They Are All Dead Now - March 19th 2024

March 19th 2024

Yuriy describes a morning routine in Ukraine that's similar and also very different to how people in peaceful countries start their day.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Podbean app users can enjoy closed captions)

  It is 18th of March. 

What does the morning of residents of peaceful countries begin with? I allow myself to assume that it starts with scrolling through the phone- news, weather notifications from friends and colleagues. In Ukraine, it's almost the same, but with specifics of war in country. The first thing we do is check which cities the Russians bombed last night, we message our friends and relatives there, asking if we need help, and we also have thousands of people who start each morning by checking Telegram channels of the occupiers where they boast about killing the Ukrainians. 

There are dozens of such channels where they post photos and videos of the people they have killed and tortured. And those Ukrainians whose relatives have disappeared without a trace start their morning by checking these channels, carefully examining the photos of Ukrainians killed by the occupiers. Because among these victims there maybe their loved ones. I know a young woman whose husband was missing in action on the front lines and there was no information about him for several weeks. She search for him everywhere in hospitals, in lists of prisoners of war, but she found him on the one of these Terrible telegram channels. 

The Russians simply killed him, it seems when he tried to surrender to them, they shot him after he had already laid down his arms, and then they posted photos of his dead body on the internet with dirty, racist comments and calls for killing of all Ukrainians. That's how his wife found out what happened to her husband. She unsubscribed from all these cannibalistic channels her mission to study their content ended as soon as she found a photo of her dead husband.  

But you know what? Every day, hundreds of other Ukrainians whose loved ones have disappeared without a trace, subscribe to these channels. They flip through occupiers chats with horror in their hearts, carefully scrutinizing every blooded face of the people with Russians killed. In Ukraine, thousands of people are searching for their loved ones among the dead because they have lost hope of finding them among the living.

I could once again remind you now what we would be far fewer dead, widow orphans, and parents who have lost children if they were given even a thousandth part of the weapons rusting in the warehouses of Western countries. But I won't- you know about it yourselves. You also know that only vile and amoral people build political careers on the bodies of Ukrainian defenders and the broken fates of their loved ones. We all know this, but knowing it changes nothing.