Fight… and overcome

15 Mar 22 | News and features, Russia, Ukraine

Vasyl Symonenko (1935-1963), a Ukrainian dissident poet, died after a brutal attack by the Soviet police in Smila, Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. His death was likely connected to his interest in the mass graves at Bykivnia forest outside Kyiv, where the Soviet regime buried tens of thousands of its victims. His poem To A Kurdish Brother can be read as a call to his Ukrainian compatriots to rise against the Soviet regime. The Soviets had committed genocide against Ukrainians during the 1930s, exterminating millions of them during the Holodomor, a forced famine accompanied by mass executions. In the post war period the regime was slowly choking the remains of Ukrainian identity under the guise of “internationalism” by assimilating Ukraine’s people into Russian culture. Putin’s war is the Russian empire’s final effort to destroy Ukrainian identity, but it relates directly to hundreds of years of oppression.

To A Kurdish Brother

by Vasyl Symonenko

Fight… and overcome! Taras Shevchenko

The mountains cry, drenched in blood,

The battered stars fall down:

The fragrant valleys gouged and wounded,

Where chauvinism’s hunger tears in.

Oh, Kurd, conserve your ammo,

But don’t spare the lives of murderers.

Fall as a whirlwind of blood now

On these pillaging lawless bastards.

.

Only talk to them with bullets true:

They did not come just to take all you own,

But for your name and language too

And leave your son an orphan.

The oppressor will “rule” while you haul the cart

So you cannot consent to live with them

Drinking the blood of oppressed peoples they grow fat

For chauvinism is our most savage foe.

He will do anything, so that you submit,

He has betrothed treachery with shame,

Oh, Kurd, conserve each bullet,

For without them you won’t save your kin.

Do not lull to sleep the power of your hate,

Until the last chauvinist on the planet falls,

Into their open grave, only then take

Tenderness as your motto, however it calls.

—

Lina Kostenko was born into a family of teachers on 19 March 1930 in Rzhyshchiv, Ukraine. According to this poem, she wrote her first poem on the walls of a dug-out in World War II. It’s unlikely that this is poetic licence. Kostenko is a poet who is both highly literary, mixing references to Shakespeare and Gogol, but also very honest and accessible. That first poem written as shells fell around her has not survived so what we have instead is a poem about writing a poem. It is a powerful piece that speaks to the plight of children in war. She is currently seeing her country being invaded and shelled by another brutal dictator who, like Hitler and Stalin, wants to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Putin is committing war crimes and has displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

My first poem was written in a dug out

On a wall loosened by explosions

When stars were lost in the horoscope:

Though my childhood was not slain by war.

The fire poured its  lava,

Stood in the grey craters of orchards,

Our path choked by water

In deranged barrages with flames

The world once bright now dark

That burning night illuminated to its depth

The dug out like a submarine

In a sea of smoke, fear and flame.

There is no longer rabbit or wolf there

Just a world of blood, carbonised star!

I wrote almost in shrapnel

Block capitals from the child’s primer.

I would still play in the dark and in classes

I flew on the wings of book covers in stories

And wrote poems about landmines

Having already seen death so close.

The pain of first unchildish impressions

What trace left on the heart

Verses do not say what I cannot speak

Have they not left mute the spirit?

The spirit in words is the sea in a periscope

And its memory, light refracted from my temple

My first poem, was written in a dug out

Simply imprinted on the soil.

Both poems translated from the Ukrainian by Stephen Komarnyckyj

How an independent broadcaster in Ukraine is defying the invasion

14 Mar 22 | News and features, Russia, Ukraine

It was never easy for hromadske. The independent Ukraine broadcaster was set up in 2013 during the dark days of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian President of Ukraine. Founded originally as an independent TV station, hromadske (public, in Ukrainian), prided itself on its freedom from control by oligarchs or the state even after Yanukovych was forced to flee by the “Maidan” protests of 2014.

Over the years journalists at the station had adapted to shifts in the media landscape and by the time of the Russian invasion hromadske was streaming topical videos on You Tube and Facebook with special reports every Tuesday and Thursday.

“From January 2022 we changed our model and had no broadcasts, only irregular live streams on the spot from what we considered to be major events,” producer Kostan Nechyporenko tells Index on Censorship. These included the treason trial of former President Petro Poroshenko and major demonstrations.

“After 24 February things changed dramatically,” says Kostan. “It was tense in the first few days and people moved out of Kyiv. We had a backup plan in case of invasion.” The station moved its studio from the centre of Ukraine, close to the country’s parliament building, to a temporary base in Vynittsia, halfway between the capital and the Moldovan border.

“We left a lot of our gear,” says Kostan. We took our most important things. We had to take care of the website as a priority.” The producer moved with his family to the countryside outside Kyiv but plans to return to the office for more equipment this week. Meanwhile, he organises logistics for hromadske crews still reporting all over the country. The film making capacity of hromadske was initially reduced, but the team took the opportunity to revive broadcasts and there is now an hour-long programme every evening at 6.30pm.

The whole mission of hromadske has now changed. “Only the video production had some problems in the early days of the war. The website and social media were working overtime and much more intensely than before. After the first five or six days the situation changed with video production too. Now we produce two to three videos a day, though they might be made in a rush. And because of the war, we’re back to digital broadcasting, though it’s of poorer quality and from a makeshift studio.”

Kostan has no doubt hromadske journalists are at mortal risk from the Russian forces. At the beginning of the war, one of his colleagues, whose must remain anonymous for security reasons, was already in the Donbas region in the east of the country to report on the shelling of Shchastia in the Luhansk region. The reporter remained there when the war started and reported from the front, but had serious problems getting out.

“Our journalist found a car and went to the front line again in the Zaporizhzhia region,” Kostan continues. “The car got shot by a Russian tank so was abandoned. The Russians took a laptop, camera and personal belongings.” Thankfully, the reporter was able to hide in an abandoned house and contact her colleagues at hromadske the next morning.

A second correspondent  narrowly escaped from Irpin, on the northwest edge of Irpin, where New York Times journalist Brent Renaud was killed.

The hromadske project was founded during a flowering of independent media in Ukraine and fiercely protected its freedom from the influence of oligarchs and government. The independent values remain more important than ever as it continues to report from Ukraine under siege.