Summary: In fact, ordinary Ukrainians (including me, of course) are quite excited about China's willingness to propose a peaceful solution, believing that this is a crucial step in solving the problem.
Written by Observer.com columnist Anton Nierman].
Before you know it, another year has passed.
For me in Ukraine, it has been a year of progress, but also a year of pain, and a year of change. My life has never been so full of joys, sorrows, joys and sorrows as this year.
The war continues, and Ukraine at war is full of all kinds of tragedies, and I don't think I'm in a position to call it unfortunate. There are also many Ukrainians who are struggling in the dire straits of life, "a grain of sand of the times will become a mountain when it falls on everyone", this famous sentence that Chinese friends love to say, is also a true portrayal of the reality of Ukraine.
However, tomorrow will come, and life will not be just night, even the slightest remnant of sunshine is precious to us. Every experience I have had, every cleansing of my soul, pain and joy, have added to my life notes that may not be a strong stroke.
Undertone: Joy in suffering.
Entering 2023, despite the fact that Ukrainians have accepted the fact that the war is prolonged, hopeful people still believe that the war will end in the near future.
I vaguely remember the Catholic Christmas period of 2022: it was December 27, 2022, Christmas markets were in full swing, glittering ice sculptures greeted visitors, and Ukrainians ushered in a rare atmosphere of relaxation in the midst of traditional New Year celebrations.
In interviews on the streets in the center of Kiev, people wished each other a happy new year. A kiosk was set up on Independence Square for people to donate gifts and humanitarian aid to the army, and there was a cheerful scene outside the pavilion. Although there is often a shortage of goods on weekdays, fortunately, during the Christmas period, ** finally managed to maintain the sufficiency of goods**, which also relieved people who had been tormented by **shortage for a long time.
People congratulated each other and talked to each other as if war had never existed. I still remember a quote from a girl named Maria on Maidan that said to me: "Although I am not ready to celebrate as usual, I still need to celebrate." We need to give gifts, etc., and we need to fight this feeling of uncertainty. ”
Whether you really believe it or lie to yourself, "fighting the feeling of uncertainty" has become a necessity in the lives of Ukrainians. But many Ukrainians genuinely believe that in 2023, the war will end there.
"Shell Christmas tree" in Kyiv (Reuters).
Comedy has now become the "food for thought" for Ukrainians, a coping mechanism to "fight against uncertainty", and an emotional outlet for Ukrainians. We face so much stress and tragedy every day, and it becomes something we have to do to vent our emotions to keep ourselves sane. Sometimes, you just need to make a joke that isn't funny and forget about life's troubles and move on.
Many have even developed comedy acting into a survival skill. All kinds of humor can make us feel that life is still alive, and it gives people hope. I remember when a comedy show in Kyiv ended, a woman said to the people around her, "This is the first time I've laughed so much in a whole year." ”
But the humorous comedy of Ukraine is not without talking about war. Although the sketches revolve around the joys and sorrows of the common people, they also involve some jokes and bureaucratic style of the authorities. For example, I once watched a show that joked about how Ukrainians should get used to Russian missiles and drones, since the authorities can't get them from the West fast enough**.
While we all know that the joke isn't actually funny: it's about life, but we see it more as a pleasure in suffering. I also often joke to my family now that I was afraid that the rockets would hit my building, and after the walls collapsed, everyone would see that I hadn't cleaned my apartment and that I wasn't wearing clothes.
It is indeed true that Ukrainians now often say that our lives are divided into two contrasting phases, "before the war" and "after the war". Before the war, the jokes we loved to tell were not so political, and after the war, even the taste of jokes changed. For example, the European Union has told us that it will provide us with "the best quality light bulbs", but in reality Ukraine is currently running out of electricity and does not need light bulbs at all. It's really the best black humor.
But I hope that this black humor will be less in the new year.
Ukrainians really love to watch comedy.
Advanced Color: Habit.
Ukrainians are indeed used to war.
When air raid sirens sounded on the streets of Kyiv, some people rushed to seek shelter, but others did not want to hide. People log in to Telegram with their mobile phones, and there are groups that monitor radio waves from morning to night to know what kind of missiles or drones are coming. Then, they decide how to respond.
Russian airstrikes in early 2023 are more frequent than ever. At first, when the air raid sirens sounded, I, like many people, watched the people around me come and decide how to respond. But after a few days, I also started turning to Telegram channels to better gauge the potential severity of the situation before deciding whether to hide or not.
As the intensity of Russian bombardment gradually wanes, most restaurants, cafes and other businesses in Kyiv are opening as normal. As I walked through the spring breeze that was no longer cold, these places were often crowded with customers. On one weekend, I even saw a crowded bungee jump, with people jumping off a pedestrian bridge over the Dnieper River in Kyiv in search of a momentary thrill.
In the evenings, I saw people taking a leisurely walk outside the theater. Towards midnight, the crowd disappeared because there was still a curfew in Ukraine.
However, the signs of war in Kyiv have not been completely eliminated.
I saw historical monuments protected from air strikes with sandbags, Russian tanks on Kiev's historic Mikhailovska Square where Russian tanks were being displayed as trophies, destroyed residential buildings as a result of missile strikes, cars with bullet holes, many large metal tank traps - these traps, often called "hedgehogs", were used to block roads.
You can also see yellow and blue — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — common on fences and billboards throughout the city.
On the grass of Kiev's Independence Square are also small Ukrainian flags, each of which bears the name of a person who died in the war. The flags of other countries that support Ukraine are also there.
A man walks past a memorial point dedicated to servicemen killed in Russia's war against Ukraine on Independence Square in Kyiv (Reuters).
One day while walking in Kyiv, I met a 46-year-old woman who claimed to be the principal of an elementary school and said she thought the war could drag on until 2024 or more. But she also said that at least she and her children are used to war. "With so many people dead, I no longer worry that me and my children will get tired of being attacked by the Russians. She explained to me that the war had become part of their school life.
I still remember the conversation vividly, and she said to me: "It's not unusual for our kids to go to school bomb shelters, they're used to it now." As soon as they heard the air raid siren, they knew they had about two minutes to get to the place where they were hiding. Air raid sirens are generally twice a week, but they can also be five times a day. Sometimes we spend five or six hours in the shelter, sometimes just 15 minutes. ”
Six months ago, many children panicked when they heard the siren, but we worked hard to make the shelter a welcoming, comfortable place. We painted the walls in bright colors, filled them with books and art materials, and tried to make the kids feel like going to a bomb shelter was like going to outer space, like a trip to Mars. There are generators and wi-fi there, so there is always electricity and internet anyway. We provided them with lockers and they kept an emergency kit there with water and some favourite snacks. Sometimes naughty kids sneak into shelters and eat these emergency treats when they shouldn't! ”
She continued to tell me her story: "I've been working in education for 22 years. ”
Before the start of the war, I opened a school in Kharkiv. My school was not destroyed, but it was surrounded by buildings that had been badly damaged. When the children no longer come, the school becomes a place where volunteers distribute food. I lived alone in the school for a while, stayed until mid-March, and then I moved to Kyiv and picked up my old business again. ”
Many women and children left Ukraine, I also had many opportunities to leave, and many of my friends and colleagues tried to convince me to go abroad. But I think it's important to stay. What are our men fighting for if we leave our country? If not me, who will do the work? In this case, it is difficult to teach children.
Children know so much more about the world than we think. They grow up fast, and war has become a part of their learning and life, and they incorporate it into games and word games. If someone is scared or sad, they comfort each other. Sometimes they start crying because they don't know if their parents are safe or not. It's been an incredible, memorable year.
When the air raids sounded, our youngest kids came to the shelter in their pajamas, sleepy, their hair messy – you know they almost never cried. They are our little heroes, and from them, I can feel the meaning of my existence. ”
Ukrainian children in bomb shelters.
In fact, the words of this old educator are the real mentality of most Ukrainians, like most ordinary people I know, who "just want to live in peace."
Most Ukrainians have long been "coexisting" with the war, and they do not want Ukraine to continue to be in the midst of war, but only peace. But our people do not know how to win peace, they can only hope for others. Most Ukrainians feel that many countries around the world have smart people who know how to stop the war from continuing, so they hope that the countries concerned will lend a helping hand and make the war stop. It is precisely because of this that, in fact, ordinary Ukrainians (including me, of course) are quite excited about China's willingness to come up with a peaceful solution, believing that it is a crucial step in solving the problem.
Even my family has talked to me about this, and they know that I have Chinese friends and know how Chinese friends help our family, so they believe in the kindness of Chinese: "I know we're all a little scared to look into the future, but maybe this plan can help." It is about dialogue and cooperation, not conflict. That's important, right? Perhaps China's plan is a shortcut to achieving this goal. But, of course, we need to be careful and smart, analyzing all the pros and cons. ”
Maybe this war will continue for another year or even years, and although I also want it to end, Ukrainians have become accustomed to the present life, or rather numb. My former neighbor, 30-year-old Kiev native Irina (not her real name), was pregnant with her first child when the war broke out. She stayed in Ukraine to give birth to her daughter, but soon after went to Spain. The war is at a stalemate with no definite end in sight, which makes it unlikely that she will return anytime soon.
On the one hand, it is foreseeable that the war will drag on, although it is difficult to admit, "said Irina. "I'm just listening, analyzing, and understanding reality, and I'm not going home anytime soon. This is her reply to me.
Obviously, we who live with all kinds of threats (not just wars) can realize that it is important to keep life going in the here and now, to accept the new world again and again, to treat each day as a separate unit – that's how I am adjusting my mindset to continue living, and the same is true of the current state of many Ukrainians.
It's hard to talk about having fun in time, but we're used to it.
Dark: Pain and licking wounds.
In 2023, I lost my cousin forever. His young life was left in the ** Mutter.
I don't need to go into the pain anymore, I still remember the day of his burial: the sun was shining, and the staff indifferently threw a handful of dirt into his grave. My aunt sobbed uncontrollably, and she arched her grief-stricken body over her son's coffin. She pressed her face to the wooden coffin, hugged it with her arms, and stroked the fabric embroidered with the requiem motif. His father, my uncle, comforted her softly.
Due to the death of my cousin, I gradually changed from a novice who knew nothing about military affairs to a "military strategist", and I have to say that this is an extremely black humorous but not funny joke.
The only thing that can affirm me from my cousin's death is that for both Russia and Ukraine, the fighting in **Mutter in those months has cost both sides unbelievable.
Ukrainian servicemen in the trenches of **Mutter.
Some of the accounts of my cousins can help us understand the scale of the loss.
Oleg Storoghes (not his real name) served in an aerial reconnaissance unit in the northeastern part of the Mutt region.
Having lost a hand, he retired from the army and returned to Kiev. I met him in a café in Kyiv on May 31, 2023, which was also the funeral of his best friend Yuri Taranuka (pseudonym). Before the war, the two worked together in construction in Zmiv, a small town in Kharkiv.
Storojes said he had seen many young men who had died in battle, and that his cousin was just one of those who had lost their lives, "There are funerals every day, and people I know die from time to time." Storonges, who has served on the front line near **Mutter for about eight months, said the losses of the Ukrainian army were "appalling", but added that the Russian losses he witnessed were "not far behind".
Before the outbreak of the war, he was a professional poker player with no prior military training. The only way to control the intense fear, he said, is to "fully accept" the possibility that he too will die.
He had told me about the military life of **Mutter, and I can imagine what it would have been:
Exhausted troops are often sent to the rudimentary military ** centers there, where they are decompressed for two or three days before returning to the battlefield in the mud. In the center of the ** is a rare leisure time for the soldiers, who can stay away from the sniper's line of sight, as well as the constant sound of artillery and shrapnel from the frontline positions.
The soldiers were able to play table tennis, pray, eat and drink, and undergo trauma and meditation sessions before returning to "hell on earth."
For soldiers who serve in such hellish conditions, they are also afraid of a crude and simple truth: in order to survive, they will almost certainly have to kill, or be killed.
Oleg and his family were clearly lucky. Although he lost a hand, he was also "a blessing in disguise" and stayed away from the brutal battlefield. Obviously, my cousin and many other young people were not so lucky.
For the families of the war dead, "no one is alive and no body is dead" is the source of the long suffering.
After my cousin's death in battle, I joined a Telegram group to find his relatives on the battlefield, and even though my cousin's comrades had told me that he had died on the battlefield and that there was no one to collect his body, I still hoped that his soul would rest in peace, even if the Russians buried him.
Ukrainians desperately search for missing relatives in clusters or identify unclaimed war dead. In the rough images of cold gray faces, blood-stained torsos, and fragments of human remains, they identify the deceased by identifying anything recognizable, such as a scar on a body or a ring worn.
That's why, in the age of socializing, the internet has become the lifeblood of this war. Every day, mothers, sisters, fathers, partners, brothers search the internet trying to find any fragments of information they share in chats. Ironically, one of the most valuable resources for their family search is the list of the dead published by the Russian side, as the Ukrainian authorities have been reluctant to talk about the names and numbers of the dead (the official statement is "to prevent the spread of disinformation", and I think I am afraid that they are reluctant to let the population know about the cruelty of the war on the front line, so as not to have a "bad impact" on their recruitment efforts).
This is the fate of the families of missing or killed soldiers. In the information blockade, it is their responsibility to bring together open-source information and try to piece together what happened.
Even though I had different purposes than theirs, I was able to feel it. The dark color of the loss of family members, many Ukrainian families have suffered this pain in 2023.
Members of the Ukrainian National Guard attend the funeral of their comrades who died in the fighting in the capital Kyiv (Reuters).
My year: "fulfillment".
Pain is only temporary, and after getting rid of bad emotions, busy work will eventually attract all your energy.
I've never been so busy as this one. Russian airstrikes on infrastructure across Ukraine often keep me on the move. Of course, it is certainly not limited to Kyiv, and I have traveled far and south to make use of my expertise, and this year of "enrichment" has finally allowed me to forget the fact of the death of my loved ones for a while.
Since March, the National Grid of Ukraine (UKRENERGO) has been preparing to merge our grid with the European grid in order to further upgrade the network and increase its stability. As a professional, I naturally threw myself into this business.
In general, I spent the whole year doing repetitive and tedious work such as replacing old equipment, refurbishing power lines, and building new equipment.
I beg your pardon for my ramblings, but I would like to put into writing all the contributions I have made to our people this year. Of course, from my account, readers may also be able to see what social life in Ukraine is like today. Let me try to explain what we did in simple terms from a technical point of view.
In order to provide electricity to consumers, the power generation system needs to do two things: one is to generate electricity, and the other is to transport and distribute electricity. The Russian airstrikes are mainly aimed at the transport system, which consists of power lines and substations of different levels. In most cases, a substation is a network node of the grid that is used to reduce the voltage of the incoming electricity and distribute it to consumers.
Russia's large-scale and well-orchestrated attacks have targeted these network nodes. I'm sure these attacks were apparently planned with the help of Russian engineers. They also attacked thermal power plants in large cities such as Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkov.
A combined heat and power (CHP) station is a facility that generates and supplies heat at the same time: it can provide heat and electricity to urban consumers in winter. Therefore, attacks on substations are highly targeted. Once the transport line is destroyed, it is no longer possible to deliver electricity to consumers. In fact, Ukraine still has enough power generation, and there is enough coal, nuclear and hydroelectric capacity, but the transmission system is being destroyed step by step, which is a huge problem.
When an attack causes a power outage in some areas, power is usually restored within an hour. This sounds like a lot of speed, because we're going to switch the power line to a backup line. If some simple single piece of equipment is damaged, we can restore it very quickly. During the period when Russian airstrikes were most frequent, we used almost all of the available stock equipment and worked hard to repair all damaged electrical facilities within 3-4 weeks. But there is still a very complex, expensive and special type of equipment – such as transformers – that is difficult to supply in a short period of time. With Ukraine's manufacturing capacity today, it would take up to six months to manufacture them.
If you see black smoke coming from some places in Ukraine, don't doubt it, it's most likely that the oil in the transformer is burning.
Substations became the main targets of Russia's attacks.
Transformers and transformer oil are now one of the most scarce things in Ukraine, and in the city of Mykolaiv alone, there is a shortfall of about 120 tons of transformer oil. Without it, we can't repair some slightly damaged transformers. Once the transformer is damaged, the power plant cannot supply power to the grid. If these transformers are completely destroyed, it will take a long time to build new ones. It's not something that can be made beforehand and plug and play when needed, manufacturing a transformer requires a whole set of industrial processes. The stability of Ukraine's power grid suffers from the massive destruction of transformers.
That's why we generally ask people to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours, because all the temporary solutions can't put the grid under pressure to run at full capacity. As soon as we find that the grid is overwhelmed, we must turn off the power urgently**. These temporary outages reduce the load on the grid and prevent the entire system from collapsing. If people can reduce their electricity consumption, the grid is likely to continue to be so afloat.
Due to the instability of the power grid, many Ukrainians can hardly enjoy modern comforts, and the motivation to survive trumps everything. Houses on the outskirts of towns or in rural areas have become rudimentary shelters from nightfall, and residents live by candlelight, drawing water from wells and sheltering from the cold on firewood and the heat of their bodies themselves.
Beginning on November 25, 2023, perhaps due to the renewed increase in pressure on transformers and power grids, some villages and towns outside the city of Kyiv lost power again, and people endured sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water.
On November 29, I went to the village of Bziv, about 60 kilometers from Kyiv, and saw 11-year-old Artyom (not his real name) helping his grandmother light a smoky fire in her makeshift outdoor kitchen next to their almost abandoned apartment building. The brightness inside the house is rapidly declining, and they need to eat before the setting sun plunges their home into cold and darkness. Artem's grandmother, Irina (not her real name), said she and her grandson have been sleeping in an abandoned apartment next door since the power outage began.
After the first wave**, we lost one window and two were damaged. After the second time, all other windows were destroyed. She said. "It was cold to stay here. It was difficult to cook and we had to run between the apartment and the place where we cooked. ”
Temporary sloping structures dot the overgrown courtyards of their apartment complexes, where residents gather to cook over fire. I saw a woman collect pieces of wood from her first-floor apartment to burn for firewood. Another resident joked that his home was turned into a "five-bedroom apartment" after a façade collapsed.
The Ukrainian people languishing in the dark.
Here, here, here," my colleague called out to me, beckoning me to look at the side of the transformer. Sharp metal shards were scattered in large numbers on the nearby ground and left no one to pick them up.
Along the way, shredded transformers the size of bungalows are encased in a protective net of concrete and sandbags, and above us, the towering, formidable Soviet-era walls of the power plant's massive turbine hall loom overhead.
We got to work in thick work jackets, climbing poles and twisting wires together. When the power is restored**, we go to another place and repeat the process. Many of my colleagues caught a cold after working for several days, but thanks to our efforts, the power supply was fully restored on December 2, and water was restored to all households.
When I packed up my tools and returned home to learn the good news that the electricity problem had basically been solved, it felt like it was really the happiest day of my year. Thankfully, we had a little bit of a respite.
This tense-relaxed lifestyle has become the norm in my life since the beginning of the winter in Ukraine, and sometimes I even think that this is the true meaning of life - constantly being busy will make you feel that your life is very meaningful, and it can also make people forget all the unhappiness of life. But I still wish I had less work – if I'm busy, someone must be suffering.
There is nothing more than this in life, there is pain, and there is hope. This year may not have left me with good memories, but the sparkle of people is still shining: the flickering lights in the family, the rare laughter and singing at Christmas, the watchful help between friends and strangers, as long as you want, you can always find the light of hope.
Chinese friends, may you be favored by Lady Luck in the new year!