The Ukraine of before the war no longer exists

The first sign of abnormality is the commercial planes, which no longer exist. The transport par excellence in our time for long distances has disappeared in Ukraine.

It is simply a reality that has ceased to exist. You haven’t entered or left the country by air for six months, that is, when the war started.

The same thing happened eight years ago, on a smaller scale, when Russia first annexed Crimea and then the pro-Russian revolt broke out in the Donbass, in eastern Ukraine. The suspension of flights at the affected airports was the point of no return, which revealed that the situation was only going to get worse.

It was 2014 and then the chroniclers – among them the author and her partner Leticia Álvarez, in these months sent by France 24 – began to travel in combinations of train, bus, taxi and kilometers on foot at the border crossings. Today that is common throughout the country, because no airport works. Logistics is a headache.

In one country, which is the second largest in Europe after Russia, journeys of one or two hours at most by plane have turned into journeys of several days in noisy and crowded trains, or on roads that are almost always single-lane, bumpy and where traffic jams almost always coincide with the presence of ‘checkpoints’, with all its consequences for the local population and for the transport of goods, food or medicine.

Since the borders that can be crossed are only the land ones, at the Medyka crossings, on the Polish border, hundreds of trucks wait in kilometric lines to enter Ukraine, many of which carry international aid.

In this way, dozens of old second-hand cars have also entered the country, which countries such as the United Kingdom send to the Slavic country, and whose pieces some volunteers have even been using to manufacture personal protective equipment in cities as far away as Zaporizhia.

A conflict with many faces

In fact, shortages exist today in Ukraine, but it is irregular and is accompanied by seemingly unlikely scenes such as those of people waiting in line to receive a piece of bread and, a short distance away, supermarkets that – even in martyred Kharkiv – they still sell beer from famous Mexican brands. They are drunk by young people who, even in times of war, do not give up a meeting with friends or celebrating a birthday, when that does not mean risking their lives.

They are the face of a conflict that has many faces, including the silence that has fallen on any excess of criticism, a boldness that the authorities often see as symptoms of disloyalty towards the country, at a time when the Russian enemy is still firing at discretion in the east and south of Ukraine. Proof of this are the complaints about the deep-rooted corruption that the country suffers, which is now barely talked about.

“We should avoid talking about it because of the war, but everyone knows it. Corruption is a big problem in Ukraine,” confesses Yuri, a teacher from Odessa.

It is not the only dispute in Ukraine, but it lies below the surface.

Another issue, much more complicated and polarizing, is the issue of the coexistence of Russian and Ukrainian. No one knows exactly how many today prefer one or the other. But, as happened in 2014, the outbreak of the war six months ago has pushed more Ukrainians to publicly express their decision to abandon Russian altogether, to speak only Ukrainian.

And, even so, not everyone agrees with the decline of Tolstoy’s language and speaks it openly when they are not in the west of the country, because there the use of Russian is not well seen.

“I don’t see why I should give up Russian, it’s my language and the language we speak at home, even though at school my children only study in Ukrainian,” says Misha, a driver from Kharkiv.

“Being able to speak in more languages ​​should be considered a wealth,” he adds, reflecting on recent announcements by the kyiv government that measures such as reducing the hours of Russian literature in classes are being considered.

Bombing as a common language

But the daily chronicles dissipate these debates, when the confrontations continue causing death and destruction.

The figures known to date reflect the magnitude of the disaster caused by the Russian invasion. The latest data offered by the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, has been 750,000 million dollars that will be needed for reconstruction when the conflict ends, as he said at a symposium in Lugano; others have given higher figures. Not even the medical structures were spared.

The World Health Organization has already counted, in its regularly updated analysis, some 400 attacks on hospitals and other medical centers. They are witnesses, they too, of a conflict that has already killed more than 5,000 civilians and injured more than 7,000, according to the UN.

Even the reconstruction of the houses located in those areas near kyiv that the Russian troops abandoned in March, still seems like a pipe dream. It is also part of a Ukraine that now no longer exists.