The Voices of Ukrainians

  “Mom, how long are we going to stay here in the Czech Republic?” 8 year old Bodya asked Anya as they walked home one day. “I’m not sure.  One month, maybe two.  We have to get you and your brother back to Ukraine before school starts in September.”   Anya had only brought the boys back to Czech Republic from Ukraine earlier in the week.  “Why are you asking?”   “It’s easier here in the Czech Republic.  It’s easier away from the war.  I’m tired of the war.  In Ukraine everyone is always talking about the war.  I just wish that they would stop.  At night the sirens wake me up and I don’t like the sound.  I’m tired of always having to go to the basement during school.  And I don’t like the sound of the explosions.” Each sentence that Bodya spoke hit Anya like a punch in the stomach.   Bodya and the rest of his family in Kyiv, Ukraine had just lived through the two most difficult months that that part of U...

     I have been in Ukraine during many air raid alerts and have been close enough to hear and feel a number of explosions (primarily Russian missile being shot out of the sky), but, strangely, I haven’t actually been around Ukrainians throughout the duration of an air raid until this past week.   I had gone to a small warehouse store where I buy nails for my framing gun.  In the middle of placing my order, everyone’s phones started dinging.  Kyiv was under an air raid alert.  The young man who was helping me just kept working on his computer, but his colleague immediately stood up, looking at her phone and started wondering out loud if we should go to a shelter or if we should stay put.  Within a few seconds another worker came in from outside, and a lady came down the stairs.  They were all on their phones.   “Ballistic missiles.”   said the man “… heading towards the Kyiv area.”  Said the woman who had just come d...

Late in 2022, I was driving to visit our friends in the outskirts of Kyiv.  As I neared their house in a more residential area, I watched as, ahead of me, about 30 kids crossed at the crosswalk.  This was the middle of a school day, so I was immediately curious what they were doing.  As I watched, they joined 50-100 people who lined the side of the road.  Some had Ukrainian flags, some had flowers.  It was a somber group. Something was happening, though I didn’t yet know what.  The light turned green, and I drove forward along the crowd with the other cars.  We kept our speed down. As I approached the end of the line of people, I saw two things.  A police car came around the corner, driving slowly with lights flashing.  Behind the police car was a military personnel vehicle with flags flying on both sides.   At the same time, on my side of the road, at the end of the line I saw a man in the crowd step forward and throw a sm...

 One thing that didn't make it into this video:  I asked Pasha if he was scared when the air raid sirens went off.  He said that at first, it was scary, but you get used to it.  Every time he heard the sirens, there was this thought of, "This could be the time I am hit by a missile."  But you know that the statistics are really small and the country is really big.  So you move on with your day.   I completely relate to this from my time in Ukraine.  

    We moved to Ukraine in 2011 before Ukraine grabbed the world's attention.   Before the Maidan Revolution.   Before former president, Viktor Yanukovich fled the country to Russia.   Before Russian forces moved in annexed Crimea.   Before Russians started paying people to come into the Donbas and carryout what they falsely labeled as a civil war in Ukraine.   And long before the full scale invasion of 2022, when Ukraine surprised the world by holding off the world’s second most powerful army.   I recently met a lady in the Czech Republic who was amazed at the resilience that Ukraine has shown as they are standing up to a much larger army.  She noted that the Czech people have had professional armies to defend them … but those armies have never done a thing.  She was referring mostly WWII and the Czech Revolution in 1958 that was put down with little resistance by the Soviets.  Her perspective piqued my curiosity and we ended ...

Written April 2022 Just a few weeks after our group fled to the Czech Republic, I went to visit Anya’s apartment.  I found a bag sitting in the hallway in front of their door.  It had a globe and some drinking glasses in it.  I assumed that some one had just left a small a gift for the family, so I took it in.   The next day, Anya had me look more closely at the globe.  Most of Europe was smudged out and a smiley face was drawn there.  There were little arrows drawn to different parts of the world.   My first thought was that a kid had made marks to places that he had heard about or wanted to travel to.         Anya saw a more sinister message.  A message to the refugees that they should go home.  Europe was a happy place where they were not welcome.         I’ve been around enough marginalized people to understand that while every perceived discrimination may not be real, only fools do...

At the end of 2022, Lena and I tried to cross the border from Ukraine on our way back to the Czech Republic and Lena was rejected at the Polish border in spite of having done everything right.   When our group fled to the Czech Republic, they were granted refugee status immediately.  This originally came with some restrictions: namely, they wouldn’t be allowed to return to Ukraine without forfeiting their refugee visas and getting themselves restricted from returning to the Czech Republic.  Since none of us had ever been refugees before, we had no idea that this is standard procedure in most countries for people who are fleeing violence in their home countries.  When, two days after fleeing Ukraine, our group went and registered, none of us had a full appreciation of these restrictions. We were just grateful that for the moment, we didn’t have to worry about whether we would be able to stay or not until we figured out what to do next.   Our group had fle...