Olena’s parents are those that Vladimir Putin claims to “liberate”. They live in Donyetsk, eastern Ukraine, in a self-declared independent republic. They are Ukrainian according to their passport, but Russian by culture, traditions, language. They don’t even speak Ukrainian.
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They arrived in Ukraine more than 40 years ago, when the father had a job in heavy machinery.
“They did not ’emigrate’ to Ukraine: at the time of the USSR, it was the same country, they only moved”, specifies the one that her parents call Lena – Olena in Russian – and who now lives in Quebec. She fell in love with the French language when she was very young, when her parents were playing Joe Dassin at the top of their voices, without understanding a word of it. She chose Montreal.
In Ukraine’s 30 years of independence, the country has gradually passed language laws to protect and promote Ukrainian, which has caused political friction.
But Olena’s parents never thought of returning to live in Russia. Even less hoped for a Russian military intervention.
This morning last week, when the sound of bombing sounded at the airfield, they couldn’t believe it. They still can’t come back. And like everyone in this invaded country, they are in disbelief, terrified.
They put tape in the windows, so they wouldn’t burst, and turned off all lights. They live according to the “two walls” rule: one settles two walls away from the windows, in the hope that a wall will stop a shell or a stray bullet.
At first, his friends from Kyiv spent the nights in the metro. “But they have almost all fled, the city is emptying out. Except that men are not allowed to leave the country, and my friend does not want to leave her husband, so they moved with the children…”
Others are in the resistance.
They just write to me that they are alive. In war, that’s all you say.
Olena
“We lived well in Ukraine. The media were thought to be exaggerating the danger. There are millions of Russians in Ukraine, and millions of Ukrainians in Russia, and I have family on both sides. After 2014, we thought it was over. So much has been given to the war in this country… Something irreparable is happening. But also, instead of dividing it, I believe that this conflict will unite and define the Ukrainian nation. »
Tatiana Goi’s grandfather was a soldier in the Soviet army, living in Ukraine. Her father still does not speak Ukrainian, despite having lived almost all of his life in Kyiv. Tatiana, she lived in Kyiv, went to Ukrainian school, is passionate about Ukrainian history and literature. People at the university were surprised that she spoke Russian, she was so fluent in the language. But “I’m Russian,” she told me on the phone.
Like many Russians, she first applauded Putin’s rise to power 22 years ago. After the years of misery which followed the dissolution of the USSR, the arrival of a strong man in 2000, who was going to restore order in this immense country adrift, seemed to him a very good thing. She remembers her grandfather, who repeated how much the dissolution of the USSR had been a “very serious error”.
She especially remembers the years 1992-1993, when, at 10 or 11 years old, her mother sent her to do the shopping. He had to go to three or four groceries to find milk, bread, sour cream, sometimes eggs, if by some miracle they could be found.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Tatiana Goi with her parents and daughter in Kyiv last January
But all that is a long way off, like the days when, in some parts of Kyiv, it was frowned upon to speak Ukrainian. Even if the country is still much poorer than the European average, its standard of living has increased, its identity has been affirmed.
And she may call herself Russian, but this doctoral student in psychology, also based in Montreal, is nonetheless horrified by the aggression decided by the Russian president, whom she has seen for several years as “a very dangerous man”.
“In Ukraine, it doesn’t matter where you come from, whether you’re Tatar, Uzbek, Russian [l’URSS encourageait le déplacement des nationalités dans le pays]I have friends from all backgrounds: there is no difference, everyone is in shock,” she told me.
The 2014 Revolution, which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, and which was followed by the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern territories, saw Ukrainians resist. The UN estimates that 14,200 have died (including 3,400 civilians) in armed clashes in eastern Ukraine since 2014.
But Tatiana Goi does not know anyone who anticipated, let alone hoped for, a Russian military intervention following the events of 2014.
“We were brought up to fear war,” Tatiana tells me. May 9 is still a big holiday, which marks the end of the Second World War [le 9 est la date de la capitulation allemande à l’heure de Moscou, alors qu’on commémore le 8 mai en Europe]. The Battle of Kyiv claimed half a million lives in two months in 1941.
“The Ukrainian people have paid dearly, the German people too, moreover, it is always the rulers who decide on wars…
“As a child, at school, there was always talk of peace, it was in the mottoes, on the postcards, everywhere: for peace in the world. And then history repeats itself…
“Except that this time it’s our Russian brother who is attacking, it’s even worse. It’s like Cain and Abel in the Bible. We don’t understand. »
And according to her, if you have to look for a parallel between the Nazis of 1941, still vividly remembered in Kyiv, and what is happening today, it is not in Ukraine that you have to look, but rather in the Kremlin.