Ukraine, a country whose sociocultural evolution reflects a blend of modern and traditional values, has always had a weakness for symbols. We have mastered the art of finding meaning where perhaps there is none, of seeing more than is there in reality.
And then the war with Russia gifted us with a whole host of new images: a Ukrainian tractor towing away a Russian tank embodied the heroism of farmers, while a kitchen cupboard left intact on the wall of a devastated building became an emblem of invincibility.
Then we had the collective figure of our fighter pilots known as the “Ghost of Kyiv”, the Russian warship Moskva, sunken by a stealth Ukrainian operation, and a shrapnel-pierced bust of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, discovered in a small town outside Kyiv, to name just a few. At one time, they all seemed so important, so comforting in their ability to infuse the predictable consequences of war with a deeper meaning.
The first spring of the full-scale war intoxicated us with a desperate desire to be strong and indestructible. Everything became symbolic, from socks in shades of blue and yellow to the traditional braids of a girl inspecting car trunks at a checkpoint. The smallest details were reframed as an aesthetics of resistance, filling us with belief in our strength and invincibility. We created memes and invented symbols more quickly than we could incorporate them into our cultural code. We thought all this would save us. It probably did.
But all symbols have one thing in common – they die out over time. Just like the people who hold onto them, believe in them and live by them.
After the heroism of spring 2022 came summer, autumn, and winter. At some point, the terrible realisation dawned that we were in this for the long run. Ahead of us lay a huge amount of work, pain, torment and loss. We would lose loved ones, we would bury poets and filmmakers, we would grieve, then maybe argue, and, in the end, we would die. Not all of us. But some of us.
The roulette spins – red or black, life or death. You never know when the next missile will strike and who will be buried under the rubble. And you can’t calculate the trajectory of Russian rockets in order to take shelter in time either. It is a long game of survival.
We did not even notice when symbols started to fade, losing their significance and allure. A tractor towing away a tank? Give it a rest … Now we speak about generators, blackouts and FPV drones, which are needed at the front on an industrial scale. A cupboard on a wall? It’s just a cupboard on a wall. As of mid-2024, Russia had destroyed or damaged more than 250,000 buildings. Every single one contained a cupboard – several, in fact. We’ve grown tired of gazing into the innards of obliterated apartments.
The Ghost of Kyiv? We’ve buried so many exceptional pilots who were living, breathing symbols. The warship Moskva? Over the past three years, we’ve sunk a third of the Russian Federation’s Black Sea Fleet, with the rest driven out of the Black Sea by the threat of our military capabilities.
As for me, I had some favourite symbols – or rather totems – of my own. I acquired one of them long before the first missiles flew towards Kyiv one February night. It appeared in 2015, when I first took up arms to defend the territorial integrity of my country in the east.
Before leaving for the military training facility, I bought a metal mug with oranges painted on it at a Kyiv shopping centre. I grew to love that mug and foolishly took it with me everywhere, turning it into a fetish and imbuing it with special meaning.
It stayed with me throughout the 14 months I served in 2015–16, 10 of which were spent on the front line. It served me as no other object had ever served me before. Later, back in civilian life, I took it with me to the mountains, into the wilderness. For a long time, it served me in the studio where I worked as an artist.
And, of course, in early March 2022, I took it with me to the army. I told my brothers-in-arms stories about it, explaining its significance. My fellow soldiers knew how important this mug was and how much we had been through together, which is why, when we moved to a new position and I couldn’t find it, the entire unit rushed searching for it – for the mug that was so important to their commander.
In late spring 2023, when Bakhmut, which suffered one of the bloodiest battles of this large-scale war, finally bled to death and our troops, shaken, shell-shocked and spent, were withdrawing, my unit was thrown in as cover to distract the Russians from the forces leaving the city. We spent several days under constant fire with no prospect of reinforcements or leaving that trench that reeked of corpses.
When the order came to retreat, I abandoned everything that could weigh me down, because we were facing a gruelling run over several kilometres under enemy bombardment and drones. There in that trench, scattered with the bodies of our soldiers and literally ploughed by shelling, I left my mug behind. My very own symbol of invincibility, my trusty totem, an heirloom my children will never inherit.
It was a shame. But the fractional increase in my chances of survival was more important. My life was more important to me than some ordinary household item, no matter how much symbolism I had invested in it.
Symbols die when drudgery sets in and heroism becomes routine. Fatigue has blurred the boundary between horror and habit. Over the past 18 months or so, it seems not a single new symbol has emerged. The number of memes and topical cartoons has drastically decreased.
We have finally grown tired of this military fervour, just as we have grown tired of this endless war. We have even grown tired of ourselves. And that is not a bad thing. People cannot live in a constant state of upheaval. We have become pragmatic and rational. We are the only symbols that we have.
Every person who remains unbroken, who carries on working and contributing, who holds the front line with every last ounce of strength, who donates every last penny to buy drones and off-road vehicles, who sources medical equipment across the globe, who tries to live their life in spite of everything. We are the symbols: Worn-out like old winter coats, but real.
We are the people who just carry on living and fighting.
This text was written within a joint initiative of UkraineWorld, the Ukrainian Institute and PEN Ukraine. It was translated by Helena Kernan.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
