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.
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