I have done a podcast, a Q&A, with Inna Sovsun, who is a Ukrainian: a politician and an academic, a member of her country’s parliament. At the outset, I say I’m going to ask her a dumb question: “How are you?” She answers essentially as follows:
I’m asked that all the time, and I never know how to answer. I can say I’m okay, which would not be true, because I’m not, because I miss my son, whom I haven’t seen for a couple of weeks now, and I miss my boyfriend, who’s with the army, fighting in the east. I worry about him day and night.
So, “okay” is not the right word to say. Also, I can’t say that I am not okay, because there are people in Mariupol, and they’re the ones who can claim they are not okay. How can I say I’m not okay when I’m sitting here alive and well?
So, yes: “How are you?” is probably the most simple and at the same time one of the most complicated questions for a Ukrainian right now.
Inna Sovsun was born in 1984, in Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine, after the capital, Kyiv. She remembers the independence referendum in December 1991. Her parents took her to the polling station. She was aware that something very important was going on. Ninety-two percent of Ukrainians voted for independence. People talk of divisions in Ukraine: Russian-speakers, Ukrainian-speakers. On the question of independence, they were virtually united, even then.
In our podcast, Inna Sovsun and I talk about identity, nationality, nationhood. She has many insightful things to say about that. In the 30 years since independence, there have been shifting moods in the country: Should we lean toward Russia, toward Europe? The shifting has ended. Putin’s bombs have closed the question. As Ms. Sovsun says,
There is no going back. There is no going back to friendly relations with Russia. The situation here is black and white. This is an existential threat we are dealing with. Everyone understands it. There are no shades of gray. They have come here and started killing us. There is no debate about that.
Ms. Sovsun belongs to a small party, an opposition party. But normal politics — party politics — has been suspended in Ukraine. How could it be otherwise? Everyone is focused on one thing: surviving, repelling the invader. “In order for politics to exist, we need to have a state,” Ms. Sovsun says, “and this is what we’re trying to do now: make sure the state continues to exist.”
Many of us foreigners are stunned by the Ukrainian military: their ability, their courage. Is Ms. Sovsun? Yes, and by the Ukrainian people, too. They cannot be separated, she says, the military and the people. She explains why the Ukrainian military is performing more ably than the rest of the world expected. For one thing, they have been fighting for years: fighting the Russians in the Donbas. Putin launched the war in 2014. February 2022 saw the full-scale invasion.
Ms. Sovsun speaks of families who moved from the east, to escape the war, to safe and peaceful places in the west, such as Irpin and Bucha. Russian terror seems to find them wherever they go.
Obviously, the Ukraine war involves more than Ukraine: It involves Europe, the fate of the West — big things. The Kremlin recognizes that as much as anyone does. But if I were a Ukrainian, I would think, “To hell with the ‘larger stakes.’ I want my country to be saved.” I raise this with Inna Sovsun — who says,
There is a general understanding that we have always been the front line between Russia and Europe. That we are in the middle of the two. We have always known that Russia is a danger. We knew that better than any other nation in the world.
Other people in the West did not know about the danger, or chose to ignore it, for economic reasons or whatever.
But there is also this: Ukraine has chosen a path — a path of democracy. Our democracy has many problems. But, unlike Russians, we are choosing our own presidents, our own legislators. So Putin is not just fighting Ukraine, as a country, as a territory. He is fighting against the values that we have chosen for ourselves. And if he wins here, he will go farther, to other countries with the values of freedom and democracy, the values he hates.
Finland and Sweden are certainly understanding this, better than ever.
I am sitting in free and peaceful and pleasant America. I can hardly bear to read and hear stories from Ukraine: about murder, rape, and terror. And to be in Ukraine?
The day that images from Bucha started showing up, I was on a train going west, to see my son. On the train, when Wi-Fi kicked in, I would see the images and think, “How can this be happening?” I could recognize the streets — the streets of Bucha, where the bodies were.
Near where my parents live: There were corpses. It was terrifying.
I thought I was going to break. But, strangely enough, I have not cried since Bucha. I can’t explain this. If I started crying, I would not be able to stop. I would not be able to do my job.
You just feel emptiness. That is the word I would use to describe how many of us feel. Just emptiness.
We are focusing on one thing now: to win. After we have won, I will get back to the rest and try to process it.
Inna Sovsun has an uncanny ability to articulate that which is impossible, or extremely difficult, to articulate. Again, to listen to her, go here.