a prize that has to be won over and over again, and it is worth fighting for’: Askold Melnyczuk In Dialogue with Kateryna Babkina

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 4, 2022, Ukrainian author Kateryna Babkina held a conversation with the American writer of Ukrainian origin Askold Melnyczuk. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 4, Ukrainian author Kateryna Babkina held a conversation with the American writer of Ukrainian origin Askold Melnyczuk. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Kateryna Babkina and Askold Melnyczuk

Askold Melnyczuk: Kateryna, what a pleasure to meet you. I have heard so much about you. As a person who is speaking about what is happening in Ukraine, I am wondering if you can give us all a bit of an update on the situation.

Kateryna Babkina: Hello, everybody. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Askold. There are two levels of life in Ukraine now. On the first one, people are trying to keep life going. If you briefly look at their Instagram profiles, you might forget for a moment that the war is still going on, even though these people are receiving awful news every day. On the other level, every day Ukrainians are dying, and every day Russian atrocities on the liberated territories are being discovered. It heavily influences both people who are in Ukraine, and Ukrainians who are abroad, like me.

I have a small child. In March I fled to Poland, and then temporarily moved to London. I did it because I cannot guarantee my daughter’s safety. Given what has happened in Bucha and Irpin, moving to the west of Ukraine or abroad was probably the best solution for Ukrainian mothers.

What is happening in Ukraine right now is so unacceptable, so impossible. When I talk to people from abroad, not only do I experience Ukraine fatigue from their side, but I also see that it is difficult for them to accept the fact that the atrocities really are happening. We have to keep talking about that. Nobody likes a messenger who brings bad news, but these events are important to understand.

Askold Melnyczuk: It is essential indeed. I have a friend, an American literary critic, who speaks about the myth of the blue sky. I am just outside Boston, although today is a cloudy day, very often it is beautiful and sunny here, and things are so peaceful on the streets. The immediate reality around us is so unlike what people in Ukraine are experiencing that it becomes a kind of cognitive dissonance to try and accept it.

Seven months in, I still wake up and find it hard to believe that the war really is happening. It is the irrationality of the situation that makes it so very difficult to accept it. Therefore, it is essential to create platforms enabling people who are now aware of Ukraine to understand the radical difference in daily experience between here and there.

I think that people are naturally empathetic. If they are able to hear what is happening, they will respond. And I think that a great number of them are responding in the United States. I do not know what it is that you are hearing in London. I spoke to various Ukrainian writers who have said that the conversation is different in Europe and the United States.

Kateryna Babkina: It depends on the people to whom you are talking. Generally, I meet people who are empathetic, very supportive, and very pro-Ukrainian. But it is only true of those who are rather educated in history and politics, and aware of what Russia has done to Georgia, Chechnya, and other countries.

However, I am starting to hear more and more often the narrative shared on Twitter recently by Elon Musk. “We just have to find a way to end the war. Ukraine should remain neutral, Russia should keep the occupied Crimea.” Are we expected to give away the homes of those born in Crimea and the east of Ukraine just so that people in Europe do not pay expensive energy bills?

This will not stop Russia. Moscow has been committing these crimes for years in many different countries. It will carry on if it is not stopped.

Askold Melnyczuk: I think of a line by Bertolt Brecht who wrote: “He who fights, can lose. He who does not fight has already lost.”

It is a fact that Ukrainians have stood up for themselves. They knew enough to stand up to a bully because they have experienced bullying before. Ukrainians prioritised freedom over slavery, and liberty over serfdom. They have stood up for democracy worldwide and have become emblems and champions of what it means.

Ukraine has become an inspiration for many of us. I work with a political group here in the US called Writers for Democratic Action. We have some 3000 members nationwide and many across Europe as well, and it is our goal to preserve democracy here in the US, which itself is under siege. One of the interesting elements of the conversation I discovered here in the US is that a very specific segment of – I hate to generalise but I just have to say it – the Republican Party has been quietly supporting Putin. Perhaps, not even quietly anymore, but rather increasingly loudly and proudly encouraging Ukraine to give up.

We have come to take for granted the idea that you can criticise the government and institutions here in the US. This is a privilege not enjoyed in Russia but experienced in Ukraine. It is precisely for that freedom and that right that people are fighting. Democracy is not a gift but a prize that has to be won over and over again, and it is worth fighting for.

Kateryna Babkina: What Ukraine is fighting for now is not only those high values and ideas.

Every day here in London I take my 2-year-old to the playground. She has a friend named Evie. Evie is a surrogate daughter who has two dads, who can live their lives freely and be a happy couple. This is impossible in Russia. Russians will never be able to enjoy just being themselves.

Ukraine is a buffer separating the West from this world of violence where people are leading shitty lives and are ready to sacrifice themselves and suffer for abstract high ideals. Ideas of democracy and any kind of freedom are irrelevant to them.

Askold Melnyczuk: The Russian state has become not only an ideology but a religious faith.

We have talked about how Ukraine is being reconsidered by the world. Twenty years ago I gave a speech at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. At that point, Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated had just come out. There had also been quite a wonderful novel by Claire Messud that had Ukraine as a character.

Back then, Ukraine was culturally considered a terra incognita. I know it from my own experience. In grad school, I was often translating poems from Ukrainian. Some students said to me that for them Ukrainian language sounded just like Russian. Then, however, I remember talking to Joseph Brodsky in Ukrainian. He was speaking Russian, and neither of us could understand each other. He said: “Askold, this is America, let’s just speak English.” But he certainly knew that there were distinctions.

I wonder what you think about how Ukraine is beginning to emerge culturally.

Kateryna Babkina: I have to confess that my own perception of Ukraine has changed rapidly since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Mistakenly, I used to think that we had a weak army, that we were rather poor as a country, and that people have become rather passive as a result of the Soviet past where nothing depended on the ordinary people. This perception has certainly changed.

People are ready to support the state with their own hands and money if it needs help. That is probably the first example in history when people are funding the army with their private funds. Each of us is our state. All of us are Ukraine.

The amount of money we are raising and donating makes me realise that we are not really poor as a country. We are earning money not only to maintain our living but also to support our army.

Everyone is contributing to our victory in their own way.

Now that more and more people are discovering Ukrainians in person, they realise that many of us are highly qualified and educated. They are finding out more cool things about our country every day, and it does not surprise them anymore. The world is discovering high-quality Ukrainian cultural products: cinema, art, music, and literature.

However, the price we pay for this recognition is too high. I would much rather prefer to stay less published and [less] recognised.

Askold Melnyczuk: I know exactly what you mean. I have friends, political scientists, who are saying: “Look at all the publicity Ukraine is getting, look at all the press!” I am thinking to myself, I would sooner have anonymity rather than all these deaths and slaughter.

We have to accept the fact that this is what has happened. We have to come to terms with this reality quickly and respond appropriately.

I entirely agree with you that it was an improved education system in Ukraine that created your generation. It was the first generation to be politically free and financially capable of going outside the borders and working all around the world, travelling, learning other languages, and experiencing other cultures directly.

Kateryna Babkina: We also used to be the first fearless generation who was growing up in a rather safe environment. That was before they started shooting at protesters on Maidan in 2014.

Now I hope that my daughter’s generation is going to be entirely fearless. She is two years old now, so she does not really understand what is happening. She enjoyed the nights in the bomb shelters so much because people were bringing their dogs there. She loves dogs, and she has never seen so many dogs, cats, and other pets gathered in one place before. My daughter was the happiest child ever. She did not understand why we left the house, but she was happy to have new friends, a new playground and toys.

If we succeed to end this war completely, our children are going to be the first generation of completely free and fearless Ukrainians.

Askold Melnyczuk: One reason for that is the example that your generation is setting by fighting for freedom. It had the chance to look at the past and to confront the history that had not been examined before, like the history of the Holocaust and Holodomor in Ukraine. When you begin to look squarely at the past, you can begin to understand the present much more clearly.

I do worry about one thing though, and for me, there is a personal aspect to it. The part that horrified me was seeing my parents’ lives all over again.

My parents grew up during WWII, my grandfather fought in the army in WWI, first for the Austro-Hungarian army, and later for the Sichovi Striltsi. Then my family had to flee Peremyshl, where they had been living, and they came to the US. The process of becoming a refugee is complicated. The consequences of war and violence are passed on for generations.

In my parents’ generation, post-traumatic stress was never dealt with. And we are much more aware of it now. The post-war period has to come with an awareness of how to start talking about the traumatic experience and healing from it. I hope this process starts now, even before the war ends, and will continue afterwards. All of you experienced trauma, whether you were on the frontline or had to leave your homes. It is about being conscious of the reality that has happened and facing it as soon as possible rather than denying it.

I want to ask you about your plans moving forward. You are in London, and you have a book that is coming out this week. I wonder how you are looking ahead to the future?

Kateryna Babkina: I do not build long-term plans anymore. Of course, I am looking forward to coming back home, like everyone is, but I am not sure when it is going to be possible. I want to give my daughter safety.

I plan to start talking about the war more. I have just finished a book which is going to be published relatively soon in Ukrainian and Polish. It is a story written for young adults about what has happened since February 24.

In the Soviet Union and shortly after its collapse, we had a very flat and modified version of history tailored to the needs of the party. We did not have the opportunity to talk about the huge trauma experienced by the people. Only in the 80s did Ukrainians start writing about Holodomor and the Holocaust, WWII, and Chornobyl, as well as being part of the Soviet Union which was by itself a traumatic experience. Only now have we gained the voice powerful enough.

We still have not dealt with our past, and we have a lot to talk about. This is our job as writers, intellectuals, and artists.

Simon Nielsen 11/4/22 Simon Nielsen 11/4/22

Paweł Pieniążek In Dialogue With Oleina Huseinova

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On October 6, 2022, Ukrainian journalist Oleina Huseinova held a conversation with the Polish journalist Paweł Pieniążek. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation. This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Oleina Huseinova and Paweł Pieniążek

Paweł Pieniążek: Hello everyone. I wanted to ask the first question about the mood dominating in Ukraine at the moment. I think there are two main things here: on the one hand, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been very successful in the Kharkiv region, which I managed to visit, as well as in the south and Donbas. On the other hand, there is this constant threat, especially in the foreign media, about a possible nuclear attack. How does all of this affect the mood in Kyiv and Ukraine in general?

Oleina Huseinova: First of all, greetings everyone. I am very happy to take part in this conversation. I hope that we will manage to deliver some important messages about what is happening in Ukraine.

It seems to me that we have to differentiate the thoughts and feelings every Ukrainian has. When I am talking about the mood, is it something I am thinking or feeling? I believe everybody remembers September 30, when the Kremlin announced the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions. At this point, it is a reflex for all Ukrainians: we know that anything, including bombings, can happen after Putin’s speeches. I came back from my twelve-hour shift and just could not fall asleep because I was scared to miss the possible declaration of WWIII. This was very irrational, but I know that many people in Ukraine have this ‘fear of missing out’.

At the moment, we have much less irony and much more willingness to control the situation. For example, in my purse I have a rubbish bag, a pair of rubber gloves, a bottle of water, and a mask. Nobody wants to be taken by surprise, everyone wants to be prepared. Is it our mood or is it more of an emotional thing?

At this point, we are all trying to reflect. There was a certain amount of euphoria when we were reading about the liberation of the Kharkiv region and the first kilometres of land liberated in the Kherson region. It is very important to be happy about this news, but it is equally essential to recognise the price and remember the losses we endured along the way. Ukrainians are balancing between all these feelings. We are trying to be prepared, to understand our panic, and to control our joy.

I know that you recently came back from Ukraine. You visited liberated territories. What kind of mood is dominating there?

Paweł Pieniążek: When people saw any representative of the Ukrainian state or any person associated with Ukraine, be it a soldier, a journalist, or a railroad worker, I saw joy and hope in their eyes. Hope was dominant in the people’s mood.

In Balakliya and Izium, there was joy. People had the hope that their normal life was coming back, that the active fighting in their region ended. No one was talking about the nuclear attacks back then. In Kupyansk, it was different. The city was still under pretty close shelling, so over there there was a lot of fear. The proximity of the war made people think about its horrors coming back. A lot of hope, but also a lot of trauma because people have lived through terrible things: hiding in their basements, being tortured, and losing their loved ones. I expected that after all the horrors, people would look at the situation in a more reserved way, but their joy was sincere. I have not seen anything like that yet.

Back in August on the podcast The Book Shelter (“Книгосховище”), you shared with us three books that will help us after the war. After February 24, I could not listen to music or read anything. For a long time, I did not because my attention span was very short and concentrating on a book was a problem for me. How did you manage to read in this situation?

Oleina Huseinova: Thanks a lot for this question and for listening to this podcast. More than 20 episodes of The Book Shelter are out now. I wanted to use this name for one of my programmes back in 2017, but, according to the editor, the name was pessimistic and had the potential for scaring people. And she was right. The programme ended up being called Top 7, and the idea was to share with our listeners seven books to read next week. The programme existed from 2017 until February 2022, it was very popular with the audience and had a lot of feedback. I remember the penultimate episode – it was about books debunking the myth about the strength of the Russian army. It was already in the air. But when you find seven proofs busting this myth, it gives you hope.

Then the full-scale Russian invasion happened. I know that feeling very well when you are a professional reader unable to open a book and read a single sentence. I had it for a long time, and I started reading again only when I realised that I need to work on my speaking more, as I had not spoken as much as I did in the first days of the full-scale war. So, I simply opened a book of poetry by Yevhen Pluzhnyk and began to read aloud. That is how I overcame the inability to read. Then it was easier for me to read complicated and painful books: Hanna Arendt, the Nuremberg process, and all things WWII. I have discovered for myself a new author, a German writer Uwe Timm. He has a story called “Die Entdeckung der Currywurst” (“The Invention of Curried Sausage”). It describes life in Hamburg in post-war Germany. The author was about five years old when Germany capitulated, his father was in the Luftwaffe and his older brother, who was a soldier in the Waffen SS, died in Ukraine in 1943. Uwe Timm writes a lot about how redemption in the generation of his father and older brother never happened in Germany. There was a lot of talk not about how they had allowed the war to happen, but how they had managed to lose. This reading made me realise how much work we will have to do after the war.

When I address my listeners, I often remind them that it is not a fairytale that is awaiting us after the victory. We are going to enter a very scary world and we have to learn our lessons and do our homework for the future.

Paweł Pieniążek: Definitely, I agree with you when you say that the future is always there. For me, this realisation is one of the big changes that have happened since 2014. Back then, it seems to me, no one was thinking about the future. When I went to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2016, I visited a university there. Even though fighting was still going on there, they had already written academic papers on how they were going to manage their autonomy. There was very little of that in Ukraine.

Oleina Huseinova: Actually, I might have a theory about why it was like that. To a great extent, the archetypes of battles and those who fought them were based on our rebel folklore and literature in the school programme. There, the fighters were ready to give up their lives for freedom and hoped that their successors would be able to put an end to this struggle. The experience of actually obtaining victory was lacking in songs and literature.

But I would like to come back to 2014 and the aspect of being a witness to the war and the ability to recount your experience afterwards. How did you decide to become a journalist and tell people about war? Was it somehow connected to the events of 2014?

Paweł Pieniążek: Yes, of course. I would not say that it was a decision, it just so happened. Most of the things I do now came to me accidentally.

In 2008 or 2009, I was studying in the Ukrainian Linguistics Department at the University of Warsaw. I was coming to Ukraine regularly, I lived there. Even before the Maidan started, I started writing about Ukraine for different media. I understood that the Revolution of Dignity was the most important event of recent years in the region and that I needed to be there. I arrived in Kyiv in the first days of the Euromaidan in 2013, around November 27 or 28. The following April, I went to Donetsk. At the time, most people did not realise that the war was about to begin. I, personally, was not ready for it. I arrived in Donetsk and my colleague, a Polish journalist, said that extremely important events are happening in Sloviansk and we have to go there immediately. We boarded a train and went. That is how I found myself in a city where the war started. Professionally, I grew up with this conflict.

I was never interested in the military aspect of wars. Of course, I have learned lots of things military-wise. However, during the first years of the war I became proficient in Soviet and post-Soviet arms used by Russia, so now I have to learn about the new Western weapons. I am much more interested in an anthropological approach. What happens to human destiny in the war? What does it mean when war comes into your home?

‘Civilian’ is a special category different from all others in war. Civilians do not go to war, the war comes for them and influences their lives the most. I found out that when people try to tidy up their homes and backyards after a missile attack, they are trying to preserve their normal life and show that they still have control over it. The war is coming to people’s homes, setting its own rules, and people are trying to counter them. I believe that these aspects of life during war are the most important, and even optimistic.

Oleina Huseinova: As you know, I work with my voice. I do not leave my studio and do not work in the field. But I know that radio is the only medium that can reach occupied territories. We know from our local reporter that people in Kherson are listening to us. This is an incredible feeling and also a great responsibility. The war is in its eighth month now and I am still unsure whether I am doing everything right. People usually listen to us at night, so I have to make sure that my voice is not too high and loud. I have to balance optimism and try not to scare people. I do not know how it should be done correctly. It is not something a journalist should say, but I am trying to be sincere.

Paweł Pieniążek: Actually, a journalist has to be sincere. It is very important.

Oleina Huseinova: And to simply give people information that is there. This is a very dangerous part. For example, we kept repeating information about the evacuation from the occupied territories many times every hour. We never knew whether people were able to catch our signal or how long the connection was going to last. All those green corridors, the meeting points, the bus stops… We were repeating the details constantly. Later on, people who had managed to get out, told us that they were getting all the news from Ukrainian Radio. They found out that Kyiv was not occupied from our reports. These are the things about which I am still unable to talk calmly. It still feels weird to me. And I am very grateful to all the journalists who managed to take to the streets and to work in the field as events were unfolding.

Paweł Pieniążek: Why does it feel weird?

Oleina Huseinova: Because there is the feeling of shame. Shame that I do not know anything about taking to the streets, leaving cities like Mariupol or Bucha, or looking for the road to Zaporizhzhya from Berdyansk. I can only imagine how scary it is.

Paweł Pieniążek: No matter how basic my statement may sound, I am convinced that it is a good thing that not everyone has had these experiences. You need to be happy that you know about all of this just in theory.

When I was talking to people about the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion, everyone said that they were constantly on the phone and kept watching the news even though they were a part of it. This is a very interesting paradox: you can be in the very centre of the situation and still need to look for external information about what is happening next to you.

Oleina Huseinova: I know that you write mostly for Poles. Here in Ukraine, we tell incredible private stories of people and the experiences they have been through. For example, one of my friends survived the occupation of Bucha. To light a fire for cooking, she had to burn the motivational book she translated. When telling these stories, you have to understand what goal it has to achieve and then frame it accordingly. What is the goal of your stories? How do you want your audience in Poland to react?

Paweł Pieniążek: I grew up and spent most of my adult life in Poland. It sometimes upsets me that people seem to have a prepared answer to anything. When asked what they would do in the situation of war, they confidently say that they would go and fight, they would stay in the country, or they would leave. But these are very theoretical questions you cannot answer unless you face them personally.

In most of my work I am trying to show that the choice in front of you is not always obvious. You cannot envisage it. Choices are ambiguous, they are not black and white in the way that people want to see them. I may seem somewhat critical, but I am trying to tell people’s stories differently and break this wall in my articles. What I like most about books is that I can understand the motivation behind the characters’ actions. I love books where a person's choice is not obvious, and this is what I am trying to convey in my articles.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 10/31/22 Simon Nielsen 10/31/22

‘Bucha changed my understanding of this war’: Katrin Eigendorf In Dialogue With Oleksandr Zinchenko

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On September 6th, Oleksandr Zinchenko, a Ukrainian journalist, held a conversation with the German journalist Katrin Eigendorf. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Katrin Eigendorf and Oleksandr Zinchenko

Oleksandr Zinchenko: Katrin, if you allow me, I would like to ask the first question. Recently you wrote the book Putins Krieg – Wie die Menschen in der Ukraine für unsere Freiheit kämpfen. In your opinion, why did Putin dare to start this war?

Katrin Eigendorf: That is a difficult question. From my perspective, the war is not only against Ukraine and its existence. It has a much broader context, concerning our way of life, our system, democracy, freedom, and human rights. This is what I also try to explain to Germans. The whole establishment of the post-WWII world order is attacked by Russia. This war against Ukraine is, in fact, an attack on the Western world. Why Ukraine? Because Ukraine was the country that took the strongest and the most effective steps toward the West by trying to join the EU and NATO. This effort was also made by other countries, like Georgia, but not with the same powerful support of the population that we saw during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. I have been following this war since its very beginning in 2014. What Putin tries to do now is to challenge the West.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: In my point of view, Putin started this so-called ‘special operation’ with a wrong perception of the world in mind. Several weeks before the full-scale invasion started, my father, who had cancer, was told that he had a couple of weeks left to live. He was in Kharkiv at that time. My family was wondering whether I, as a historian, thought that the attack would happen. Right before 1939 and German aggression against Poland, Polish economist and historian Stanisław Swianiewicz was claiming that massive amounts of troops, arms, and other military resources only happened before the upcoming aggression. On the other hand, I was wondering – what Putin was thinking? Did he really think it was possible to conquer Ukraine with only 200,000 soldiers? Ukrainian territory covers approximately 600,000 square kilometres. This is basically one Russian soldier per three square kilometres! They wouldn’t even see each other. On top of that, I was thinking about the logic behind starting the invasion in late winter. Only asphalted highways were available to the troops. They couldn’t even form orders of battle; they had to march in columns. Considering all these facts, I said that the invasion was unlikely, I gave it 80 to 20 percent of probability. My sister eventually said that in terms of risk assessment this probability was high. So we started preparing.

Katrin Eigendorf: When I saw Putin starting this war, my first thought was: “This is the end for him”. Now the question is, when will this end come? After half a year of the full-scale invasion, let us set aside positive developments and take a look at the negative impact. We have so many people dying, the economy ruined, and we have harsh winter approaching. There is a dangerous situation in Zaporizhzhya. Let me ask you this: did anything change in the mood of the population?

Oleksandr Zinchenko: For me, the start of the full-scale invasion coincided with my personal tragedy. On February 22, my father passed away due to cancer. On February 23, we said goodbye to him. On February 24, the sounds of explosions woke us up. My pain threshold was already pretty high. So, naturally, my first thought was: Putin, what an idiot. And this attitude has not changed since. As for Ukrainian society, it is difficult to generalise, but it seems to me that a significant part of Ukrainians is still highly mobilised. We feel this absolute anger towards the aggressor, and this feeling keeps our level of mobilisation high.

During the presentation of your book, you mentioned that this war is changing all of us, and you in particular. Could you please explain what has changed within you?

Katrin Eigendorf: I have been a reporter for 30 years now and I have covered many wars. Normally, when you go to war as a reporter, it affects you in some way. You see sad stories and horrible situations, but in the end, you always come back home. Most wars happening abroad do not really affect the inner situation in the country. For example, when Germany tragically lost 59 soldiers in Afghanistan, it did not change the course of the public debate. In the case of Ukraine, German politics have changed fundamentally.

Since WWII, Germany has always tried to get along with Russia, be it through media, diplomatic or economic ties. This attitude is caused by the historical role of Germany as a perpetrator that started WWII. When the full-scale invasion happened, this policy changed, so the radical and quick decision was made to put sanctions in place, break all economic ties, and provide military aid to Ukraine. For Germany, this is a big step. It was German tradition not to support other countries with weapons, especially the ones fighting against Russia.

Now we see a fundamental change in German society, and this policy is supported by the majority of the German people. But now we are in a situation where prices which everyone is paying for this war are rising. The discussion is getting harsher on how we will proceed to support Ukraine in the long run. Therefore, we really need first-hand information. That is why every time I come back to Ukraine to report. It is very important to show people what is going on in this country.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: From the Ukrainian point of view, the actions of German authorities of people in power are not really understandable. This is indeed a rare case when Germany supplies lethal weapons to another country. On the other hand, just today we all learned that German chancellor Scholz refused to provide the Ukrainian Army with tanks. Could you please try to explain this? What exactly does not allow the chancellor to send tanks to Ukraine?

Katrin Eigendorf: I am a journalist, not a spokesperson for the German government. I am also criticising its policy regarding this issue. But I will make an effort and try to explain.

You have to see Germany in its historical context. You have also to be aware of the fact that when Germany was defining its post-WWII policy towards the East, it was always having Russia in mind. It was never about Ukraine, which was perceived as a side of this big empire. Only now do we start to see what the situation in Ukraine was like. Having said that, supporting Ukraine with weapons is a big step for Germany. Germany is a very bureaucratic country. So, it took a while to make the political decision and then implement it.

Another aspect is that our military is in quite a bad state. We did not invest much in it because we felt safe. But the world has changed and the war is now taking place in the heart of Europe. To see this reality, to stick to the fact that diplomacy came to an end, for the moment being, was quite hard for Germany and the German government. Now, surprisingly, the Green Party pushes for supporting Ukraine much more than the Social Democrats.

From my point of view, it was a bad step on behalf of Germany and Chancellor Scholz in particular that he did not take the chance to visit Ukraine.

When I saw the first foreign politicians showing up in Bucha, I asked myself – why is the German chancellor not here? It was a bad decision on his part. We have a certain responsibility towards Ukraine, considering what happened not only decades ago but in recent years too, considering that Germany was supporting Russia to a great extent. When the war started in 2014, the German politicians did not really listen or see what was happening here.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: I am against this policy of Chancellor Scholz too, and it is difficult for me to understand his stance. Scholz has not been to Bucha. You, on the other hand, have. What did you feel when you were there?

Katrin Eigendorf: We went there with our ZDF team just the day after it was announced what had happened in Bucha. This trip was organised by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and we had a chance to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at the end. How do I describe that feeling? I was really shocked. I have seen a lot of situations and wars, but what happened in Bucha really struck me to the core. You could see all the extent of the destruction, all the cruelty, and all nightmares that civilians faced, on one street. We saw people that were killed and tortured. Those who saw Bucha will understand… It is not only the image. It is also the smell, the little details. After seeing Bucha, Irpin, and Borodyanka, I understood quite well what this war was about. It is the war against the Ukrainian civilisation. I saw the way and extent to which the Russian army was operating. This was so shocking. Bucha changed my understanding of this war.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: Were you able to explain to yourself this degree of Russian cruelty?

Katrin Eigendorf: This behaviour is a strategy supported by the commanders. I worked in Russia in the 90s and saw the Russian army in Chechnya. I noticed their attitude towards their own people. There was this principle called dedovshchina, the reign of the eldest, which meant that young people joining the army came under the complete control of their commanders. This principle exists not only in the Russian army, but also in parts of their society. It is very inhumane.

Russia had a very short time frame to liberate itself from its cruel history. This brief gap started in 1991 and ended when Putin came to power. Essentially, this is the tradition in which Russia and the Russian population were raised over generations. I think this is one of the reasons why the Russian troops act like this. There is absolutely no respect or humane attitude in that army.

Oleksandr Zinchenko: When the full-scale invasion started, I was staying in a small town in Kyiv's suburbs with my mother. One day, the Russian troops came there, and I had to talk to them. Based on that interaction, it seems to me that there was another motive too. Ukraine has already seen this a century or so ago. They have been told for years that Ukrainians were extremely poor. They invaded Ukraine, came to our small cottage town populated mostly by middle-class people, saw the houses, and asked me: “Are you all millionaires here?”

How did we dare to live that well? I believe this was one of the reasons why Russians murdered people in Bucha, Irpin, and Borodyanka. They were trying to avenge Ukrainians for their high quality of life.

Katrin Eigendorf: When the war started in 2014, we saw many people in Kyiv carrying on with their lives as usual because the fighting was going on somewhere far away. Now I think that the war is in the middle of Ukrainian society. As a Ukrainian intellectual, how do you see your life in the next six months?

Oleksandr Zinchenko: My life will be full of work. I work for the Ukrainian PBC. At the moment, I am working on a big documentary about Ukrainian history. As for Ukrainian society in general, I think we are facing a very difficult next six months, especially around February 24. We expect this winter to be harsh. Some people might start sinking into pessimism or depression. However, we should do our best to convince everyone that no one should give up right before the victory.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 10/21/22 Simon Nielsen 10/21/22

“Europe Is Ukraine.” Philippe de Lara In Dialogue With Kostiantyn Sigov

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On August 30, Kostiantyn Sigov, a Ukrainian philosopher, held a conversation with the French philosopher Philippe de Lara. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation. This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Kostiantyn Sigov and Phillipe de Lara

Philippe de Lara: February 24 was an enormous shock for many people in France who have — at last! — opened their eyes to the brutality of Russia and to the atrocities we did not think the Russians were capable of. At the same time, people who did not know much or knew very little about Ukrainians suddenly discovered their courage, love of freedom and patriotism, ingenuity, love, and power. I believe that it plays a deciding role in the reaction of our country, in the unity and solidarity of Europeans which has strengthened since the very beginning of the war. For me, Ukraine has triggered a real conversion of Europeans. In March, in your article published by Le Figaro, you told the story of thirteen hours of Ukrainian resistance. I would like to ask you, where did this resistance come from? I think about the French: if the same happened in France, would our people exhibit that resilience?

Kostiantyn Sigov: Thank you for the question. We can state that Europe now is waking up while facing this war, this resilience of Ukrainians against Russia. Six months of this cruel aggression, accompanied by absolutely enormous lies, have passed. On August 24, the Independence Day of Ukraine, the special edition of L’Express magazine was issued. The entire issue was dedicated to Ukraine and its people, both civilians and military, men and women of different ages and professions, who, each in their own way, have already contributed to this resistance. At the very beginning of this special edition, Taras Shevchenko’s poem is quoted: “Our soul cannot die and the truth is always going to prevail.”

On February 24, we were woken up at 5 am by the bombs. We responded to numerous calls and questions of journalists and friends from the West, testifying that our nation has stood up and the truth has not been killed. In fact, every Ukrainian now can testify to it in more than words.

In the interview for Le Figaro that you had mentioned, I tried to explain that the resistance in Budapest in 1956, in Prague in 1968, and the very powerful movement of Solidarity in Poland, really prepared the world for the emergence of a different, free Eastern Europe that would put an end to the totalitarian Soviet experience, stop this Soviet madness. Today, despite everything, even you in France can see this idea of the Soviet Union reemerging again. The empire does not want to die. Keeping it alive is the goal of the Russian government.

For me, a real revelation of today’s resistance against Russian imperialism is the Maidan generation. The young people, who have grown up and pursued their education in independent Ukraine, showed their patriotism during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and in 2014, during the Revolution of Dignity. My two children, my students, and the whole generation of young Ukrainians that I know persuaded me that this movement towards freedom, an exodus from Egypt so to say, was key for all democracies.

Our war for independence, our anti-totalitarian, anti-colonial war, has already changed the destiny of our century. Even though it is going to last for a long time, I hope that the solidarity of the free countries and their capacity to defend our freedom, which we have discovered during this war, will persist.

The ability of Ukrainians to unite by defending their dignity and freedom is a signal that we have not yet exhausted our resources of unity. It could be a lesson for some extremely divided Western societies. We understand the fragility of the European Union and we really hope that democracies are going to prioritise issues that are important, deep, and necessary today.

Philippe de Lara: What you are saying is very important. Essentially, it is a crisis of our democracy. It is a crisis of our unity, which is founded on a deep doubt of the very existence of our national community, of the basic confidence we can have in our compatriots. The lessons we can learn from Ukraine are very important indeed.

Europeans understood very fast that they were at war themselves. In the beginning, there was a lot of talking about ‘the war at the doors of Europe’. But the realisation that the war is actually taking place in Europe came very quickly.

Still, there is an important step to take: to recognise, not just technically, but in essence, that we, Western Europeans, are at war with Russia. Because it is us, it is Europe in general, not only Ukraine, that Russia has attacked. Once this recognition comes, we are going to quickly further our support of Ukraine and provide the much-needed military aid.

When the full-scale war had just started, there were concerns about providing Ukraine with offensive rather than only defensive weapons. It is very significant that this notion, which had been very much present in the French public discourse, has disappeared. We have become aware that we are in this war, that it is a whole different challenge.

Kostiantyn Sigov: I was actually very surprised by this hesitation to recognise that the Russians actually hated the West. For many years, their TV channels have openly claimed that it is the West that they actually oppose.

This very battle against the dictatorial regime, which does not hide its aggressor's nature anymore, also changes the behaviour of collaborationists everywhere, including France, Italy, Spain, and other countries. I am not even talking about Hungary here, which is an exceptional case, real sabotage in the context of European defence and democratic Europe.

This crisis can change the situation in Europe in two ways. It can bring us closer. Or, on the contrary, it can divide us even more, in case Hungary and other countries become seduced by sabotage or get too afraid of Russian blackmail. Regular citizens in Europe do not realise that the Russian economy is, in fact, much weaker than the Italian, let alone French and German economies. It is like a gangster that wants to scare us, but, in reality, does not even have economic, cultural or spiritual means in plain geopolitics to become anyone’s competitor. So, in my opinion, we have to transcend this state of apathy, fear, and disorientation. It is very necessary.

Philippe de Lara: This awakening of Europe has two aspects. On one hand, we have to be aware that it is indeed extremely difficult because Russia started the hybrid war against the European nation a long time ago. Since the fall of the USSR, people who wanted to restore it immediately targeted the EU. They tried to establish a network of influence in our country to corrupt political and public figures. This process was going on on rather deep levels. On the other hand, our countries, at least the UK, Germany, and France, tried to get out of this trap, this mix of seduction, fear, and corruption that Russia tried to feed them. Seduction by power and fear by power, which is caused today by nuclear weapons and corruption.

There is also, I have to note, the development of the public debate. Of course, public opinion in France is not unanimous. Not everybody understands the war in Ukraine the same way. But still, there is more and more consensus about the existential nature of the conflict between European civilization and Russia.

What I see as positive evolution is the very fact that we stopped constantly speaking about “after the war”. There was a discourse that was pretty reassuring. We talked about the war and then immediately switched to talking about going back to normality, including in relations between Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. Europe did not want to accept the idea of a persisting opposition, an everlasting conflict between two civilizations, represented by Europe on the one hand, and by the Russian regime on the other hand.

Despite the aggression, all Ukrainians, not just the government, in the meantime manage to maintain communications, the Internet, power grids, railroads, and the organisation of the army. We see that this nation is extraordinary. The understanding of Ukraine beyond the war, plus the heroic power of Ukrainians continues to advance that very awareness about the Ukrainian cause. That Ukraine is Europe, or, more exactly, that Europe is Ukraine.

Sometimes my Ukrainian friends are a bit too pessimistic about France. They tend to see mostly negative signs. Like when our president said many times that we should not be embarrassing Russia. He does not say it anymore. They also sometimes underestimate the development of public opinion. For example, the conservative Le Figaro newspaper for many years was if not pro-Russian then sympathising with Putin. Since the beginning of the war, their editorial stance has changed completely. The newspaper's solidarity with Ukraine has become pretty evident.

This conversion of Europeans cannot happen immediately. It is a detoxification of sorts. We are getting rid of the poison that we were willingly taking for many decades. We were in the illusion of being out of history after the collapse of the USSR. It became difficult to recognise that we do have an enemy, we do have to fight it, and we do have to draw borders of security between us Europeans and hostile Russian power. We do not only have to defend Ukraine and help it liberate its territories. We also have to do something to make sure that Russia is incapable of attacking Europe anymore.

I would like to ask Kostiantyn the last question. There was a declaration from the Hermitage Museum, in which its director Mikhail Petrovsky declared his full support for militarism and imperialism, claiming that the Hermitage’s exhibitions abroad are a very powerful cultural attack, a “special operation” of sorts. Lots of people have found his statement disgusting, yet absurd rather than frightening. Can you please explain to us the challenge of a cultural war against Russian imperialism in Ukraine?

Kostiantyn Sigov: I believe that Petrovsky’s statement shocked people who did not want to notice the ideological stance of the biggest Russian museum. By the way, we

are still waiting for the response of its branches opened in Europe, which are now compliant with the imperialistic and militaristic views of the director who is obviously close to the Kremlin.

All this symbolic kitsch around the so-called Russian world, this symbolic decor vested in orthodox symbols, this whole mix has become truly explosive and toxic. We cannot be tolerant or even neutral to it anymore, it is simply impossible if we do not want to become collaborationists of sorts.

British journalist Peter Pomerantsev once said that by depending on Russian gas, Europe has become a victim of an abusive relationship. How should it liberate itself? Europe must end it as soon as possible. It is not going to be simple, but there is no other way. To get out of this abusive relationship, we have to clearly see the evolution of the regime.

When the atrocities of the Soviet regime became public, it punished the people who had uncovered them. The totalitarian regime confirmed that hell was not on the other side of the shore, it was here, in the USSR all along, and everyone should fear it because the regime can do whatever it wants.

We are together in this resistance. Even today, Ukrainian cities are bombed and lives are lost.

To stop this mortal insanity, we have to be much stronger and united when it comes to anti-Russian sanctions. We have to communicate to regular citizens in the West that they are absolutely necessary. It does, in fact, slow down the Russian war machine, even though the propaganda tries to make the world believe that sanctions are worse on other countries than they are on Russia itself. We should not be paying for the war. We should not buy Russian energy. More systemic embargoes and sanctions are necessary. It is the most peaceful way for the world to stop the aggressor.

I have just one more question for you. France and the EU say that Ukraine is part of the European family. How is it seen in France? How would the EU benefit from having Ukraine as a member state?

Philippe de Lara: Ukraine is indeed very welcome in the EU. For Ukraine, membership is going to be a helping hand in terms of security and economic prosperity. For us in the EU, on the other hand, Ukraine is a treasure that is not hidden anymore. The treasure of Ukrainian resistance is more deciding, knowledgeable, and specific. Ukraine, undoubtedly, is a big country in terms of its size, and it is going to enlarge the EU territorially. This tragic war made Europe aware of its real borders. The EU borders are actually the eastern borders of Ukraine and of the Baltic countries. Not just administrative, but civilizational borders.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

Simon Nielsen 10/13/22 Simon Nielsen 10/13/22

‘It is not the right moment to try and understand Russians.’ Sophia Andrukhovych In Dialogue With Orhan Pamuk

In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On July 8, Sophia Andrukhovych, Ukrainian author and translator, held a conversation with Orhan Pamuk, author and Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

By PEN Ukraine with Sophia Andrukhovych and Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk: Hello, I am very pleased to have this conversation. I am here, in my summerhouse, in Istanbul, away from the town. I want to ask you, Sofia, where are you now? Where were you when the war started and what were you doing at that moment?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Hello Orhan, hello everyone, thank you so much for having me. I was living in Kyiv when the war started. I have been for 17 years. I was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, a little town in the western part of Ukraine. And after the first week of the war, my family and I fled there. It all started when I woke up at 5 in the morning. I never wake up that early. I had this awful feeling I could not explain. I was just lying in my bed listening to silence. Then suddenly I heard an explosion and felt trembling.

Orhan Pamuk: Were you expecting something like this to happen when you went to sleep that night?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Yes. We were warned by the American and British governments. We knew that Russian forces were near our border. In a way, we were somewhat prepared, but you can never really prepare for something like this. I woke my husband up and told him that the war had started. Then immediately I thought, is our daughter going to school that day? Probably it was my conscience trying to make everything normal. Only then I understood: nothing will be the same anymore.

Orhan Pamuk: Did you immediately wake your daughter up?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Yes, I started packing things because we were hoping to flee on the first day. That’s when she woke up, and I tried not to scare her and to explain what was happening. She’s 14, so she was aware of the news.

Orhan Pamuk: And the explosions were continuing?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Yes, every 20 minutes or so. Although my memory may have changed a little. The sirens were on. We were told to hide in the bomb shelters because staying at our flat was dangerous. One of the shelters was the Kyiv Metro. I think you have been to Kyiv and have seen it yourselves before.

Orhan Pamuk: Yes, how far away was the subway station from you?

Sophia Andrukhovych: About 5 minutes. It was so unrealistic. This huge underground space is filled with hundreds of people. They were sitting so close to each other, with their cats and dogs. They were shocked. However, when I started to watch the people, I was surprised to notice how calm they were. They came with their suitcases, bags, and chairs, but they were very composed.

Orhan Pamuk: Back then, how long did you think the war would last?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I had somewhat naïve thoughts. I could not imagine that now, in our times, something like this could happen. When it started, I hoped that the world would not allow this. I hoped that other countries would interfere and influence the situation in some way. I hoped such an atrocity would be stopped. Now I see how naïve I was.

Orhan Pamuk: What did your husband say? If you were writing a novel set in that particular moment, what would the conversation between the two of you be like?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I asked my husband’s opinion on the situation. We talked about the Ukrainian troops, the people who volunteered and joined the Armed Forces, who took up arms to fight for our country. We also talked about what we had to do to stay alive. Those first days were mainly about surviving.

Orhan Pamuk: How long did you stay in the subway station that day?

Sophia Andrukhovych: About 6 hours. It became very tiring and depressing. We saw elderly people, sick people, and little crying children. So we decided to return home.

Orhan Pamuk: Sorry to ask, but were there toilets or food in the Kyiv Metro?

Sophia Andrukhovych: There was one toilet for this huge crowd of people. So, it was not very convenient. Every family had its food. But from the very beginning the desire to help each other, to make this situation easier, was obvious. Sharing food and helping people next to you with medicines felt like saving lives. It started then, and it is still going on, this willingness to help and to support.

Orhan Pamuk: It is so great to hear about this solidarity. But were there people who were acting egotistically, on their own? Sorry for this question.

Sophia Andrukhovych: I am sure there were, but I have not met them. I saw only kindness.

Orhan Pamuk: What did you learn about humanity throughout this process?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I have learned that humanity is kinder than I imagined it to be. But at the same time, I saw these horrible things going on: Russians killing, raping Ukrainians, ruining our cities. Of course, this radicalises Ukrainians. People cannot simply be kind when something like this is going on. We become tougher. We see everything in black and white. It is a survival mechanism working like that. When you are in danger, when it comes to life and death questions, you cannot perceive shades.

Orhan Pamuk: You are telling us very interesting things. Are you keeping a diary?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I am writing essays, and those essays are my diary. I did it every couple of weeks and I noticed that every essay was like a chronicle of what was happening to me.

Orhan Pamuk: During this whole time, including the moment just before the war, did you regret not doing something?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I do not think I have regrets about the time before the war. But, possibly, I have regrets about not doing enough during it. At the same time, I know it has to do with the radicalisation I mentioned before. You always demand from yourself to be the best, to be like the people you see and read about in the media. You constantly feel like you are not enough, and this is a humbling experience. You have to remind yourself every day that you can do only what you are capable of doing.

Orhan Pamuk: I understand. Besides the aggressive Russian army, what are you most angry about?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Maybe I am angry at the Ukrainian government for not doing enough before the war. They were warned about the situation and they could organise things more efficiently to save more human lives. But I also understand that these people were also experiencing something like this for the very first time. So, even though I am angry, at the same time I understand that it could be worse. They do what they can.

Orhan Pamuk: Do you have any family members or friends who died in the war?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Fortunately, I do not. I know many people who lost their homes, fled the country and were injured. But no one among my relatives and friends was killed. Except for Roman Ratushnyi, about whom you have probably heard. He was the son of my friend, a Ukrainian writer Svitlana Povalyaeva. I have known him since he was a kid.

Orhan Pamuk: Are you a different person now? Or are you the same person who has been through a radical experience?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I would not say I am different. It is rather a question of trauma. I am fortunate not to be traumatised in a way that would make me a different person. I am the same person, just with a much deeper experience and a constant feeling of death being close to me, to my loved ones, to everyone in Ukraine. Our life will never be the same anymore. Ever.

Orhan Pamuk: What is the side of your life that you miss the most?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I miss not having innocent dreams about the future anymore. I am sorry Ukrainians are so traumatised now that I do not know how we will manage this trauma. How much work do we have to do to overcome it and how long will this work take. Children who lost their parents and vice versa. People who lost their homes. Raped women and children. I cannot imagine how we, as a society, can cope with it. Although I believe that we have to do it eventually. There is no other choice.

Orhan Pamuk: What do you dream of most now?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I dream for the war to end.

Orhan Pamuk: Of course. And after it does, what do you dream would happen?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I suppose the best thing would be to see that my country is not endangered anymore. And to see that all of us have embraced our Ukrainian identity. This war is against our identity. It has been going on for hundreds of years. It has traumatised us before, and we have not worked through those traumas. Trauma is an awful thing, it does not allow us to live our lives fully. But at the same time, it can bring a new realisation of who you are, a new understanding of this particular moment in your life, and the things you cherish.

Orhan Pamuk: How come Russians are seemingly ignoring this war?

Sophia Andrukhovych: Russians see Ukrainians as second-class, lower-quality Russians. When they started this war, ironically, they made many Ukrainians realise that we are not the same. We do not want to be with them. We are our own people. While this war is an unnatural and awful thing, it made many of us realise, on a deeper level, our path. It strengthened our identity. I know for sure that for many Ukrainians at the moment it is better to die knowing who you are than to be with Russia.

Orhan Pamuk: Do you have strong negative feelings against the Russian people?

Sophia Andrukhovych: I do. I think it is natural. It is not the right moment to try and understand Russians. For me, it is way more important to analyse processes that are going on within ourselves, and in our society.

Orhan Pamuk: Who do you blame the most in the international community? Who is the most cynical? We are addressing writers, intellectuals, and journalists.

Sophia Andrukhovych: I would rather not name the exact people whom I blame. But the support we have now is not enough. The war is going on, and we cannot see the end of it. But at the same time, I realise that the world is united around Ukraine. I see this huge sincere help, and I feel it.

When the war started, the Russians wanted to destroy us completely. If Ukrainians did not want to be close to Russia, it was better for them not to exist at all. But it did not work the way the Russians wanted it to.

The huge interest in Ukraine brought by the full-scale invasion is very important. Everyone who has some kind of influence should try and learn more about us. To translate Ukrainian authors, to find out more about our history, to understand us better. The main thing is that we are noticed now. I hope this interest will only grow in the future.

Orhan Pamuk: I am shocked that such a war, just like WWII, is happening so close by. Due to this war, I now observe the Ukrainianness of the Ukrainian people. Besides the war, the nation is flourishing.

Edited by Cammie McAtee

The Empty Square