Tracing Patterns – Kyiv, Tuesday, March 14th
When I’m in Kyiv, it’s my (very fortunate) habit to walk around Shevchenko Park in the dignified downtown area in the mornings. People with dogs, early-arriving old-man chess players, street sweepers.. Improbable calm in a nation victimised with violence.
I notice that the kids’ playground – where I’ve played in the past with young relatives who are now refugees – has been fully restored after having been destroyed in a ruZZian rocket attack. The ceramic «бабця» (granny) that’s looked over generations of Kyiv kids has survived and continues to maintain her ceaseless watch over and into this country’s future.
I finish my slow laps of faux exercise and head back to my room to prepar3 for a panel discussion today. It’s about why (the hell) the Russian Federation will chair the UN Security Council from April 1st — an awful April Fool’s if ever there was one. We all contribute what we can – even if it’s only words of solidarity.
I notice that I’m on the intersection between the glaring red building of Taras Shevchenko University and the monument to Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the World War 1 era leader, historian and father of Ukrainian academe. It should by rights be a corner that reminds of Ukrainian aspirations for excellence.
This morning, though, I’m reminded that this is the intersection where a leading young female oncologist died from a ruZZian rocket. It was a regular morning like today; she was doing one of the rituals of modern urban life — whether its Kyiv or Canberra or Etobicoke. She’d dropped her kid at childcare and was driving to work in the usual morning traffic.
What a tragedy especially for her orphaned child. What a waste of the wonderful contribution this woman was making and would now be making but not for some delusional old men.
But Kyiv has signs of preparing to right that wrong and the many others that have occurred since February 2022. On Telegram channels – the ubiquitous source of news here – there’s reports of tank crews finishing their Leopard 2 training in Spain and Germany. On another channel, Atesh, a partisan movement in Krym, reports blowing up an occupation administrator in his car. More than an eye for an eye.
In the streets, posters on bus stop shelters seek volunteers for the new military units being specifically organised for «наступ» or attack and recovery of currently occupied territories. (The world – with only Bakhmut to fixate on – seemingly forgets that Ukraine has recovered about 50% of territory lost during the full-scale invasion.) Well-trained men and women are being matched to the best military technology there is in preparation for what’s next.
They are to supplement all those that have held until now. I’ve written a piece soon to be published in Kyiv Post about a 60 year old sniper – and master jeweller – who has served all over the country since the invasion. Over a family dinner, a young officer recounted being greeted by partisans – modern-day UPA fighters – as his unit liberated a village in Kherson oblast. They proudly showed off the RPGs they’d hidden in rubbish bins and had used on ruZZian forces.
I think of the great Брати Гадюкіни fight song from the independence era about the prepared farmer with a bomb in his attic.
As it was for that farmer waiting for his chance, it’s not “if” or “how” here in terms of pushing the ruZZians out – it’s only about the calendar and the climate. Everyone has theories of when that might be and where. Melitopol makes military sense, but the Ukrainian military has showed its skills of surprise time and again. Because many international embassy staff and NGO personnel are rumoured to be returning on July 1, folks speculate that maybe that’s when “things will be safe”.
But for now no one – except for those who are meant to – knows and that very, very much includes an Australian scribbler.
I can only but walk my morning laps and hope for the best.
