FIGHTING TO SURVIVE

UKRAINE’S NIGHTMARES

At 4.00 AM, 22 June 1941, Luftwaffe began bombing Kyiv, the capital of then Soviet Ukraine. One of the first episodes of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR, the air attack on sleeping Kyivans symbolises Nazi villainy and cruelty remembered by generations of Ukrainians.

At 4.00 AM on 24 February 2022 – having celebrated the so-called “Defender of the Fatherland’s Day”, one of Russia’s most venerable holidays – its air forces started striking resting Ukrainian settlements…

“I could never imagine in my life that my childhood nightmares would return one day,” says Dina Sviderska, an 83-year old survivor of WWII, recollecting the days, when her family hid from Nazi bombs in a basement.

Today, she again has to look for an underground shelter, every time an air alert sounds in one of Kyiv’s districts.

UNTHINKABLE REALITY

Apparently, Vladimir Putin planned his invasion for quite a long time, with Russian troops and weapons gradually deployed all along Ukraine’s overland borders, as well as along the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

His intentions were not clear – it was difficult to distinguish between his bluff and real war preparations.

“Until the very last moment, we did not believe that the Kremlin would dare wage a fully-fledged war,” Andriy Yermak, Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, recently admitted to the media.

The level of hypocrisy of Alexander Lukashenko, the long-time Belarusian dictator, is another thing that was hard to imagine.

Ukraine and Belarus share hundreds of miles of common borders and centuries of interwoven history. Both viewing each other as good neighbours, they used to cherish friendly relations, no matter differences in political systems.

While maintaining his loyalty to Moscow, the self-proclaimed Belarusian president repeatedly pledged to refrain from any hostile act towards his “Ukrainian brothers”.

In reality, Putin and Lukashenko transformed Belarus into a launch base for Russian rockets and troops targeting Kyiv, located approximately 90 miles south of the Belarusian border.

Advancing from several directions, the invaders planned to encircle the capital. With, however, the Ukrainian army preventing the possible siege, furious Russians have razed Kyiv’s suburbs to the ground, killing and wounding numerous civilians.

Scared by the escalating violence, many families have had to flee their destroyed homes. As a result, Ukraine’s largest metropolis has lost about half of its pre-war 3 three million population, according to Vitali Klitschko, Mayor of Kyiv. 

DELUDED IDEAS

Since Soviet rule with its policy of centralisation and “Russification” (through education, culture, administration etc.), many ethnic Ukrainians in the country’s heavily urbanised and industrialised eastern and southern regions have used Russian as their everyday speech.

While the majority of Ukrainians are bilingual, the Kremlin has made the “protection of Russian language” a milestone of its “Ukrainian policy”, with the occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014. This year’s aggression is doubtless intended to extend this policy.

Just like Berlin in the 1930s justified the annexation of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia by its “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!” notion, 21st Century Moscow has developed its “Russian World” concept to substantiate its territorial claims.

It is by no means, however, a common parlance that determines a people’s self-identification.

Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second most populous city, lies just around 25 miles from the border with Russia. Following weeks of endless fire, the Russian artillery has turned it into ruins, but not managed to force the 1.5 million of its mainly Russian-speaking inhabitants to surrender.

“Moscow had promised to save the people from “Ukrainian fascists”, but has instead expelled them from their homes,” So says 48-year-old Kharkiv-born Oleksandr Sydorenko, describing the fate of the thousands of homeless currently living on the platforms of local subways.

HELL ON EARTH

Glorified by domestic propaganda as the second strongest military force in the world, the Russian army has increasingly adopted barbaric tactics since its conflicts in Chechnya in the 1990s and 2000s.

Back then, the Russian army demolished Grozny, the rebel province’s capital city, and launched a genocide against local civilians. The same inhuman approach was deployed in Aleppo, Syria and is today manifest in Ukraine’s Mariupol.

Obsessed with the idea of cutting an overland corridor to the annexed Crimea along the Ukrainian coast of the Sea of Azov, Putin sees the resistance of Mariupol as the main obstacle to his plans.

As the Ukrainian stronghold has been in a prolonged assault, Russian air attacks have ruined the city’s infrastructure and destroyed about 80 per cent of its residential areas.

With no heat, electricity, medicines, food and even drinking water, the locals are dying in their basements and out on the streets. The Russian “liberators” have turned the Russian-speaking city into hell on Earth, its pre-war population of over 0.5 million now nearly halved…

WAR AGAINST CIVILISATION

The “special operation in Ukraine”, as it is cynically labelled by Moscow, to camouflage its unprovoked aggression, has quickly proved to be the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945.

Having invaded Ukraine, totalitarian Russia has effectively declared war on global democracy, humanity and civilisation.

If it is not stopped in Ukraine, it will go further. The Ukraine will not surrender, we will defend our right to sovereignty and basic human rights. We thank the democratic nations of the world for their continuing support against the Putin led aggression.