Before I move on to the subject of war, let me introduce myself. I should have done so before. I’m Daryna from Kyiv and I just turned 22 earlier this month. I don’t know if I’ve lived a lot or not, for I cannot put into words how much I love this life, how much I love my country, and Kyiv, which I moved to five years ago. I also love reading Stephen King every morning, playing the violin every night. With trepidation, every Saturday, I used to attend a poetry party, and then go to the theater. I held several jobs at once and loved it. I had planned to go to university to get another degree, in law. I had wanted to buy a home. The apartment I had in mind is small and inconspicuous on the outskirts of the capital, on the 18th floor, to be able to see my city, strong and independent, as it has been for hundreds of years. And this is how it will continue to be…
We will not surrender Ukraine. We have not done so after a month of war, so the dwarf in the Kremlin [Putin] should understand that we will never give up. Because that’s the kind of people we Ukrainians are. From the age of 11, my favorite subject was history. Perhaps, if Putin had read more history, he would have understood that it is not a good idea to mess with Ukrainians.
We did not give up when Russia rewrote the history of Ukraine in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the whole world. He didn’t want people to know that Kyivan Rus was a great state, when Russia was still just a swamp. We did not give up when Russia destroyed the Cossack Sich. We did not give up when Russia banned the Ukrainian language. We did not give up when they took away all our bread and starved us in the early 1930s. We did not give up during the years of the Great Terror. We did not give up when the persecution and murder of our poets, our bards, our intellectuals began. We did not give up in 2014, when Russia took Crimea from us, when that horrible country sent its troops to invade the territory of our state. Eight years have passed since then, and yet we have not given up, even when Russia lied to the whole world that the people of Luhansk and Donetsk regions do not want to be a part of Ukraine.
The world knew that there was such a place called Ukraine, but many could not even find it on a map. However, by February 24 of this year, everyone had heard about us. Today the whole world knows who Ukrainians are. Today the whole world has turned blue and yellow.
But we have been around for a long time, not just for one century. Kyivan Rus comes from the word Kyiv, not from the word Russia. Ukraine from the word for will, not from the word for invader. We have been fighting our entire history, ever since the state, the empire, the federation of Russia appeared from the swamp in the east. Call it what you will. But suffice it to say that we are not fraternal peoples. We never were, and we never will be.
The land is covered in blood. But this has been the case for centuries. If we count all the wars of liberation, all the famines, all the terror, all the murders that have been committed against my people, the death toll runs into the tens of millions.
The Russian lie has been that we want to be united with them. The truth is that we have always wanted to keep them away from us. And we are still trying to do this today. I know we will win this war. I know that my children will go to a kindergarten in Kyiv, where they will learn to speak the Ukrainian language, and where the Ukrainian flag will hang from the roof. I know that we will rebuild everything that the Russian Federation has destroyed. In Kyiv alone, we are talking about more than a hundred destroyed buildings. In Kharkiv, it is more than a thousand. And in Mariupol, Irpin and many other cities – there are only ruins.
We will rebuild it all, because we are still standing, because we are not on our knees, because we are defending our homeland, and we are fighting as one – because we are not like the Russians, because this war is a war of the whole world against a single country, an evil empire. We have been fighting for exactly a month so far, and we will continue to do so until all Russian soldiers have left Ukraine. Each of them can decide for himself whether to go back home or go into a grave.
Perhaps, upon reading this article, you may find me cruel. Indeed, the last month has changed me. I, we Ukrainians, have become hardened by the sight of the dead bodies of Ukrainian children, the corpses of women shot down after begging for their lives, after the death of so many brave Ukrainian soldiers. How could we not become hardened? I don’t know if, after the war, I will again play the violin or go to the theater, because I don’t know if there will be a theater. But there will definitely be a Ukraine, and sooner or later there will be peace.
