La guerra in Ucraina spiegata a Conte

Mykolaïv, from our correspondent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Laura Loomer, the ‘Maga star’, a former RT contributor and now presenter of her own programme, ‘Loomer Unleashed’, who has gone from being a driving force behind the Kremlin’s version of events to a tireless advocate for Ukraine’s defence. Loomer approaches the whole situation as if she had been saved, almost as though it were not a true understanding of reality that had made her change her mind, but rather a redemption, a sign of the divine. Loomer, in fact, apologises, saying she was deceived and had succumbed to the Kremlin’s lies until she chose to send one of her own journalists to Kyiv, at which point she understood everything from his accounts. Last week she travelled to Ukraine herself and met Zelensky, who asked her how the journey had been. “Long,” she replied. It is indeed long, and there is no alternative to this length: there are no scheduled flights in Ukrainian airspace for the simple reason that Russian drones and missiles could strike them. Closing the airports is not a decision taken by Kyiv, but rather by Moscow, which has deprived airlines and their passengers of a considerable chunk of European airspace. So you adapt: you take the train as soon as you reach the Ukrainian border; the journey sometimes takes days, and for the past few weeks, travelling by rail has also become more complicated.

Russia has begun targeting moving trains; the attacks have increased in both number and lethality, and the railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, together with the government, has decided that whenever an air raid alert is issued, trains must stop and order the evacuation of passengers, who may only board again once the alert has ended. Journeys have therefore become longer and more complicated. Following the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukrzaliznytsia had managed to ensure the safe movement of Ukrainians and others; it had done so using efficient trains that remained on time despite the difficulties. Travelling is now even less straightforward, not because of a decision by Kyiv, but once again due to Moscow’s actions. Sometimes, simply taking a train is enough to realise how Russia has turned an entire country – and even part of Europe – upside down; indeed, just listening to a couple of stories about those carriages, which are always full and well-maintained, is enough to understand how Ukraine manages to function despite everything. It functions in spite of Russia. This ability to function is the result of necessity, tenacity, talent and good alliances, and Laura Loomer says she realised this immediately upon arriving in Kyiv – a capital city constantly under attack that reflects Ukraine in miniature, and serves as an excellent gateway to understanding what it is like to live constantly under threat and, rather than giving in, to choose to carry on, to move forward, to defend oneself.

Every city in Ukraine has its own story of the invasion; in every place, Russia poses a different threat. That is why we need to travel the length and breadth of the country – perhaps aboard one of those trains that the Russian army wants to see taken off the rails – to understand just how real Moscow’s war is. There is no aspect of daily life that has not been affected by the war: people move about on journeys that seem to stretch across oceans, with unexpected stops along the way. Sleep is scarce and fitful because the air-raid sirens sound several times a night, and setting them off yet again is not a choice made by the Ukrainians, but by Moscow, which sometimes sends up a fighter jet just to trigger the alarm, out of sadism, and sometimes launches missiles and drones at civilians, out of sheer malice: the decision lies with the Moscow-led military, which, if it wanted to, could let the Ukrainians sleep, but does not do so because its aim is to kill them or drive them mad.

In Ukraine, when you’re not dying, you’re growing up to the rhythm of the war. In entire regions of the country, particularly close to the front line, schools continue to operate online; it is as though the children had never emerged from the pandemic and continue to live in their virtual classrooms. In Kherson, a city that was occupied in the early days of the invasion and liberated eight months later, the children, who do not attend school, rarely go out, and when they do, they are trained to listen to the sky. The most common advice from parents is: ‘Keep an eye on the sky’, and keeping an eye on it means straining their ears for sounds to determine whether a drone is approaching. So everyone lives with their ears pricked, preferring to walk or park beneath the canopy of trees, where there are any, because they are seeking any means to evade the drone cameras hunting for civilians. The Ukrainians would have preferred not to have to teach their children what a Shahed drone sounds like, but they had no choice because the Russians have decided to turn the war into a daily hunt for Ukrainians, whether in uniform or not. Across almost all of Ukraine, only the Transcarpathian region is free of curfews; in the rest of the country, life outdoors has a set start and end time, and the closer one is to the front line, the more time one is forced to spend indoors. In Kherson, you cannot go out after nine in the evening; the streets empty, and the night is a continuous explosion, just like the day, but louder. The noise is Russian; the Ukrainian response is aimed at bringing down what Russia is firing.

Ukraine did not choose war; it found itself on the receiving end of a barrage of Russian hatred. What it did choose was resistance. During the occupation, in Kherson, the Russians tried to open their own schools, circulate their roubles and make way for their companies. Most Ukrainians preferred online schooling in Ukrainian, the hryvnia and empty pockets. No one asked or ordered them to do so; they could have accepted Moscow’s terms, but refusing to do so was a choice. And if the Ukrainian army managed to liberate the city, it is also because its inhabitants wanted it to happen. Today they live in this reality of war, which hurts with every passing second; it is tangible, a painful constraint with no end in sight, and they keep telling themselves: bombs are better than occupation. Moscow could choose peace at any moment; all it needs to do is stop launching its missiles and drones. It does not do so, and so Ukraine has reorganised itself; it has learnt to adapt everything to the war: work, transport, school, food, sleep, human relationships. It has learnt to cope with shortages – of weapons, above all else.

Ukraine has now been holding out and fighting for 1,615 days. For 1,615 days, Russia – just as it chose to start the war – can choose to end it. In Ukraine, where the sirens now seem to lose their power whenever they sound, people have realised that Vladimir Putin will never say ‘enough’. Like Laura Loomer, all you need to do is be patient, set out on a very long journey, board a train, get off if an attack is imminent, perhaps wait through the night – which is mild at this time of year but will soon turn fierce – and finally arrive in Kyiv, hear the first air-raid siren of your life, hope it’s the last, and realise that the Russian threat is anything but fabricated – it is so real that defending yourself requires plenty of weapons and boundless ingenuity.