Should Ukrainian writers, poets and intellectuals participate in events abroad to which Russians are also invited? Orysia Hrudka provides an overview of the controversies of the past two years, which became catalysts for the attitude towards the participation or non-participation of Ukrainians in international events in which Russians participated. 

From the first days of the Great War, the Ukrainian intellectual community’s stance toward Russian culture has resembled the dilemma of a Russian liberal whose liberalism, as the old saying goes, “ends with the Ukrainian question”

But I don’t rule out that something else should come to replace being in the captivity of collective trauma. Perhaps it’s a kind of symbiosis reflecting that we, despite Western politicians’ expectations and the Russian dictator’s expectations, did not capitulate in the first days of the February offensive. Pride for the hundreds of thousands who came to the military enlistment offices. They didn’t hide. Those who did and continue to do everything to give Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation a chance for the future.

In war, poetry is definitely not a soldier. It’s more like a shout instead of a gunshot. That’s why Ukrainian poets often remind me of people who, after a car crash, are the first ones to rush into the lane of oncoming traffic, desperately calling for help.

What we, journalists, and all war documentarians are doing today is a memorial. Russia failed to conceal its actions from the world and from history. Testimonies of these atrocities are preserved. 

War is about more than heroes and valor. In essence, war touches every one of us, even those who are far from the front line and without shrapnel wounds. None of us were born for war; it is not in our nature. Yet, in different ways and to varying degrees, we all eventually become its victims.