Ukraine, a rustic whose sociocultural evolution displays a mix of contemporary and conventional values, has all the time had a weak spot for symbols. We’ve mastered the artwork of discovering which means the place maybe there may be none, of seeing greater than is there in actuality.
After which the struggle with Russia gifted us with a complete host of recent photographs: a Ukrainian tractor towing away a Russian tank embodied the heroism of farmers, whereas a kitchen cabinet left intact on the wall of a devastated constructing grew to become an emblem of invincibility.
Then we had the collective determine of our fighter pilots often called the “Ghost of Kyiv”, the Russian warship Moskva, sunken by a stealth Ukrainian operation, and a shrapnel-pierced bust of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, found in a small city outdoors Kyiv, to call only a few. At one time, all of them appeared so necessary, so comforting of their capability to infuse the predictable penalties of struggle with a deeper which means.
The primary spring of the full-scale struggle intoxicated us with a determined need to be sturdy and indestructible. Every little thing grew to become symbolic, from socks in shades of blue and yellow to the standard braids of a lady inspecting automotive trunks at a checkpoint. The smallest particulars had been reframed as an aesthetics of resistance, filling us with perception in our power and invincibility. We created memes and invented symbols extra rapidly than we may incorporate them into our cultural code. We thought all this is able to save us. It most likely did.
However all symbols have one factor in frequent – they die out over time. Identical to the individuals who maintain onto them, imagine in them and dwell by them.
After the heroism of spring 2022 got here summer season, autumn, and winter. Sooner or later, the horrible realisation dawned that we had been on this for the long term. Forward of us lay an enormous quantity of labor, ache, torment and loss. We’d lose family members, we might bury poets and filmmakers, we might grieve, then possibly argue, and, in the long run, we might die. Not all of us. However a few of us.
The roulette spins – crimson or black, life or loss of life. You by no means know when the following missile will strike and who shall be buried beneath the rubble. And you’ll’t calculate the trajectory of Russian rockets with a purpose to take shelter in time both. It’s a lengthy recreation of survival.
We didn’t even discover when symbols began to fade, dropping their significance and attract. A tractor towing away a tank? Give it a relaxation … Now we talk about turbines, blackouts and FPV drones, that are wanted on the entrance on an industrial scale. A cabinet on a wall? It’s only a cabinet on a wall. As of mid-2024, Russia had destroyed or broken greater than 250,000 buildings. Each single one contained a cabinet – a number of, in actual fact. We’ve grown uninterested in gazing into the innards of obliterated flats.
The Ghost of Kyiv? We’ve buried so many distinctive pilots who had been dwelling, respiration symbols. The warship Moskva? Over the previous three years, we’ve sunk a 3rd of the Russian Federation’s Black Sea Fleet, with the remainder pushed out of the Black Sea by the specter of our army capabilities.
As for me, I had some favorite symbols – or fairly totems – of my very own. I acquired one in every of them lengthy earlier than the primary missiles flew in direction of Kyiv one February night time. It appeared in 2015, after I first took up arms to defend the territorial integrity of my nation within the east.
Earlier than leaving for the army coaching facility, I purchased a steel mug with oranges painted on it at a Kyiv procuring centre. I grew to like that mug and foolishly took it with me in all places, turning it right into a fetish and imbuing it with particular which means.
It stayed with me all through the 14 months I served in 2015–16, 10 of which had been spent on the entrance line. It served me as no different object had ever served me earlier than. Later, again in civilian life, I took it with me to the mountains, into the wilderness. For a very long time, it served me within the studio the place I labored as an artist.
And, after all, in early March 2022, I took it with me to the military. I advised my brothers-in-arms tales about it, explaining its significance. My fellow troopers knew how necessary this mug was and the way a lot we had been by collectively, which is why, once we moved to a brand new place and I couldn’t discover it, the complete unit rushed trying to find it – for the mug that was so necessary to their commander.
In late spring 2023, when Bakhmut, which suffered one of many bloodiest battles of this large-scale struggle, lastly bled to loss of life and our troops, shaken, shell-shocked and spent, had been withdrawing, my unit was thrown in as cowl to distract the Russians from the forces leaving the town. We spent a number of days beneath fixed hearth with no prospect of reinforcements or leaving that trench that reeked of corpses.
When the order got here to retreat, I deserted the whole lot that would weigh me down, as a result of we had been dealing with a gruelling run over a number of kilometres beneath enemy bombardment and drones. There in that trench, scattered with the our bodies of our troopers and actually ploughed by shelling, I left my mug behind. My very personal image of invincibility, my trusty totem, an heirloom my youngsters won’t ever inherit.
It was a disgrace. However the fractional enhance in my possibilities of survival was extra necessary. My life was extra necessary to me than some unusual family merchandise, regardless of how a lot symbolism I had invested in it.
Symbols die when drudgery units in and heroism turns into routine. Fatigue has blurred the boundary between horror and behavior. Over the previous 18 months or so, it appears not a single new image has emerged. The variety of memes and topical cartoons has drastically decreased.
We’ve lastly grown uninterested in this army fervour, simply as we’ve got grown uninterested in this countless struggle. We’ve even grown uninterested in ourselves. And that’s not a nasty factor. Individuals can not dwell in a relentless state of upheaval. We’ve grow to be pragmatic and rational. We’re the one symbols that we’ve got.
Each one who stays unbroken, who carries on working and contributing, who holds the entrance line with each final ounce of power, who donates each final penny to purchase drones and off-road automobiles, who sources medical gear throughout the globe, who tries to dwell their life in the end. We’re the symbols: Worn-out like previous winter coats, however actual.
We’re the individuals who simply stick with it dwelling and combating.
This textual content was written inside a joint initiative of UkraineWorld, the Ukrainian Institute and PEN Ukraine. It was translated by Helena Kernan.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
