Editor’s Note: ‘That time when’ is a new feature by the Kyiv Post which invites its readers to share their experiences of living in Ukraine. Please send us your stories.
That time when…I witnessed the war in Ukraine.
I have been to Ukraine many times, but going to the Donbas in 2015 left many lasting impressions on me. One of the most notable was how polite the locals were in spite of everything they had to deal with.
For the sake of brevity I have chosen one experience that stood out, if only for how surreal it was. I was doing interviews in Avdiivka and we were allowed to explore some of the city on our own. We ran across a makeshift shelter for stray animals. Suddenly we were surrounded by puppies and kittens. A mother cat nursed her kittens in a crate.
Two locals came up to explain how they and other residents built the shelter for animals who’d been made homeless when their owners fled. During our conversation another battle broke out a few kilometers away. First small arms, then the heavier machine guns, and then the mortars, artillery, and so on.
All the while these two elderly women are chatting with us about the animals and we’re petting the kittens. The contrast of adorable animals amid an active war zone was unforgettable.
When you see life in the liberated Donbas you get a sense of how artificial and manufactured this war is, and thus how insidious it truly is. It’s clear that many people there already lived hard lives from 1991 onward, and the last thing they needed was an invasion and a war that is absurdly claimed to be for their “protection.”
Looking back on that trip I kept getting this feeling that I wasn’t doing enough. We told people’s stories, we brought food for refugees. But it just seemed so insignificant. In 2016 it reached the point where I realized what I needed to do, and now I am moving to Ukraine to do my part.
