Ukraine, a rustic whose sociocultural evolution displays a mix of contemporary and conventional values, has at all times had a weak spot for symbols. We have now mastered the artwork of discovering which means the place maybe there’s none, of seeing greater than is there in actuality.
After which the conflict with Russia gifted us with an entire host of recent photos: 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 turned an emblem of invincibility.
Then we had the collective determine of our fighter pilots referred to as 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 exterior Kyiv, to call just some. At one time, all of them appeared so necessary, so comforting of their capacity to infuse the predictable penalties of conflict with a deeper which means.
The primary spring of the full-scale conflict intoxicated us with a determined need to be sturdy and indestructible. All the pieces turned symbolic, from socks in shades of blue and yellow to the normal braids of a woman inspecting automobile trunks at a checkpoint. The smallest particulars had been reframed as an aesthetics of resistance, filling us with perception in our energy and invincibility. We created memes and invented symbols extra rapidly than we may incorporate them into our cultural code. We thought all this could 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 reside by them.
After the heroism of spring 2022 got here summer time, autumn, and winter. In some unspecified time in the future, 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 perhaps argue, and, ultimately, we might die. Not all of us. However a few of us.
The roulette spins – pink or black, life or loss of life. You by no means know when the subsequent missile will strike and who can be buried underneath the rubble. And you may’t calculate the trajectory of Russian rockets with a view 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, actually. We’ve grown bored with gazing into the innards of obliterated flats.
The Ghost of Kyiv? We’ve buried so many distinctive pilots who had been residing, 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 reasonably totems – of my very own. I acquired one in all them lengthy earlier than the primary missiles flew in direction of Kyiv one February night time. It appeared in 2015, once 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 metallic mug with oranges painted on it at a Kyiv procuring centre. I grew to like that mug and foolishly took it with me in every single place, 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, in fact, in early March 2022, I took it with me to the military. I informed 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 via collectively, which is why, after we moved to a brand new place and I couldn’t discover it, the whole 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 conflict, 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 town. We spent a number of days underneath fixed hearth with no prospect of reinforcements or leaving that trench that reeked of corpses.
When the order got here to retreat, I deserted every part that might weigh me down, as a result of we had been going through a gruelling run over a number of kilometres underneath 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 kids won’t ever inherit.
It was a disgrace. However the fractional improve 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 have now lastly grown bored with this army fervour, simply as we’ve got grown bored with this infinite conflict. We have now even grown bored with ourselves. And that’s not a nasty factor. Individuals can’t reside in a continuing state of upheaval. We have now turn into pragmatic and rational. We’re the one symbols that we’ve got.
Each one that stays unbroken, who carries on working and contributing, who holds the entrance line with each final ounce of energy, who donates each final penny to purchase drones and off-road autos, who sources medical gear throughout the globe, who tries to reside their life after all. We’re the symbols: Worn-out like outdated winter coats, however actual.
We’re the individuals who simply keep on residing and preventing.
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 mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
