Ukraine (6)

12/7

Another pre-sunrise start on a train for me, starting to get to know the route to the train station very well. I travelled to Ivano-Frankivsk with Yulia who is a lovely young lady working at the Baptist Seminary who has been helping us out with translation. Thankfully this was only a 2 hr ride. Our first visit was with an organisation called FILTER. This is another group of totally inspiring young Ukrainian Christians. They are from several different churches and have set up a resource centre for young refugees from the war. It includes a social enterprise café and a sewing social enterprise that sews and sells civilian clothes and donates quality military clothing to the soldiers. Amazingly they had things going within days of the war starting and refugees arriving. And now many of those refugees are also volunteering and helping. They also have a fantastic educational program that is about helping ‘change the mindset’ of society. So often we’ve heard people talk about the damage caused by the ‘Soviet mentality’. They want to work to undo this and instead instil values such as mercy, selflessness, giving, and love, as a bedrock for their nation into the future. Their dream is of a Ukraine driven by Christian values and the building of a new nation with a strong civil society free of the ‘scars of Soviet history’. Just a really fantastic group of people. You’ll have to check out some of the footage when we put all the video together.

Then we met with the American family that Becky had connected me with. The guy had spent a lot of his childhood in Ukraine where his father had been a missionary. He had married a Ukrainian and had five kids born in Ukraine. They lived in Kharkiv but fled when the war started. They had some interesting stories about those initial days and the impact on the kids’ friends and children that they knew. There was a lot of psychological trauma, nightmares, flashbacks, fear of loud noises, as well as physical manifestations of psychological hurt. They knew people from their old town that had lived in basements and subway stations to survive. A neighbour had been killed by shrapnel as he mowed the lawn. Sadly though, when I tried to ask them for messages to the world, their answers were strangely different to that of all the native Ukrainians with some ‘discussion’ about whether this war could be ‘justified’ if it wasn’t a ‘winnable war’, that Russians aren’t that bad, that it seems to be more about corrupt market traders making money out of war. I have no doubt some of those things happen but it doesn’t change the pure evil being perpetrated by Russia on their adopted country. Quite frankly some of it sounded like Russian talking points. It was good to hear the kids talk about their personal experiences of growing closer to God and realising the futility of material ties but I thought their comments about being ‘citizens of heaven’ first were easy to make given they had another country to run to (USA) if they needed and were about to go on a fundraising tour of Europe. All whilst citizens of Ukraine are left under Russian occupation, being raped, deported, tortured, their homes bombed with no other options to go elsewhere… Poor Yulia was so upset and angry and to be honest I became more upset the more I thought about this conversation. Later we were walking through town and going past rows of posters of dead soldiers and she got angry – “how dare they talk like that when these soldiers are dying for them and they can just go back to America any time they want.” Fair point. It just highlighted for me the dangers ahead for Ukraine and the vital importance of placing the future of their country firmly in the hands of Ukrainians themselves and not others regardless of how well meaning. We can support and contribute but they need to drive the way forward themselves.

We had a little time to kill before the train and so we went to a nice café that is run as a community enterprise and community radio station. Then back on the train to Lviv. At the station I heard a jet and didn’t think anything of it until I saw everyone looking and starting and then I remembered there are no commercial flights in Ukraine during this war. I looked up and it was a fighter jet. No wonder everyone was nervously watching. But all was okay for now.

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Lviv train station at sunrise

Yulia in Ivano Frankivsk with posters of dead soldiers in the background

One of Filter’s social enterprises

Some of the amazing FILTER team

Filter employs refugees who sew clothes for selling and also for the military

13/7

So last night there was another air raid alert. It woke me up but it was clear fairly early on that it wasn’t really a problem for us in Lviv so didn’t rush off to shelter. Looked like the Russians were a bit peeved about the NATO summit as they really hit Kyiv hard last night as Zelensky arrived back. They also intensified the already intense shelling in other parts. It was sobering to look at the places that got badly shelled yesterday. One of them was Stanislav, the town where I’d just visited and interviewed all those brave ladies and that man who had lived through occupation. I hope they are okay.

John, Elsie, Yulia and I jumped on an 8 hour train to Kyiv. Compared to what I’ve been on lately it felt like absolute luxury – comfy seats, tray tables, toilets and power points. John and Elsie might think I was making up my tales of the other trains!

We arrived in Kyiv and as in all the other cities, the train station was full of soldiers coming and going to and from leave. Everywhere you go in Ukraine there are signs about joining the army, or building up the morale of the army or thanking the army for being their defenders and heroes. There is not one corner of this country, even the most peaceful corner, where you can forget that this country is at war and has been invaded.

Every station has the obligatory sign of being a bomb shelter

Fertile fields everywhere

Beautiful countryside seen from the train

Little old ladies (“Babusya’s” or grandmas ) come in from the villages to sell a few vegetables, berries, mushrooms or flowers for some small income.

Ad to join the new offensive

14/7

Today was emotionally brutal. And that was just interviewing and listening to the stories so imagine what it is like to live these stories… We spent the day at Save Ukraine. An organisation set up by a Ukrainian that provides rescue and refuge for children from war ravaged/de-occupied areas/the frontline and also the few kidnapped/deported children who have been rescued/returned from Russia. Everyone has a story, even the staff. Many of the staff are themselves refugees or people who came to the shelter with their children. But all have a story. Even the manager who lives here, at one point said “Every child in this country is affected – millions of them. Even here where it not so affected – as a mother- every night I worry if a missile strike will come for my children. Every thunderstorm or loud car noise brings that fear.” The International Communications manager ended up talking to me a little after our initial interviews and as I asked about her family it turned out that her husband had PTSD and injuries from the first Russian invasion in 2014. It turned out a group of them were blown up by a mine and he was the only one who survived. Then she felt embarrassed about telling me this saying “You didn’t come to hear about that.” But all these stories are important. Now she works to rescue people affected by the second invasion.

At first I thought we might be intruding a bit, I’m sure they are busy. And I know there’s been a bit of media so maybe they’re a bit sick of telling their stories. But maybe because we were keen to interview people and hear stories – they seemed eager to tell them. They lined up interviews that kept us going for 7 brutal non-stop hours of videoing and traumatic stories of horror. There would have been more but quite a few of the people were too traumatised to speak and withdrew. There were gorgeous children running around everywhere. Most of the younger ones looked happy and reports were that they were responding well to the art therapy, play therapy and secure and safe environment. One of the babies still looked a little too reserved for a baby and his mother reported that he still gets very upset at loud noises after having lived under bombing. His mother had severe psoriasis which is a skin disease exacerbated by stress and she said that currently no treatments are helping at all. John asked her how she saw the future and she couldn’t talk more after that – she said she couldn’t think about that right now. It was too early to ask her- she’s only barely dealing with her present. Her house is destroyed, if not for this refuge that she found out about at the train station as she fled the bombing with her children, she would be completely homeless. What her future holds for now she doesn’t know. We didn’t speak each others language but we hugged, and she held me tight for a long time. It was a language we could both speak…

Another gorgeous little boy was wearing a camouflage army style outfit and John made a comment about him being a handsome little soldier. His mother just grimly said “I hope and pray he never has to be a soldier.”

Many other stories were shared about running from bombing and artillery, being hit with pieces of shrapnel. Hollow eyed people told about coming out of their building after missiles to find the bodies of neighbours in their yards. A 16 year old boy sat quietly as he listened to his grandmother cry as she told she was the carer of her grandchildren and had worked hard to build up an apartment for her grandchildren and now it was destroyed, they were homeless and she was old and had no way to provide for them anymore. The boy only managed a half smile when I commented how grateful he must be to still have her, such a loving grandmother. Otherwise his eyes just looked far away, like eyes that had seen things they should never have seen.

Save Ukraine refuge centre

Sad to see some of the images the kids drew but good to see how the themes changed with time and healing

An art therapy activity

The play therapy room

Refugee kids playing in the refuge

The director of the Hope and Healing centre

This gorgeous child has come from a war zone where her house was destroyed by bombs

One of the workers there, Andriy, told how he had been a soldier in the first invasion in 2014. Because of this, when the Russians arrived to his area they targeted him and arrested him. He was tortured and beaten for over a month and by some miraculous negotiations he was freed and able to join his wife and kids who had been rescued by this organisation. He now works tirelessly to help others here at Save Ukraine and is even still able to laugh. Our eyes connected many times throughout this translated conversation (which I was able to pick up snippets of before it was translated) and it was all I could do to not start sobbing. He also told how their village mayor had been bought out by Russians and collaborated with them (he has now fled to Russia). He was coming door to door encouraging families to send their children to ‘summer camp’ for a ‘rest’ in occupied territories. As he said “they arrest me and beat me and I will send my children to them?”. Thankfully his village were quite suspicious, and no one trusted their kids to this offer. He later heard about other villages that had and their children were essentially kidnapped and not returned. We now know some of the stories of how they are being brainwashed and manipulated by the Russians to become pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian and the older ones undergo military training. The situation is complex and there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work going on to rescue what they think is around 20000 such children who have been deported to Russia from occupied territories.

Most of the mothers told of their children screaming in their sleep and experiencing ‘horrors’ and ‘hysteria’, frightened by any loud sounds or voices. But any that had been there a month or more also told of how much better their kids were now that they were safe and had been undergoing art and play therapy. We watched some of the play therapy and also the love shown to the people by the workers here – very inspirational. It is not officially a faith-based organisation but they kind of refer to themselves as that as almost all of them are from various Christian churches.

The interviews went non-stop and it was getting to evening. Even then, Anna, the lovely director didn’t seem to want to let us go and we talked some more, and hugged and shared. Yulia told her about my Ukrainian connections and how I had brought the Ukrainian soil from my grandmother and she became teary which then of course made me teary. It was all very emotional. You can see she has such a beautiful heart and a love for the people and the work she is doing. They all do. She kept thanking us for coming, for listening. She told us she thought we were heroes because we had left our safe, peaceful country so far away to come here and listen. Because she goes out to a neighbouring country for a meeting and still feels anxious every time she comes back into her country under bombardment. But yet she stays, and she helps – they are the real heroes.

After interviewing all day with no breaks or food we were hungry – Anna suggested a good place for local food which was on Maidan Square (the site of the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 where many Ukrainians were killed – for context I highly recommend watching ‘Winter on Fire’ documentary available on line for free – gives good context to this war also). We enjoyed a delicious traditional dinner of Borscht, Chicken Kyiv and Varenikyi ( dumplings).

Then we had a very sobering walk around Maidan Square – where the ‘Heavenly Hundred’ (those who sacrificed their lives in the Revolution were killed) are memorialised. For more context I would highly recommend the free documentary on YouTube or Netflix called ‘winter on fire’.

In addition , at the front of the square, on the lawn, were thousands of photos, mementos and flags – each flag bearing the name of a fallen soldier in this war. And these are just for those who could plant a flag here. Many families have lost soldiers in the far corners of Ukraine with no way to travel here. It was sobering and heartbreaking… how many more flags will be planted here before the war is over??