“How Ukrainian families experience nights in shelters and mornings when school may no longer be in session. A story about dignity and indomitability.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
It was another night in the shelter. A lot of ballistics and Shaheds on Kyiv, the sounds of explosions and this animal instinctive fear that cuts to the bones. And in the morning, the school administration wrote that a flight had arrived at our school.
Thoughts of a mother and a human rights defender appear in my head at the same time. First, it was an attack on a civilian object. Secondly, it’s good that today is Saturday, there were no children and teachers there – only a guard, and everything is fine with him. And the brain still imagines that on weekdays just at this time parents could already bring children to school who could be in the zone of damage of this huge machine, which carries at least 60 kg of explosives. And it becomes very scary.
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The school immediately asked for help. After the police inspected the place of the shooting, recorded this crime and allowed to enter the territory, the parents quickly gathered – they came from everywhere, brought what they could.
Ukraine always has this little Maidan spirit: as soon as something very bad happens, people get involved and start working. It is also a mechanism to keep yourself together – to come and do what you can, in small steps. We cleaned, covered the windows with film, threw away the damaged frames.
When you take pictures, felt-tip pens and pencils to the rooms where your children study, pierced with pieces of this glass, it is as if you are holding in your hands this part of our terrible history that our children are going through.
There was a very touching moment when several high school students gathered near the school, wanted to help, but were not allowed due to security reasons. The director came to them and asked how and why they wanted to help. The children answered: “This is our second home, we spend most of our time here, and our mathematics classroom was there, it is no longer there.” And they got their way. The students were allowed to clean the less damaged classrooms, tape the tear from the explosion at a safe distance, like a crime scene.
And in these small actions, our children find their dignity. Pulling this ribbon, they outline the borders. They seem to say: “Russia, you are here. You bring pain, damage, debris. You destroy our schools, hospitals, kill our people. But we will draw our line and we will stand where we can do something, where we can be ourselves, speak for ourselves while we are alive.”
I looked at them and thought that there is a huge irony in the fact that we are now offered “peace” and neutrality, offered to forget and forgive everything. But you understand that without responsibility there can be no mercy and no reconciliation, because children should not have to tape over gashes the size of a football field in their school, when they are deprived of their childhood, their healthy existence.
They want to instill in us a new definition of the concept of “peace” and a new definition of the concept of “justice”. And justice is clearly not about “hiding under the rug” all the crimes committed by Russia. Whatever happens next, there are already more than enough documented crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, which are already enough for a tribunal, for arrest warrants.
You can forgive when you are asked for forgiveness. And when they mock you and tell you that you still have to accept all my conditions, then it is not about forgiveness. Therefore, the “peace” format that we are currently being offered is not acceptable.
What should we do next with all this? Keep a cool head. Do the basic things for safety, go down to the shelter. Talk to children, explain to them what is happening, because they want to understand both at 13 years old and at 3 years old. Work. For for many Ukrainians, work has become a mechanism (sometimes not even a very healthy one) to keep ourselves together, because we feel that we are not alone. Laugh – and let it be laughter through tears, than otherwise. Supporting children is a game, a box of Friends from McDonald’s, a cool walk, when you feel like a very, very human being and live in that moment here and now.
At our house, the Christmas tree has been up for a week and I joke that we can bake paska in two weeks. My three-year-old son once woke up in the shelter and says: “That’s it, I want to go upstairs.” I tell him: “You know, we can’t, there are rockets, drones flying, everything is exploding, do you hear? I’m afraid”. He says: “Mom, look, we don’t have a drone in the kitchen?”. I say: “There is none.” And he says: “Let’s go to the kitchen!”.
This is children’s logic – when children outline a safe perimeter for themselves, but such thinking helps adults as well. Here is the war – it is always there as a background, but we define this “small kitchen” where there is no drone yet and we make coffee there.
Veronika Sentsov-Welchdirector of Amnesty International Ukraine
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