NEED TO KNOW

Carrying On

UKRAINE

Tatiana Putria is a nurse in the Kherson region of Ukraine.

“I am not a hero, I am a medic,” Putria told the United Nations Population Fund. “Often we are afraid to drive to certain areas. Sometimes, the residents say to us, ‘We just had a shelling this morning. How did you come here, how are you not afraid?’ All I can say is I just love my job, I love people. I am happy to help them as much as I can.”

She is an example of how Ukrainians are keeping calm and carrying on despite enormous hardships as they seek to rebuff Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the former Soviet republic.

Their defense has taken an enormous physical and psychological toll, however. Russian artillery has demolished 44,000 buildings and other infrastructure in the city of Kherson, the provincial capital, noted Al Jazeera. Vast cities like Mariupol have been wiped out and now property there faces seizure by Russians under dubious Russian laws to consolidate control, added the Economist.

Putria and others’ trauma have shattered them, too, on a scale not seen in Europe since the Second World War. “Wives have become widows, parents long for captured sons, classrooms are empty and farmers can’t find the hands to work the land,” wrote Reuters. “Unlikely friendships have formed; old ones have fallen apart.”

Speaking to National Public Radio, Ukrainian journalist Yaroslav Trofimov and art curator and journalist Kateryna Iakovlenko recounted how the war’s violence has touched every Ukrainian, from those who stay in the country to the refugees who have fled elsewhere for safety. However, Putin’s chauvinism against the Ukrainian people and state fuels their drive to resist him, they said. Putin has famously claimed there are no “Ukrainian people,” Time explained.

While they are certainly one nation judging by the blood they’ve spilled since Russia invaded in early 2022, the Ukrainians are also showing signs of weakening resolve. Draft dodging, for instance, has become more widespread as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeks to recruit as many as 500,000 more personnel into the military’s ranks, reported the Washington Post.

Ukrainian officials are serious about enrolling fighters. By law, males aged between 18 and 60 years old cannot leave the country without permission. They and Moldovan officials are also now discussing how to return home Ukrainians who flee the draft by heading into that neighboring country, added RBC Ukraine, an independent local news agency.

In Vovchansk near the Russian border, one can only keep calm and carry on for so long. Captured by the Russians in 2022 before being recaptured by Ukraine, it’s been under bombardment since May and is again invaded by Russians. It’s a shell of its former self now.

Many of its residents fled. Others hide in basements – evacuating is dangerous, too.

Liudmyla Kuznetsova, 79, said she and her family were among the last to leave, she told NPR. “Whenever the doors and windows were blown off [our home], we would just repair them,” she said.

But she ran out of supplies.

To read the full edition and support independent journalism, join our community of informed readers and subscribe today!