Natalya Rakevich, PhD

Written by Natalya Rakevich on 03/21/2022 

One of my yoga teachers said that it takes twenty-one days to develop a habit. Last Thursday was three weeks since the russian army started bombing Ukraine, my Motherland. After bombing started on February 24th, 2022, people here, in the US, started to ask my opinion on the war. In my view, the war began hundreds of years ago, with the russian tsar’s decree banning the use of the Ukrainian language. Complex Ukrainian history, its fertile land rich in rare minerals, and its geographical location, never allowed the Ukrainian nation to live in peace. russians, Poles, Tatars, and Swedes tried to divide Ukraine and keep a piece. For over 300 years the biggest parts of the Ukrainian territories belonged to the russian Empire, because Ukrainians asked russian tsars for protection from other neighbors. The price for protection was the eradication of Ukrainian books, culture, and language from central and Eastern Ukrainian cities. The language and culture were preserved in villages, small towns, and in Western Ukraine. It was preserved in songs, oral stories, and books printed abroad and in the western part of the country.

The stories I heard from my grandparents, not from books, are only a hundred years old. These stories were about the Communist government that came to villages, took away land, mills, sewing studios, and cattle from my ancestors into collectives. The stories were about slavery of my great grandparents for years that followed. The stories talked of two artificial famines that were created by Stalin and killed nearly 4 million people. Russian people were relocated by the Soviet government into Ukrainian cities, while trains full of Ukrainian families were relocated all over russia with the goal of further dissolving Ukrainian culture. They say that russians are continuing this practice today, by taking away passports and forcefully moving Ukrainian people out of the besieged Melitopol into russia.
As a Ukrainian, as a person whose first language is Ukrainian, who was oppressed and could not speak my native language due to socio-political events, I have my own story about being Ukrainian. I spent my first five years in a rural village speaking only Ukrainian. I was moved to a city to live with my parents when I was six. There I went  to a daycare where I discovered that children cannot understand me and do not want to play with me because I don’t know their language. After months of tears, insults, and humiliations not only from children, but also from teachers, I learned how to speak russian. I had to go to a russian school because the city had only one Ukrainian school out of 35 and it was very far away from my home. There was almost no one and no place where I could speak my native language. People who spoke Ukrainian were ridiculed in Central and Eastern parts of Ukraine, contrary to the russian narrative of oppression of the russian language in Ukraine. Unfortunately, the situation did not change after Ukraine received its independence in the nineties. It did not even change after putin created the “independent” territories with russian passports and currency in the East (LNR and DNR). Most of my friends from Ukraine still speak russian with me even now, during the war. What changed is the desire of Ukrainians to live independently in a democratic society. 

This bloody war, that already lasted several weeks, has left millions of people without shelter, thousands of civilians dead, including children, and entire towns obliterated. There is talk about whether this attack on Ukraine was justified, whether it was prompted by a threat from NATO or something else. But this war does not leave room for opinion, because those who justify actions of the russian army in Ukraine, are justifying the genocide of the Ukrainian nation. Ukrainians are now fighting for their right to exist. The right to be a nation. The right to use their language and to have their own culture. Russians who justify this war believe that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian language – it’s a russian dialect they say. They believe that russia and Ukraine are one nation with one culture. 

My relatives and friends in Ukraine are afraid that this war will develop into a habit and become an extension of the same “conflict” that they have been involved in for the past eight years. The “conflict” that started when russia took Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea. Thousands of people have been killed since it started in 2014, thousands of people relocated to other parts of Ukraine. It was clear what putin was doing, but nobody wanted to deal with the president of a nuclear nation.
In the past three weeks I found my voice and spoke about my perspective on this war.  One of the points not actively discussed is that Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity by Russia, UK, and the US. Twenty years later putin violated this treaty and the entire world remained silent until russia started a full blown assault on civilian targets and infrastructure with vacuum and cluster munitions. Everybody knows about Chernobyl because of the movie, but there are four active nuclear plants in Ukraine. If any of them are sabotaged by russia the effects could be many times more disastrous than Chernobyl and the entire World will be affected. Ukraine is not only fighting for itself, but for the whole of Europe. 

In conclusion, I would like to thank all the people that are supporting my homeland and Ukrainians during this hard time.  There are many humanitarian efforts that are accepting donations to support the millions of people in need. 

On a personal level, I appreciate all the kind words, prayers, and donations that I have passed on to the people directly involved on the ground. By working with volunteers from Germany we were able to send regular and baby food, medications, bandages and many other urgently needed items to my hometown, Kropyvnytskyi. Everything was delivered to the hospitals, the army, and refugee centers.

A poem by Natalya Rakevich

I don’t want to write;
I don’t want to rhyme; 

I don’t want to make
This experience better or bright … 

Means 10 years, two years of full scale invasion.

Gray hairs that belong to a ten year old girl.

Cutting people with garden scissors for surgery.

Pieces of bodies of russian soldiers on Ukrainian trees.

Raped two month old, and girls… millions of girls… and the very old man… 

“If you had fun, it doesn’t count as a war crime.” 

Drowned farms with animals and people. 

Six hours schooldays underground in cellars.

Children with teeth removed by russian soldiers.

Killed four years old together with family in the car … thousands… ?
Maybe millions? Who can count? Especially those who are missing in action?

Several days on the box in the truck to escape from moscow.

Sleepless nights and burnt out. 

Packages, containers of medications, food, and clothes. 

(Was there ammunition as well?)

Meetings to support educators.
Mined fields and steps.
MY STEPS toward Victory?

Hope beyond hope. 

February 22, 2024