In the Midst of War, Hope
By Vladimir Klimenko, Upper School history teacher, Hackley School
A member of Hackley’s History Department since 2005, New York-born Vladimir Klimenko grew up in a Russian-speaking immigrant family. This past summer, he returned to an earlier profession as a journalist and traveled to Ukraine to report on the country at war.
My bus from Warsaw to Kyiv rolls away from the terminal 40 minutes behind schedule. I am relieved to be on board, enroute, away from the station where anxious crowds jostle to stow luggage and get tickets validated by drivers speaking a Ukrainian pidgin interwoven with Polish and Russian. I notice three older male passengers; everyone else except for the drivers are women or children. With windows sealed shut and air conditioning that barely works, our bus quickly becomes stuffy in the heat of a July afternoon. A strange quiet dominates the airless cabin. The women check their phones, occasionally pass a sandwich or hard-boiled egg to a child, or just stare out the window at the passing rural Polish landscape of cinder block homes and well-tended family farms. Except for the occasional wail from an infant, the kids on board seem to know better than to complain. The mood feels more stoic than apprehensive.
Downtown Kyiv feels remarkably 21st century European: espresso bars galore, electric scooters whizzing by on every corner, retail sales almost exclusively on phones. The cars are Japanese, German, Korean — anything but Russian or Soviet. It begins to feel like it really could be a major city in another European country until you see a wall of sandbags protecting some building guarded by a soldier carrying a Kalashnikov, a Russian-made automatic rifle known in the United States as an AK-47.
I move into a friend’s apartment just half a block from the Maidan, the capital’s main plaza. This central locale was the focal point of the 2014 revolution that ousted Viktor Yanukovych, the notoriously corrupt president and Putin proxy.
Hackley connections come in useful. Across the street where I have stopped is a café where I meet Alexey Korotaev, a Soviet-era dissident who was recommended by his good friend and former Hackley teaching legend Pavel Litvinov. He sings the praises of his hometown of Kharkiv, my grandmother’s hometown and a place I would like to visit if the fighting there isn’t too fierce. Two hours later, I go on a tour of the capital with a government consultant recommended to me by a former Hackley parent, Alexei Bayer, father of Sam Bayer ’13. Both men sound reasonably optimistic about Ukraine’s prospects.
By day, I am building up my roster of contacts. I also go around the city interviewing mental health professionals for a story on psychologists during wartime. One afternoon, I interview therapist Kseniya Astafyeva about what she has learned from this war. In the middle of describing the hardships and horrors of war, she shifts to a philosophical note.
“The purpose of life is always different. Sometimes our purpose in life is more sublime, while other times it’s very simple. So, for example, during war, the purpose of life might consist of remembering to notice and appreciate very small things: the small pleasures and joys that can completely fill your day and your month with great meaning.”
I recall Andy King’s constant reminders about the need for gratitude. I ask her if, in the midst of war, she finds meaning in being grateful for small things.
She nods.
“After the first days of living under artillery bombardment, it was hard for me to listen to music. It just felt like something from another life. And then, one day, I was able to listen to music, and I realized I liked what I was hearing, which, in the past, could have been my favorite melody. And so, for me, this was a rediscovery — something for which I gave thanks.”
At night, with my interviews mostly finished, I wander the picturesque older neighborhoods above the Dnipro River in search of my own small pleasures. I am drawn to the nighttime street musicians, whether the man who plays the traditional (lute-like) bandura on a park bench overlooking the river or the nearby solo guitarist who switches easily between Ukrainian folk songs and Pink Floyd.
By 9:30 p.m. the streets begin to empty as people start to make their way home before the 11 p.m. curfew. I linger late, hoping to catch the last sounds and impressions of summertime nightlife on the streets before war forces everyone indoors.
My Ukrainian photographer partner, Nick, arranges for the two of us to visit Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and the original capital of Soviet Ukraine. The city happens to be the birthplace of my maternal grandmother Vera, whose maiden name, Murashkina, was, according to family lore, Russified from its original Ukrainian form, Murashko.
Kharkiv lies 26 miles south of the Russian border, a shorter distance than Hackley’s campus is to the Empire State Building. After half an hour of walking on a weekend morning, we still find the streets almost deserted. By 8 a.m., we encountered no more than a dozen pedestrians.
Unlike Kyiv, the downtown section of Kharkiv clearly shows the proximity of war. Nick leads me into the debris-strewn inner courtyard of a stately 19th century building badly damaged by artillery and rocket fire. We wander through rooms and corridors littered with chunks of plaster wall, wainscotting, and window glass shards. Pieces of furniture — mostly desks — lie scattered about.
Nick and I wonder if we’re in some kind of academic building. We pick through the bookshelves and peer at the blackboards. Only when we see the chalk drawings and books on design do we realize that we are walking inside the bombed-out campus of the Institute of Architecture.
We travel by subway and taxi to Kharkiv’s northern suburbs, the areas hardest hit by Russian troops. It looks like Co-op City in the Bronx, only the facades and rooftops of the 16-story Soviet-era concrete apartment buildings are perforated and charred by missiles, bombs, and shells. Many of them suffer from irreparable structural damage. Only 1% or 2% of the original inhabitants still remain.
Nick suggests that we go inside and climb up to the roof. We hear the unmistakable boom and thud of rockets and artillery.
“That was our side launching a rocket,” Nick says.
“How can you tell?” I ask.
“When it lands, the impact makes a different sound.”
We climb to the room and survey the horizon. I see plumes of dark smoke between us and the Russian border some 20 miles away. A rocket or artillery duel is underway.
After we descend to street level, Nick surveys the damage from the barrages that hit this area six weeks earlier. Like a forensic pathologist, he traces the projectile’s imprint on a paved road. He looks over his shoulder and says,
“The missile came from over there, in between those two tall buildings.”
I ask about the burned wreckage of the hardware store in front of us.
“Heat from the shrapnel. It’s enough to ignite any building around here.”
Nick and I travel several hours by car south to Zaporizhzhia, an industrial hub that has become a de facto funnel for people fleeing fighting from the front line and/or the Russian-occupied east. Every 30 minutes, we pause at a makeshift sandbag checkpoint where armed uniformed men — militia, army, police — inspect our ID before waving us on. We drive through the city’s wide main thoroughfare to a series of intake centers for internally displaced persons.
We stop at a tent city that has cropped up on the parking lot of a large shopping mall. The adult newcomers — mostly women — exchange news, vent frustrations, or offer words of mutual support.
Some of the women’s children are gently ushered into large, carpeted, air conditioned tents. I pop into one of those and introduce myself to Marina, a 20-something social worker who sits at the door and beckons the children inside. She jots down their names and invites them to join the other young adult volunteers who are leading games, art lessons, and reading sessions. Marina tells me that volunteers undergo training to prepare them for this work. Lowering the volume of her voice, she points out that the children may have experienced a range of traumatic experiences before arriving here.
The volunteers exude a calming cheerfulness as they encourage the children to pick up books, pens, or toys. After a moment of shyness, the children generally oblige. As I consider the moment, it occurs to me that this could be a safe, comfortable day care anywhere, not just a way station in a country whose new vocabulary is now loaded with daily mentions of “launches” and “impacts.”
Looking at these lovely volunteers, these young people who set their personal worries aside to create a fun, amiable refuge for these children with uncertain futures, I am reminded of our own Hackley students. I think of those who help with Hudson Scholars and Midnight Run, the ones who give their time as peer tutors, and those many others who understand that even a crisis — perhaps especially a crisis — can be a calling card to step forward and do meaningful work.
Several days later, I am finally riding the bus back to Warsaw. As before, the passengers are mainly women and children.
The road passes through a vast landscape of sunflowers in bloom. My eyes lazily scanning the horizon, I feel grateful to be able to return to a healthy family, warm home, cozy town, thriving school, and peaceful country.
And yet, my feelings are already becoming mixed with some anticipatory nostalgia for a country and people who are redefining themselves and their identity through courage, endurance, and sacrifice mixed with bursts of creativity and humor.
I catch myself wondering how we, ourselves, would react and step up if serious trouble were to come our way; if we, too, became immersed in a large-scale emergency that we never anticipated. And then, recollecting those young counselors and social workers in the tent city, I think: if we were stuck in Ukraine’s shoes today, a good part of Hackley, with its culture of friendliness, effort, and gratitude, might be among those volunteers.
Dusk approaches and I close my eyes to try to make up for lost hours of sleep. The murmurs of my fellow passengers do not disturb my thoughts: it is a privilege to be able to go back to a peaceful place I call home, but it is also a rare privilege to have been able to witness what I have seen.
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