Rosemary Jenkinson writes: April 23rd, 2025: This is my sixth trip to Ukraine and I’ve come to gauge the mood of the people during the US-led peace negotiations. All through the night the bus passes town squares with displays of dead soldiers in darkness. Historical buildings are barely lit, trying not to draw attention to themselves. It’s as if history itself has to be obscured for the duration of this war.
I’m sitting next to Julia, a Kyiv-based teacher of German returning from a holiday in Namibia. She says it’s important to travel when you don’t know what will happen this year or the next. The war has given her a more hedonistic outlook, but she’s troubled by some of the pro-Russian narratives in Africa. A Namibian said to her: ‘The whole world is my family. Why don’t you accept Russia as your family?’ ‘Would my family rape eight-year-old girls?’ she replied.
One night, she woke up to thunder and mistook it for a Russian missile attack. While Julia’s generation will not forgive the Russians, she’s certain that in two generations’ time, things will be different. She cites her own example of loving Germany so much she teaches the language whereas her grandmother hated the Germans for causing World War II. In the meantime, she points out, ‘Isn’t it typical how Russians can fly freely out of Moscow, but we have to suffer on the all-night bus?’
When I ask her what she thinks of President Zelensky, she replies with a shrug, ‘He is our leader. It’s up to him to decide about peace.’ Her belief in Zelensky delivering victory has been replaced by the acceptance that he’s the only option in this electionless wartime period. Julia is more worried about the impact of Trump’s administration.
As dawn arrives, the bus is rolling past endless cereal fields, the mistletoe balls stark in the bare branches of spring. There are mists like fire smoke on the rivers. A moon in the shape of a Crimean cheburek fades as pink, orange and blue begin to push through the sky.
In my Kyiv hotel, the waiter tells me he loves dancing and wants to enrol in dance classes again as soon as these ‘crazy actions’ are over. ‘Crazy actions’ strikes me as a similar euphemism to the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’. In the Kyiv streets, the bronze Soviet plaques of eminent men gaze down, making it a watchful city and even more vigilant are the soldiers guarding the public buildings. The graffiti in the main Khreschatyk Street proclaims, ‘Ukraine is the Best’, although some wag has scribbled out ‘Best’ and replaced it with ‘Beast’. Nearby, a bust of a Ukrainian hero rests on a plinth made of tank hedgehogs, which seems an ingenious way to repurpose them.
‘Make Art, Not War’ would be the perfect slogan for Kyiv, as art is flourishing here. I join PEN Ukraine to attend the Drahomán Prize, celebrating translators from Ukrainian into world languages. PEN Ukraine tell me, however, that their American funding to take writers on trips to war-torn cities has been cut. I’m reminded of US vice-president JD Vance’s criticism of Zelensky’s ‘propaganda tours’ for Western leaders. Vance would no doubt tar PEN with the same brush, but such tours are vital for countering Russian misinformation.
That very night, two missiles hit Kyiv’s Svyatoshyno district, killing twelve people. Would Vance regard a tour of this shattered district as propaganda? One person’s propaganda is another’s reality. Powerful explosions are known in Kyiv diplomatic circles as ‘window-rattlers’, but after my long journey and, frankly, a few glasses of wine, I don’t hear a thing.
*****
April 25th, 2025: The following night, I take the train to Zaporizhia. Most people in the West aren’t aware of the all-pervasiveness of Russian warfare. The English-language travel website I use has been disrupted by Russian cyber attacks, necessitating my Zaporizhian translator, Alexei Stoyanovsky, to book my train for me. Alexei is currently concerned by Trump and Putin playing ‘good cop, bad cop’ and suspects that Trump’s efforts to impose a swift peace deal are motivated by his aim of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. As TS Eliot posited, ‘Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.’ Alexei nonetheless thinks that Zelensky has been clever in appealing to Trump’s innate greed through the mineral deal proposal. In spite of Trump’s assertion that Zelensky has ‘no cards to play’, he has at least managed to maintain US interest. Perhaps his next gambit should be to offer a future riviera at the Kakhovka Sea.
Western journalists keep anticipating a downturn in support for Zelensky the longer the war continues, but his Ukrainian mandate is solid. The increased missile attacks from Russia this spring are intended to psychologically weaken communities and transform cities into ghost towns. Yet they also mean that Ukrainians are so united against the external threat that they don’t turn on Zelensky. They are equally united against Trump, whose shift towards Russia against Europe is as seismic as JFK’s pro-European ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ back in 1963. To Ukrainians, it’s almost as if Trump has said ‘Ya Ruskiy.’
Alexei takes me to the Myrove community to meet a local activist, Maryna, and the team of women making pirozhki in a school kitchen for the soldiers. From there, we head to a Chernobyl commemoration led by Natalya, the director of the Zorya Palace of Culture. The Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power station is still at risk of becoming as big a catastrophe as Chernobyl, but the event is surprisingly upbeat. One of the songs is entitled ‘Unbreakable Ukraine’, revealing the mood of the people. Children sing a rap-folk fusion on how the guelder rose of Ukraine differs from the birch tree of Russia, reflecting their irreconcilable positions. One audience member tells me it’s difficult to consider peace and mineral deals during ongoing Russian aggression: ‘It’s like our house is burning down. How can we make a deal till the fire is out?’
In nearby Vyvodove, community leader Oleksander is reeling from a recent Russian Grad rocket attack on his home in Vyschetarasivka – a village just across the river from the area occupied by Russia. Fortunately, he and his wife managed to run into the adjoining room before flying glass cut their bed to ribbons. Concerning peace, he asks me, ‘What would your country do if you were us?’ I tell him that, in my opinion, the UK would continue to fight, while Ireland would probably sign a peace deal and try to organise guerilla resistance within the occupied territories. ‘But we’d never be able to resist,’ Oleksander replies. ‘Putin is FSB; he clamps down on all resistance.’ He is still affected by his narrow escape from a Russian drone last year. While speaking, he suddenly tunes into the sound of a lawnmower outside, wondering if it might be something more sinister. One of the few positive sounds in the sky this year is the increasing number of Ukrainian jets.
The pain, sorrow and suffering runs deep in Ukraine. Over the next two days, I meet Anastasia, whose husband died in hospital from wounds sustained near Toretsk, and Olesya, whose surgeon husband, Artur, died in a missile attack on a frontline stabilisation unit near Kharkiv. I also visit Natalya, the mayor of Vilniansk, who lost her son, Igor, last year in Kupiansk. Yaryna, a former soldier herself, set up a support programme to help the bereaved after she and her psychologist mother saw the desperate need around them. Yaryna had no idea she’d require help herself until the day her partner, Rostislav, was killed in Avdiivka. Personal loss has made assisting others even more urgent.
It is so important to hear these stories of resilience. Alexei and I travel to these women throughout the countryside, past verges full of pheasants and bounding hares. On a quiet road, we pass a piece of military equipment under camouflage between the trees.
*****
April 27th 2025: In Zaporizhia we go with an education leader, Julia, to meet Serhiy, a parliamentary deputy for Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. He is young, dynamic and explains that he had no backgound in politics until he answered a call in 2019 from the party for brand-new candidates. Serhiy wasn’t expected to beat the local oligarch, but did so resoundingly. He shows us the bombarded Shevchenko district known for airplane construction, then drives us to an apartment block badly damaged by a glide bomb. He points to the spot where a woman was passing with her dog. The shrapnel hit an artery in her neck, though her dog survived. Serhiy is troubled that it takes six months for those who have had their apartment destroyed to receive compensation, but he balks at Trump’s accusations of corruption and says that no evidence has been provided. ‘You can’t just steal military aid in Ukraine and sell it on,’ he insists. ‘Impossible.’
Once we’ve left Serhiy, Julia asks ‘But who is going to bring back my son?’ Some of those who have had family members killed in the war can’t help feeling that Zelensky’s party is partially responsible for having been unprepared for the invasion and for not overcoming the Soviet-era legacy where army officers prioritised their own safety and careers over their men’s. Having said that, everyone recognises that the ultimate responsibility is Putin’s. Julia’s own son, Volodymyr, was killed in Vuhledar in 2022.
The night before I leave, I ask Anna Chuprina, a journalist from MIG, and Radio on Touch founder Olga Vakalo about the prospects for peace. Anna is optimistic that even the smallest actions can change things for the better. She quotes American writer Nora Roberts: ‘We need not only to hope for a happy ending; we need to believe and do everything to bring it closer.’ Olga also strikes a sanguine note. She acknowledges that Trump and Putin share the same dark agenda, but keeps faith in the paradox that good can come from evil.
As I head back to my hotel, Alexei tells me that Russian planes have left Crimea on a mission. Outside, however, a warm spring wind is strengthening in the Alley of Heroes.
19/5/2025
