A reflection by Lauren on the impact of the war, especially on young men, and the memorialization of young people.
Most of the students in our group traveled to Lviv and enrolled in UCU’s Ukrainian language school to show solidarity for the people of Ukraine in their courageous stand against an aggressive Russia. The war was in the background when we made our decision to go. In Lviv, the war was one thread in everything we learned about Ukrainian history, culture, language and food. It was there in the military recruitment posters and beautiful murals in town, the air raid siren blasts at night and a few soldiers out strolling the nearby park at night.
Three times for me the war punched through this quiet Lviv existence. At lunch with a friend of a friend, a 33 year old software entrepreneur, he talkedabout his future plans to make more money in business so that later in life he could pursue his other dreams. Unless of course he was picked up and sent to the front. We read every day that it is a reality for young men in Ukraine: dreams deferred, dreams shredded, dreams sacrificed. To sit at lunch and in the bus, and talk with young people about their dreams for graduate school, business and creative ventures is to understand more deeply and sadly the sacrifice Ukrainians are making.
The war punched through again at The Fields of Mars (a cemetery to the war’s fallen in Lviv) at the gravesite of Irina Tsibukh. Irina volunteered in 2014 at the age of 17 to be a combat medic. After one tour in the Ukrainian military, she reported as a journalist from Luhansk, bringing to Ukraine and the world stories about the impact of the war on children, especially special needs children. With the full scale invasion she re-enlisted in the army as a medical nurse. Last year, one day before a scheduled leave, she was killed. This year Irina’s friends and family organized a festival in her nom de guerre (Cheka, or the pin of a grenade) dedicated to celebrating Ukrainian culture, addressing trauma and promoting Ukrainian education — all issues that Irina was passionate about in her life.
One of our class organizers is a member of a friend group dedicating their lives to honoring a combatant friend of theirs killed at the front. They have completed his dreams to open a bar and art gallery, and a restaurant in Lviv, organizing as a collective to buy and run the businesses. In Ukraine the phrase “rest in peace” is not practiced. Everywhere is a resurrection of personal dreams, living memorials to people’s lives and sacrifices by friends, families and, even strangers, moved by these campaigns. Ukrainians are not allowing their war heroes to become victims. Their loved ones are amplifyng their heroism, and, in the process, strengthening Ukraine’s vibrant democracy and volunteer movement, as a testimony to the war dead’s lives and beliefs about Ukraine.
I left Ukraine yesterday on a bus from Lviv to Warsaw. As I scanned the passengers, wondering who was going where and to do what, I had an awareness. It was a bus of women. There were only three men — the driver, a very young boy and a very old, sweetly smiling, grandfather. We in the West spend a lot of time covering the war’s battles, the ebb and flow of forces on the front. Young people in Ukraine live everyday with a solemn future that makes dreaming their own dreams a fragile exercise.
I do not want my picture in your offices: the President is not an icon, an idol or a portrait. Hang your kids’ photos instead, and look at them each time you are making a decision.
Volodymyr Zelensky
