Ukraine, Mykolaiv — To win the war, you need to love it, says Vitali Kim. “Love what you are doing, be in harmony with the situation you are in, and find something good as a result with a small victory in every situation.”
Kim, 41, head of the regional military junta in the embarrassed southern city of Mykolaiv, offers a candid smile that has become the face of Ukraine’s resistance along the cleanup of the Black Sea coast. It gives rise to the quiet confidence that Russian missiles may hurt us, but they cannot dent the Ukrainian spirit.
Four months ago, the port of Mykolaiv, once the hub of Soviet shipbuilding, emerged from the annexed Crimea of Russian troops and almost went wild as it occupied the nearby city of Kherson. Kim responded in a daily video message with the phrase “Good morning, we are from Ukraine!”
The unwavering belief in victory may be unreasonable when you are the largest nation on the planet and face nuclear armaments that are crooked regardless of human life during your extinction. It is indispensable for survival. Weapons alone cannot change the flow, even if they are urgently needed. Will is necessary.
“It was important to tell the world that the enemy wasn’t as scary as it looks, that we were here, and that we were there.,Kim said in an interview in a building near the skeleton of the Mykolaiv local government building, which was hit by a Russian cruise missile in late March and killed 38 people.
The message worked. Kim quickly attracted nearly 500,000 Instagram followers. Like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who first invited former businessmen into politics, Kim had a way to rejuvenate.
“Everyone was in a panic during the first few days of the war,” Kim said. “Communication was bad.” I thought for a moment. “If you are calm, you make the right decision.”
Mykolaiv has stopped Russia, but prices are higher, as seen in blown-up buildings and injured civilians and soldiers. More than half of the inhabitants have fled. The mayor advised those who are still in the city to leave.
Russian missiles, including 28 missiles overnight this week, cause regular devastation. One struck a residential building early Wednesday, killing at least four people, including children. There is a shortage of drinking water. Of the estimated 230,000 people remaining in the city, few are working. Most rely on food and clothing distributed by aid organizations.
A better understanding of the Russian-Ukraine war
Still, perhaps the most commonly heard phrase in Ukraine, the phrase “we win” is a regular refrain on the haunted streets of Mykolaiv.
Kim’s decision and the confidence he conveyed are their desire to turn back Russian troops, keep them away, occupy the entire Black Sea coast, and mobilize cities that have become like the northeastern industrial city of Kharkiv. A symbol of Ukrainian rebellion that helped to frustrate.
According to Kim, the city is now “ready and unlikely for Russia to accept it,” but the bombing continues.
As for the counterattack, we will need long-range weapons that Ukraine does not yet have and more ammo than I have given. If Kherson is retaken from Russia, the war will look different, but it won’t happen tomorrow. Ukrainian troops are terribly depleted, as is Russian troops, and resignation is not an option.
The picture of Kim, who is completely relaxed by raising his legs without wearing shoes on a desk with colorful socks, became a hot topic. Memes have increased. A doctor’s doctor raised his foot to one end of the 20-foot-long anti-covid table used by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin to show him. Putin sat down on the other end and became nervous, and the dictator became a supplicant.
Kim called the Russian army “ridiculous.” Alluding to the coat of arms of Russia with the double-headed eagle and the coat of arms of Ukraine with the three-pronged trident, he states: The coat of arms. “
The ridicule is relentless. It’s also strategic. “I’m not saying these things for fun, they are designed to make our army feel strong,” he said. “If you don’t care about something, that something no longer controls you.”
Gera Gludev, a museum curator at Odessa and partner Bogdan Zinchenko, who designed a popular T-shirt in the image of Kim, said: For casual chat. “
Kim attributed his calm to his basketball coach, later physiotherapist, and his Korean father, who said he was “a little strict and democratically strict.” Regular lessons in Taekwondo, a Korean martial art, have instilled discipline. “You have a program and you have results that you need to achieve. I believe this will help your child grow up the right way,” Kim said.
Kim’s paternal ancestors, like many Koreans in the northern Communist Party, moved to the Soviet Union to find a job and first settled in Kazakhstan. When he was young, Kim’s father moved to Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, to attend college. There he met Kim’s mother, after which the couple moved to Mykolaiv, where their son was born.
Kim was successful in construction, agriculture and catering before Zelensky was appointed regional manager in 2020. Convinced that there was a need to eliminate corruption, review the court system and strengthen the rule of law in Ukraine, he took on the job. I never imagined it would be a military character.
He is currently wearing an olive green T-shirt with “Cherno Vibeka” embroidered on it. This is the name of the village where Ukraine has repeatedly caused great losses to Russia. He sometimes smokes electronic cigarettes.
“The war will continue until our victory,” Kim said. “If rather when, We will win, Russia will stop for a long time, and the Putin system will fail. And what is victory? “Return Russia to the border on February 23, and eventually regain all our territories and people.”
For Kim, Ukraine has a wonderful future as a completely European country. The problem is that it has a bad neighbor. The war revealed that Ukraine and Russia were not connected by some mysterious coalitions, whatever their family-cultural ties, but now they have “different minds, different goals, different rules.” Is soaked in. Russia wanted the war to mask the failure of its system, he added.
“You know that the Russian way of thinking is” we don’t have to be better than our neighbors. ” It’s enough that our neighbors are worse than us, “Kim said. Prosperous Ukraine will ask Mr Putin an overwhelming question: why do Russians not have what Ukraine has? Russian leaders, on the other hand, will have no answer. Therefore, according to Kim, cruise missiles were launched into Kyiv, Mykolaiv, and countless other Ukrainian cities.
“Democratic and authoritarian nations are different,” Kim said. “In a democratic country, people have laws, aspire to live well, and criticize leaders. In North Korea and Russia, everyone lives a terrible life, but their leaders. I love you very much. “
I asked about his wife and three children. They have gone; he hasn’t seen them for three months. Did they go abroad? “Yes, no,” says Kim. He isn’t trying to give anything.
“I don’t care about situations or things that I can’t control or influence,” he said. “It’s only my responsibility and I’m always working on it. I can’t control whether Putin is alive or dead. I know that when he dies, I’ll be happy. That is. “