100 Days of Existential War Against Ukraine: I will never forget
Maksym Yali shares a personal reflection on the first 100 days of this full-scale war – the brutal experiences that he can never forget, and his fears for the future, posted 8 June 2022
Today I want to share my personal impressions and feelings after 100 days of Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, not only as a political expert, but as a person, whose family this bloody and horrible war will be following long after it will end. Just as millions of Ukrainians, who have already realized and felt all its horrible consequences not from TV news from a faraway country, but on his own skin. I want to share memories I will never forget, which have already left deep scars and wounds on my heart and soul, which keep bleeding. And conclusions I came to about the nature of this war.
There is a well-known proverb :”Time heals all sorrows”. From these one hundred days I have realized it does not. Now I can much better understand those veterans of the Second World War, who came to my school on Victory Day when there was such a tradition in the Soviet Union when I was an 8-9 year-old boy. And the sadness in their eyes and voice, when they were telling us stories about the war. Of course, they couldn’t tell to children in all details the horrors they have seen and witnessed. Though it has passed more then 30 years, I still remember how I was shocked listening to their stories.
Now I can tell plenty of them myself .
In the Soviet Union, just as in Russia nowdays, there was a cult of The Great Patriotic War. This war started not on the 1st of September 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, but on the 22nd of June 1941, when at 4 a.m., due to oficial Soviet propaganda, Nazi Germany attacked Soviet Ukraine and Belarus without declaring war.
The life irony is that, almost 81 years after that, myself and Ukrainian society as a whole were shocked to to wake up from explosions, but this time of Russian rockets and missiles early in the morning on the 24th of February. Just as our grandparents did in 1941. At that time the Nazi troops didn’t have such powerful long-range missiles, so they bombarded Kyiv from airplanes. Another life irony is that the missiles came from Belarus , which together with Ukraine suffered the most during World War Two.
Today, just as at that time, the war in Europe was started by two dictators.
The first one – Putin – just as his predecessor Hitler , led by his resentment, considers the collapse of USSR after the defeat in Cold War as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophy of the 20th century”. And he officialy stated many times, that the winners of it – the West led by US, humiliated and cheated Russia in the 1990s, promising not to broaden NATO , including the East European states, which were under its control after the Second World War, or even were parts of the Russian Empire until it collapsed during World War One after the October Revolution of 1917.
Another historical allegory is that, trying to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Putin constantly repeated that Ukraine is an “artificial state”, most of the territory of which were gifted to it in 1922 by Lenin – the architect of the USSR and the destroyer of the Russian Empire.
Now, 100 years after the USSR appeared, Putin wants to restore it, by returning “Russian historical territories” gifted to Ukraine by Lenin.
Without Ukraine, returning the Empire status, as ex-national security advisor to the US President during the Cold War and one of the brightest minds in political analysis, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wrote in his famous book “The Grand Chessboard” in 1997 , is impossible.
But Putin doesn’t see any historical contradictions.
The second dictator – self-proclaimed president of Belarus, Lukashenko, who bloodily suppressed the protest of his people in 2020 with the help of Russian police after he faked the results of presidential elections. Having become totally dependent on Putin after Western sanctions were imposed after that, gave the territory of Belarus for invasion of Ukraine. Both of them, just as Hitler and Mussolini in 1941, were sure of a “blitzkrieg ” strategy. Again, they were both wrong.
Just as most Ukrainians, including myself, who could not believe that such a bloody full-scale war may start in the center of Europe in the 21st century. Especially with the participation of Belarus, whose leader was reassuring us hundreds of times he will never let Russian troops attack us from its territory, persuading us that we are “brother-people”. Just as Putin did before and even after 2014.
I will never forget how I was woken up at about 6 a.m. by the call of my friend , who was asking me what that enormous explosion could mean. He lives in the private mansion just a few kilometers next to Kyiv.
“Maksym! What does it mean? Has war started?! My windows are trembling!”
I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, as I slept soundly that night.
I was trying to convince myself during the previous few days beforehand after Putin gave an order to recognize oficially so-called “DPR” and “LPR” as independent states, that it will end up with oficial occupation of those territories by Russian troops. Parts of which, mostly the officers and generals, were already there since 2014.
I will never forget the late call of another friend of mine on the 22nd of February after the famous TV speech of Putin on Russian Federal channels in the evening, in which during an hour he was furiously giving his absurd pseudo-historical arguments about the fakeness of sovereignty of Ukraine and the “gifts” of “historical territories” of Russia. My friend told me to take away my mother from Mariupol immediately, which was the biggest city in Ukraine-controlled territories in the Donetsk region, so was in danger of invasion much more then Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine.
But still, our positions in Donbass we very well fortified during the last eight years, so I was sure in any case there is some time left for evacuation . After my mother denied to come to me for a week to Kyiv, I asked her to think about it and to prepare. And went to bed. I knew how stubborn she was.
For me, as for most political experts, I couldn’t believe that there would be a full-scale invasion, because we knew it would fail – on account of several factors: military (Ukrainian Army in 2022 was much stronger than in 2014), attitude in society to Russia (much less supporters of Putin and good relations with Russia than in 2014, much more of those who considered Russia as an occupier and an enemy), economic (new sanctions from the West, much stricter than in 2014) and many others. We were all sure Putin was rational.
We were all wrong.
Why, is another question. Now I have some answers.
But then, as I wrote before, on the 24th of February it started.
I will never forget the panic in Kyiv during first days in Kyiv, thousands of cars stuck in traffic-jams on the roads on the exits from the city.
I will never forget the call from my 9 year-old son, who heard for thefirst time in his life explosions of missiles and shells :” Father, are you in a shelter? Did you hear that? I am so scared!”
I will never forget how I was helping him and his mother to evacuate to Slovakia and settle there in the first days of war.
I will never forget how my friend from the US called me that day and proposed her assistance , as she has friends there. Though we didn’t see each other since 2015 when we worked together in OSCE on elections in Kyiv.
I will never forget the first missiles hitting blocks-of-flats in Kyiv, first killed civilians, who were sleeping in their beds…
Explosions closer and closer to my house. Constant air-raid sirens most of us got used to and even don’t react now.
I will never forget how I was trying to reasure my mother and sister to evacuate from Mariupol in the last days of February. That time the situation in Kyiv was even worse than there, so my mother said that I overestimated the danger, when I was begging her to come to me to Kyiv just a few hours before invasion started and a few days after it began.
And then, when a week after I couldn’t reach her on the phone and Mariupol was besieged…
And borbardments and shelling in Mariupol never stopped since then…
Hundreds of children and women killed in a Drama Theater, after Russian bombers dropped a huge bombs on it… Every day, every hour, every minute of horrible news from Mariupol, which was the only obstacle on the way from Russia to Crimea.
For a few weeks I didn’t know anything about my mother. Wether she is alive or not.
I will never forget the call of my friend in the middle of March from Mariupol. How he was telling me the horrors of surviving in basements without food, water and constant shellings and bombardmens of russian aircrafts.
And when I asked him to check up whether my mother and sister were alive he told me:” Maksym! Sorry! I can’t! Though I am less then a kilometer away , I can’t do it! That district doesn’t exist anymore! Russians destroyed everything and they are already there!”
I will never forget how I felt after I heard him. For the first time I felt despair.
I will never forget when my niece called me a few days after that and said that she managed by lucky chance with her two small children and husband under constant shellings to escape from Mariupol to Berdyansk.
I was so happy to hear her voice after two weeks of silence from my family in Mariupol, which seemed to me like two years. But shellings were so heavy, that she couldn’t check for the last week on my mother and sister, who were living separately. So I still didn’t know whether they were alive or not.
I will never forget when we finally found a person who lived in nearby village who agreed to evacuate them.
I will never forget the hours of expectations before he called me to tell wether he found them or not. I knew by then that houses next to my mother’s were completely ruined, and my sister left her flat and was sitting in the basement. But it was a week before that, and since then the shellings and bombardments of Mariupol intensified enormously. So I a could only pray to God and hope they survived in that hell on earth.
I will never forget the relief when the volunteer finally called me and said he found my mother safe and sound, but didn’t find my sister. And my mother rejected to leave without her. So the next day there was another try. This time – successful.
I will never forget my feelings when I finally heard their voices! How happy I was. There were still days before they finally left occupied Berdyansk, loss of connection, then more than 20 check-points before they left occupied territories.
I will never forget the stories of my sister and niece about the horrors of living in besieged Mariupol, where every day of your life could be the last one. Not talking about the problems with water, food, killed people, corpses spread all around city.
One thing is to read about it or watch the news. Quite different, when you overcome it by yourself.
The nightmares these people saw follow them in nightmares even after they came to a safe place. The problem is also that these people due to their mentality don’t want to ask for psychological help. I still haven’t asked my mother what she came through, knowing how it hurts her feelings. But my sister and niece, who were seconds away from death several times, did talk.
I will never forget what I felt that time and still feel towards Russians, who came to my country to kill, rape women and children, steal everything they can find and take and destroy our houses and country.
The whole world saw what “Russian world ” means when it comes to your home in Bucha. How cruel it is.
The whole world saw the ruins of Mariupol, which was a beautiful and peaceful city near the sea, before Russians came there.
Now I am afraid the world will not see the crimes Russians committed there and the scale of it. More than 20 thousand civilians were killed there, burnt alive, many women raped. Now local authorities say the number may reach 40 thousand and more “brother graves” are being found near the city.
Still, hundreds of dead people are being found every day under ruins.
I am afraid the world will not know how many children, women and elderly people were killed in a Drama Theater in Mariupol after Russian pilots dropped huge bombs on it, no matter that there were huge three meter long letters “C.H.I.L.D.R.E.N” written on both sides.
I am afraid the world will not know how many civilians are still being killed under Russian shells and bombs today in Severodonetsk which is left the only town under partial control of Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Luhansk region. Because after the world got to know about the massacre in Bucha and imposed strict sanctions on Russia after that, they are thoroughly eleminating the proofs of their crimes in the towns and cities they occupy.
But most of all I am afraid that the world and Europe is getting tired of this war, watching the horrors it brings to Ukrainians every day.
The World and Europe are afraid more of inflation and the food crisis Putin is provoking, not allowing Ukrainian grain to be imported, blocking the only big port left under control in Odessa.
I am afraid European and world leaders are ready to come to “compromises” with Putin at our expense and the expense of our territories.
I am afraid they are ready to forget and forgive the horrors of Bucha, Mariupol and many others places in Ukraine, where millions of people lost their houses, tens of thousands of children lost their parents and were deported to far depressive corners of Russia. More than 1.5 million so far, due to official statistics.
I am afraid the world has not understood yet , that Putin doesn’t want to just bring back Ukraine under his control and brake our will to resist him, to make us his slaves, just as Russians are.
I am afraid people of Europe have not realized yet, that Putin wants also to ruin EU, because to make a deal on his conditions with separate governments is much easier then with a united, wealthy and strong European community.
Therefore he will anyway not stop and repeat migration crisis to Germany, France, Italy, Spain and other countries after the food crisis unfolds. Even if the west again, just as they did in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbass will shut their eyes, preferring to come back to “business as usual ” policy, buying cheap oil and gas. Just the same as after he provoked migration crises to the EU from Syria, having erased Aleppo in 2015 . Instead of strict sanctions, Western leaders, led by US President Obama , brought him back to the table of negotiations.
Germany started constructing “North Stream -1”, then “North Stream -2”, allowing Putun to get rid of the biggest obstacle for the invasion of Ukraine – its gas-transportation system, through which Russian gas was coming to Europe.
I am afraid Europe and the West has not realized yet that Putin is waging war not against Ukraine, trying to restore USSR or the Russian Empire. He is waging war against the free world and the world order where freedom, democracy, human rights, dignity are not futile words, as in Russia. But a backbone he wants to break.
And if the West will not help Ukrainians to break his Army’s backbone with much needed heavy weapons MLRS , being afraid of his nuclear blackmail, food crisis, inflation, high gas prises, migration crisis etc preferring to let him “save his face” at the expense of our territories and hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded, orphaned, millions of deported etc, after reaching his goals in Ukraine, Putin will not stop.
He will go further. Just as Hitler did in 1938 after “Munich collusion ” with France and Great Britain about Sudets.
Because it is existential war not only for Ukraine , but for the free world as a whole.
The means and tools may differ. But not the final goal.
