Ballet, busking, bathing: how Ukrainians are defying Russia by embracing ‘normal life’ OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
A girl dances, writhing and spinning in the sand while a busker on the promenade beats his drum to the beat of a pop tune.
With bars and cafes buzzing with activity, the atmosphere feels similar to that of countless European summer hotspots.
It is a stark and disturbing contrast to the scenes I saw three months ago while visiting this city.
At the time, the Russian invasion was two months in; most businesses in the city were closed and much of the population was on the run.
Gone are the convoys of cars fleeing west through Ukraine, many with the words “children” taped to the windows.
Instead, life in this country at war can seem deceptively peaceful, despite its proximity to the front lines and the ever-present threat of long-range artillery fire raining death from above.
People still go to work, walk their dogs and play with their children in the park.
“We have gotten used to it. And it’s terrible that we’ve gotten used to it,” said ballerina Katryna Kalchenko, flexing for a performance at the 135-year-old opera house in Odessa.
Here too, in this port city on the Black Sea, there is that shocking dissonance between the madness of war and the mundaneness of everyday life.
Odessa was once known as the “Pearl of the Black Sea” in Ukraine, a vacation spot popular with poets, writers and musicians. Even today, it retains much of its charm, although its tranquility is occasionally disturbed by Russian attacks – such as the two Kalibr cruise missiles that hit just hours after Moscow signed a grain export deal with Kiev, brokered by the United Nations. .
Ballerina Kalchenko had to warm up in the basement of the opera house, because an air raid siren had chased the entire orchestra and dance troupe to seek shelter just half an hour earlier.
And yet Kalchenko and her fellow dancers emerged for the first act a few stretches later with enough poise and serenity to leave their audiences spellbound—until, that is, the threat of another Russian missile attack forced a premature closure of the show.
A victory of morale
It is as if, five months after the war, many Ukrainians have come to accept their new reality.
This is partly a reflection of confidence in those who fight on their behalf.
Ukrainians are very proud of how their soldiers beat back the attempted Russian blitzkrieg on Kiev in the north of the country in the spring.
Many now hope for further success as their forces fight a war of attrition on the eastern and southern fronts, where they hope to reclaim towns and villages lost to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armies.
It’s a fight that takes a heavy toll. An adviser to Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky at one point said the country was losing up to 200 soldiers a day on those front lines.
And yet it is clear that among those brave defenders there is a willingness to endure anything.
Take Serhii Tamarin for example.
I first met him in March, when he had recently come out of a military hospital and was recovering from a spinal cord injury and broken ribs while commanding a territorial defense battalion of about 400 troops fighting northwest of Kiev.
“It’s not that scary to die, it’s much scarier to lose,” he said at the time. Within days he had returned to the front.
When we reconnect, he’ll be in the hospital again, this time for injuries sustained as a special forces operator fighting in the south.
Is there a word in English, he asked, in case something explodes near your head?
A near miss from a tank lap left him with a severe concussion and he now struggles to think clearly, he said.
But he insisted he felt well enough to return to the fight.
“I think they should send me back to my platoon in a few days,” Tamarin said.
defiance
But embracing Ukraine’s new reality isn’t just about trusting men like Tamarin. It is also carried by resistance.
Soldiers describe the war in existential terms, an invasion ordered by a Russian president who questions Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country.
“They came to take our territory,” said senior lieutenant Andrii Pidlisnyi, who commands a company of about 100 men in the Mykolaiv region.
“Maybe kill my parents and just destroy my house and live here and say it was historically Russian territory.”
Citizens often express their seething anger by using Russian rhetoric – that it “liberates” Ukrainians from their own democratically elected government – and flinging it back in the Kremlin’s face.
“Thank you for ‘saving’ my home, my family, my child who is in another country and who I miss every day,” said Anastasia Bannikova, another ballerina I met in the basement of the Odessa Opera House. .
Like so many others, Bannikova fled Ukraine in the early days of the war. Now she is back to work in Odessa, although she has left her daughter in the relative safety of Moldova.
Choose life
Almost everyone you speak to in Ukraine has lost something because of the war. Many have buried loved ones. Others have seen their businesses fail, homes destroyed and the future turned upside down.
How does a farmer plan to plant crops next year or a high school student to enroll in college as this war rages with no end in sight?
One answer may be that many have come to the conclusion that, in the midst of all the death and destruction, simply continuing to live as normal a life as possible is the greatest victory there is.
The Ukrainians I met all accepted their hardships with a quiet stoicism; rarely did they complain or wallow in victimhood.
Sergei, a cargo ship captain who has been unable to go to sea since the Russian navy blocked Ukraine’s ports, said he was brought up on the stories of the sacrifices his grandparents suffered during World War II.
“Now it’s our turn,” he said.