Invisible Wounds of the War

Ordinary people with an extraordinary destiny. They helped others while losing their own. They left their homes, which had been attacked by the enemy, and went to places unknown. These stories are the words of our land.

In 2022, I was most impressed by the visible wounds of the war. Injured children, charred bodies, mass graves, and destroyed houses. But we must honestly admit that during these nearly two years, and for some almost ten years, we got used to the visual appearance of war. We know this picture. When a news website reports that a Russian missile hit a residential building, we even imagine what that hole in the building looks like. Because we have already seen more than one of the kind. And we read the statistics about the victims without being interested in their names but only in their numbers.

We accuse the world of being tired of the news about the war in Ukraine, of the Western media writing less and less about us, but we are also tired of scary news, dressing our mental state in rose-coloured glasses. It is easier to live like this and, for some, to go on fighting. Today, taking off these glasses, I will speak about the invisible wounds of the war. About something that one cannot film on camera and show.

Kozarovychi, Kyiv Oblast. Beginning of April 2023. The house damaged by last year’s shelling has already been repaired to some extent. International organisations helped install new windows and radiators here. This is where everything good in this yard ends.

Restoration of living conditions does not bring the married couple living here any joy and happiness. I am talking about the parents of Dmytro Khyliuk, the Ukrainian journalist who was detained and kidnapped by the Russian military back in March of last year during the occupation of Kozarovychi. Dmytro’s father, Vasyl Khyliuk, is 75 years old. His mother is 73, she suffered a severe stroke. Only half a year after their son’s disappearance, Dmytro’s parents received an envelope from a Russian detention facility containing a short notice: “Mom, Dad, I’m fine.”

It is still unknown in which detention facility or Russian prison the journalist is being held. In April, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) discovered that Dmytro was held in pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in Novozybkov, Bryansk Oblast, Russia, after which he was allegedly transferred to a prison in Vladimir Oblast. But nobody knows if the journalist is still there because Russia has not confirmed that Dmytro Khyliuk is located on their territory.

Dmytro’s mother takes antidepressant medication and tries not to lose hope. It doesn’t work very well. “How are we coping with this?” she answered my question in April this year, “We cry and mourn. We can’t concentrate on the work, and we are engulfed in despair.”

After the liberation of the village on 31 March last year, Dmytro Khyliuk’s parents had some hope that their son would be back from captivity soon. At first, they did not talk to journalists because they were afraid that publicity would harm their son. Then, they started communicating with the media. Each interview hurts them, but they keep drawing attention to their grief. So far, it has yielded no result.

Twenty months have passed since Dmytro disappeared. The journalist’s parents realise that he may be held in a Russian detention facility for years. “But will we be able to see him come back? We are two old and unhappy people,” Halyna Khyliuk explained. And I could not answer her anything. I can only tell Dmytro’s story to others, including you here today. I really hope that all captives, both POWs and civilians, will come back home to Ukraine.

A Polish poet, Wisława Szymborska, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, has a poem, “The End and the Beginning.” It is about life after the war, but I believe that it is also about life during the war. Let me read a small excerpt from it:

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.

Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
someone has to glaze a window
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

The sentence “all the cameras have left for another war” sometimes can be changed to “all the cameras have left for another shelling.”

I often think about the lives of those people who suffered the peril a year or even three months ago. Their stories are extensively reported in the first days following the tragedy, but then the cameras leave. For example, how do people live in Hroza village in Kharkiv Oblast now? Can it be called life after what has happened there?

Dnipro. April this year. Three months have passed since the Russian missile X-22 hit a residential building at 118 Naberezhna Peremohy, having totally destroyed two of its blocks. Forty-six people died due to this shelling. Now, against the background of these ruins, teenagers are taking pictures, foreign diplomats come to see the scene of the tragedy, and people keep living in the neighbouring building blocks.

Iryna S. finally dares to come to the building where her apartment once was. There, she lived together with her 8-year-old son Zakhar, cat Basia and chinchilla Senia. On 14 January, Iryna was washing dishes in the kitchen while her son was in the next room. This was when the missile attack on the building happened. Iryna says that she felt glass, stones and pieces of iron falling on her. The woman lost consciousness for some time and woke up to the voice of her son calling his mother from the next room. Iryna managed to open the apartment’s door, but the stairs were blocked; it was impossible to get out of the apartment because the block was partially ruined. Then, she came up to the window and started shouting loudly and calling for help. You could possibly hear those screams, as they were all over the Internet. But you have probably never heard about Iryna.

8-year-old Zakhar was pulled out through the window by Pavlo Kulyk, a dog trainer who works nearby. As soon as the strike happened, the man ran to the scene to save people. “There was a lot of smoke, there were corpses on the ground, and someone was shouting out of the window,” he recalls that day. Iryna was shouting. Together with two other men, ordinary residents of Dnipro, the dog trainer reached the window through the pile of stones formed after the partial destruction of the building. Iryna handed her son over through the window, and then the men pulled her out, too. They took Zakhar and her to the hospital. At the hospital, stitches were applied, and glass shards were taken out of her body. She also suffered a brain injury. The woman talks about this sitting in the kitchen of the apartment, which was recently purchased for her by a charitable foundation. The commission found her old apartment uninhabitable.

After the missile attack, her son, 8-year-old Zakhar, began feeling terrified of everything, complaining of frequent headaches and crying in his sleep. Now, he won’t leave his mother even for a few minutes. During all these months, Iryna and Zakhar have been going to rehabilitation sessions; they both visit a psychologist. To cope with psychological trauma, the woman tries to avoid coming to the building at Naberezhna Peremohy and wants to start her life over.

The family’s pets have also experienced stress because of this missile strike. Cat Basia was pulled out by the rescuers 3 days after the shelling. She was hiding under the bathtub, and chinchilla Senia, which was found immediately, died soon after hearing the sound of the air raid alert and the air defence working again. The animal started running around the cage, got nervous, fell down, and died.

I am telling you all these details about these families, even about Chinchilla Senia, to show that all journalists of the world would not probably be enough to describe what people in Ukraine are facing, both military and civilians, and what psychological trauma they are experiencing. There are numerous untold and undiscovered stories. We will probably get to know about them only after many years. These stories stay out of sight of journalists, and only relatives and friends know about them. I am sure we have such stories here, too.

I want to finish my speech with a story from my native city. This is Kherson, which is shelled by the Russians on a daily basis. On 11 November, the anniversary of the city’s de-occupation, three Kherson residents launched a new radio station. So far, they have only one morning entertainment programme called the “Show Must Kherson.” In a certain sense, it is also about rose-coloured glasses. After all, people who are aware of the situation in the city understand what I am talking about. It is about life despite everything. But let them be part of this project because it is also about struggle, support, and love for your native city, the land, Ukraine and its people.

I sincerely thank the Armed Forces of Ukraine for Kherson, for Ukraine, for the possibility of practising journalism in my country rather than somewhere far away.