Voice of Ukraine

From Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 449):

For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;
he adorns the humble with salvation.
Psalm 149:4

The attacks on Kyiv continue almost every night. More missiles came at dawn, but thankfully 29 out of 30 were intercepted by our air defense. A few regions of Ukraine are under the air raid warning right now as I am writing this.

They had an elaborate method of torture in Soviet prisons – they would wake you up multiple times in the middle of the night and prevent you from sleeping in the daytime. Lack of sleep would often break the person. It looks like the Russians are resorting to this technique.

However, we’ve seen that Ukrainians often don’t meet Russian expectations. This week, I’ve heard from many people about the outpouring of love and grace toward sleep-deprived colleagues and strangers. A barista, offering a double espresso for the price of a regular to a sleepy customer. A boss, dismissing an employee’s tardiness after a sleepless night of air raids. School teachers, being gentle and understanding to the students who had to take shelter in the wee hours of the morning. And today, millions of people topped it off, wearing traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts to celebrate Vyshyvanka Day. I can imagine clueless expressions on the faces in Kremlin when they see such a response from the “non-nation” that is supposed to be crushed by fear.

Today, on May 18, we also remember the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars organized by the Soviet authorities on this day in 1944 (https://bit.ly/3WeTHud). In 3 days, they deported over 200,000 people (mainly Crimean Tatars, but also Armenians, Bulgarians, and Greeks). People were given a few minutes to gather their belongings and then packed into cattle wagons. The road to exile took several weeks, so thousands died on the way. The authorities prohibited mentioning that the Crimean Tatar people even existed in the USSR, and the native Crimean Tatar settlements in Crimea were renamed to have Russian names. The deportation was to deprive Crimean Tatars of their native land, legacy, and identity. They only slowly started to return to their homeland in 1989. That story of oppression continues today after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and began persecuting and imprisoning Crimean Tatars, destroying their unique heritage and culture again.

We long for the days when justice will be restored. Lord, do no delay!