A few days ago, Ukrainian activist and soldier Roman Ratushniy was laid to rest in the city of my birth, Kyiv. Roman and I didn’t know each other, but my father knew him and spoke admiringly of his work in protecting Protasiv Yar, a green zone not far from our house, from unscrupulous developers.
I wake up, see the news and every other morning either a friend, a friend of a friend, a journalist or a NGO person turned soldier is killed by Russian fire on the front in Ukraine. It’s a horror. And we debate 10 or 12 haubitzes. Kyiv says it needs 1000. RIP Roman Ratushniy. pic.twitter.com/p5NOMZqoL4
— Ani Chkhikvadze (@achkhikvadze) June 14, 2022
Roman was a very blunt man. “The more Russians we kill now, the less Russians our children will have to kill,” he had written recently. Some observers outside of Ukraine will undoubtedly consider this statement very harsh — I can just imagine the predictable screeching and pearl-clutching from certain German officials on the subject — but in Ukraine, people know Roman to be right. This war isn’t a misunderstanding between neighbors. It’s a war of survival.
Roman represents a new generation of Ukrainians — when he was killed in combat, he was just shy of his 25th birthday — who want their country to be not just prosperous but beautiful, filled to the brim with life. It’s disgusting that these are the people who are forced to pick up a weapon and go kill invaders now, because Putin decided that Ukrainians should not be allowed to have a country. Sometimes, life needs to be violently fought for, though.
This war isn’t a misunderstanding between neighbors. It’s a war of survival.
This generation is the very antithesis of the people who walk the Kremlin’s halls. It’s young vs old, builders vs destroyers, new vs stale. The Kremlin is the domain of the undead, a place where no original thought can survive. Today, the Russian government offers nothing profound to the world except for misery and angry threats of nuclear doom. Meanwhile, people like Roman want trees to grow and business to be honest, society to be peaceful, life to be long and good and full of plot twists no one could imagine under Soviet rule.
I’m older than Roman by more than a decade and I remember Soviet rule — its decaying, limp stage. My father knew Soviet rule even better, which was why he was so electrified by the ideas people like Roman brought to the table. The very notion that things can and must change for the better filled him with hope. My father is gone now, as is Roman. Others, however, will take their place. The one resource Ukraine never quite seems to run out of is determination.
The neighborhood, our neighborhood, that Roman helped protect when he was alive, is the kind of place where the ladies selling fruit in kiosks know their customers by name. Shiny new restaurants share the street blocks with dive bars. Church bells mingle with traffic noise. There’s skiing in the winter and ice cream stands in the summer. Everyone complains about the bus schedule. The trees are old. College students mingle with laborers, who mingle with great writers, who mingle with tired businessmen. The hills in the park are tough to climb but the views make you think you may have stumbled into another time entirely — back when there was no Moscow to speak of and Kyiv was wild and young.
The one resource Ukraine never quite seems to run out of is determination.
This is a season of death and grief for all of us, locals and expats, the diaspora, the refugees, and many other people who have tied their lives to Ukraine in one way or another. What’s amazing about it is the clarity it brings. I know what Roman fought for, what he died for.
I know the love that was in his heart, because I also feel it. It’s bigger than the love of land or the love of people, though these are certainly big things, it’s a love for existence itself. Existence and not survival. That kind of life that you can observe and appreciate and give thanks for — even when all that you are doing is buying apples from a chatty woman in a kiosk who has pictures of her grandchildren to show you on her phone.
This love is not perfect, but then again, Ukraine was never meant to be the perfect victim. Perfect victims are the domain of moral cowards. Ukrainians are not fighting for a paradise, what they are fighting for is the very fabric of their reality — their right to be who they are.
They must win.
Image: George Chernilevsky
