EPN in Kiev: Ukrainians have an undisciplined ethnicity that is now helping in the war

KIOVA When Russia launched a major offensive early on February 24, a Kievan Olga Ostroverh lamaantui. He didn’t know how to be.

The explosions belonged to an apartment building in the center of the capital.

Katja Sula arrived at his friend as soon as the attack began. This had been agreed before the war.

Sula saw his paralyzed friend and handed him a knife.

Start shelling, the command was heard.

As always, making borscht was soothing. Peeler. Grandmother’s recipe.

– Borssi has a lifetime, says Ostroverh about the national food of the Ukrainians.

We meet in Ostroverh’s apartment in Kiev a couple of months after the war began. The war is at a time when Russian troops have already been evicted from the capital’s surroundings.

Life is beginning to return to Kiev, even though the big city is still empty. Avocado sandwich can be ordered at the café. There are children again in the playgrounds.

There are five women sitting in Olga Ostoverh’s kitchen, four of whom now live in this three-bedroom apartment.

The women moved together when the war broke out.

They did not want to flee the country, but they were not alone either.

First Katja Sula arrived and stayed. The next day arrived Anna Petuhova and Maria Vrotšynska From the northern part of Kiev Obolon. The balconies of their homes showed the approach of Russian troops.

They could no longer return home. A coffin of four women was born.

What the women didn’t plan for was that they would soon become part of the capital’s home front.

The first days women did what the rest of Europe did. They sat with cell phones in their hands and watched an endless stream of news.

– We soon realized that it was too much, Maria Vrotšynska says about surfing on doomsday.

Instead, the women began to message acquaintances and ask who needed help. Do I have to pick up something from the store or pick up someone’s grandmother.

Soon the women found themselves part of a thread asking for and offering help. One had bread and another had diapers. Barter transactions were made. This is how they got to know the fifth woman sitting in the kitchen, Katerina to Stukaneva.

The women asked neighbors and friends which elderly people had been left without home help. They were given food, medicine and hygiene items.

One of the women went to the supermarket and bought the car in full. Another to the pharmacy and bought what was still available.

One of the phenomena of the war in Ukraine has been that the elderly have either not been able or unwilling to flee the country.

Someone set up a shared document on the web about what help is needed and where. The basement room of the bundle was turned into a distribution center. The room also served as a bomb shelter.

This gave birth to Kiev’s vital home front. No one asked the women to help. They started helping other Kievans because that is what Ukraine is doing.

Ukrainians are used to the fact that it is often unnecessary to expect help from society or leaders. You are used to taking care of things yourself.

– This has been the case throughout Ukraine’s history, Olga Ostroverh says.

The experience of eight years ago, when the last time the Ukrainians took the fate of the country into their own hands, helped them to organize themselves at home.

In February 2014, the months-long protest movement of Ukrainians overthrew a corrupt and pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

Demonstrations on the Maidan were not led by a single opposition group. The movement was brought together through the cooperation of various influencers and activists.

Olga Ostroverh calls this way of acting Ukrainian Ukrainian anarchism born of the compulsion of circumstances.

Ukraine’s democracy is far from perfect. In Transparency International’s list for 2021, only Russia is more corrupt than European countries than Ukraine.

Before the war trust the president Volodymyr Zelenskyia to the point. An international group of journalists had also exposed the links of Zelensky and its neighbors to tax havens, even though one of the president’s promises was to finally get corruption under control.

According to the opinion poll, a majority did not believe he would succeed as a leader if Russia actually launched a major offensive.

Zelenskyi surprised everyone after the war began, but Ostoverh said the president’s role has ultimately been secondary.

– Even if the president says tomorrow that we will surrender, it would not matter. We would say “goodbye” to him and move on.

Katja Sula intervenes in the discussion from the corner of the kitchen. He urges to think about the Ukrainian farmers who are dragging Russian military equipment away from you with their own tractors.

That’s just everyday war anarchism.

– That’s completely unreal, but that’s how it’s done! Sula says.

Ostroverhin nods and says it is impossible to control the Ukrainian people.

In times of peace, of course, it is stressful when society is not working as it should and people need to take responsibility for things that belong to society.

– Of course, we would rather live in a society with better order, Ostroverh says.

But this is not the case. The background is influenced by the history of Ukraine.

Ukraine belongs to the region of Eastern Europe, where borders have been redrawn throughout history. Stalin and Hitler caused the deaths of millions of people in the area.

During the Stalin era, millions of Ukrainians starved to death as the Soviet leadership forcibly collectivized farms and sold grain abroad to finance industrialization. The people went hungry. The famine is called the Holodomor, and many EU countries have called it genocide. Finland does not.

Ukrainians have often had to manage on their own. Therefore, according to Ostroverh, Ukraine has become the birthplace of anarchism.

Once the oppressors have been in power, anarchism and cooperation between small ethnic groups has been the way to survive as a nation.

In times of peace, anarchist thinking brings disorder.

– But in the difficult times that have unfortunately been too frequent in the history of Ukraine, it has saved us, Ostroverh says.

You can discuss the topic on 31.5. until 11 p.m.