Anger
Note: This is a series that represents my own observations in Ukraine of the strange reality that war creates. Check out the introduction here.
I am angry. Having experienced everything I have so far in Ukraine, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the pain that the Ukrainians have accumulated over the last 4.5 years. What they suffer through on a daily basis can only be felt to really understand.
Night, after night, after night, after night, they experience bombings, alarms, destruction, sadness, tiredness. It’s like a bad dream that you cannot wake up from. It’s like being in a horrific accident that just won’t end, and you’re forced to watch it on repeat, as if your eyes were taped open while you’re tied to a chair.
I can tell my friends and family are resigned and tired, but yet, they cannot resign. What does it mean to resign? To pack up and leave? To where and how? Fewer countries are now accepting refugees from Ukraine, some of them sick of supporting the outsiders in their own countries (I’m looking at you Poland). Plus, moving somewhere costs money, and for many, their jobs and access to their families.
Get AMalikova’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
If I lived in Ukraine, with family, a job, everything established there, I have no idea what I would do. Yes, I’d be angry, tired, and so ready to just sleep for a month. But with family and friends there, I’d want to have them come with me. Or maybe I wouldn’t leave because it would seem impossible starting anew in a different country.
The choice of how to act is not easy. Deciding where to go, whether to leave or stay, is not easy. I can also see how leaving would feel like giving up, admitting defeat to the damn bastards who try to kill me by bombs on a nightly basis or destroy me through the resulting stress and sleep deprivation of said attacks.
So, I’d probably stay, just like millions of other people. Despite not having enough sleep, electricity, water, and fearing for my life.
Why am I expressing anger now? Recently, the president of the US decided that have a Russian and Ukrainian energy ceasefire. His flimsy ceasefire not only did not cause Russia to stop attacking Ukraine, but it seems to have only intensified their attacks. And now the US has reportedly stopped providing intelligence to Ukraine to know when Russia is attacking them. This intelligence helps save lives by warning people about the incoming attacks so people can take precautions. People cannot live underground forever, always expecting to be bombed, that’s why this intelligence is so important.
Yet, if it’s true that Trump or one of his cronies has stopped the intelligence as well, this means that Trump has blood on his hands by withholding life-saving information. And for what? To try to get an insignificant amount of barrels of diesel to the US to… look like he’s doing something, while providing a source of revenue to Russia and their genocidal dictator. So what was the point of the Lindsey Graham’s sanctions bill on Russia? Rules matter only when they’re convenient to Trump.
I’m no expert on Russian foreign policy, by any means. But when so many global leaders, including the US Congress, are opposed to this, I listen to them. I also see the direct suffering in Ukraine as a consequence of Trump’s actions. It feels that when things couldn’t get worse, they do.
And maybe, just maybe, I will wake up one day soon, and realize it was all a bad dream.
