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A little over a year after Rachel Lehmann Ware and her husband, Duncan Ware, fled Ukraine, the Tasmanian teachers have now returned to Kyiv.

They wereteaching at an international school in the Ukrainian capital when Russia invaded in February last year.

What followed was a dramatic, three-week escape with their three cats in tow, while bombs rained down on the country.

The couple touched down safely in Hobart in March last year, running into the embraces of family members.

However, they felt for the young students and teachers who were left behind.

"We were always determined to come back it was just a matter of when, and when it was safe," Ms Lehmann Ware said.

The moment they crossed the border back into Ukraine in early April, Ms Lehmann Ware's heart filled with joy, she said.

"I was, I can't lie, a bit worried about coming back here," she said.

"But, coming back to Ukraine, it just feels like we've come home."

Driving through the west of the country, near Lviv, they saw pristine, beautiful countryside. But that scenery shifted as they headed east, approaching Kyiv.

"You could tell where the Russians had been the distinctive footprint they left of destruction and decay," she said.

The scenes confronting them in Ukraine couldn't have been more different than when they began their teaching stint in 2021.

Buildings are scarred by shelling, military checkpoints abound, anti-tank barricades nicknamed "hedgehogs" remain on the streets, and a curfew from midnight until5am is in place.

On Ms Lehmann Ware's second day back at school, the air raid sirens sounded.

Walking down the stairwell, Ms Lehmann Ware felt a wave of recognition: This was where she hadsheltered during the early days of Russia's invasion.

Her year 6 students, all too familiar with the drill, descended into a bunker and their science experiment continued underground.

"There has been some very clear impact on themfrom this war, both emotionally, but also academically," Ms Lehmann Ware said.

She recalled one student beingscared because his father worked as an engineer at one of the energy plants in Dnipro, where Russian forces have launched attacks on critical infrastructure.

"There were bombing attacks happening during school time. And he just didn't know if his dad was alive, and was clearly upset and quite traumatised," she said.

"We've had some children who have also been diagnosed with PTSD. There's been a lot of mental health issues for these children.

"We have, thankfully though, got a wonderful psychologist at our school, who helps them [and] is there for them.

"But, I must say, the resilience of these kids is mind-blowing."

The couple said they were determined to contribute to the education of Ukraine's next generation.

Many of Ms Lehmann Ware's colleagues in Ukraine have been touched by the war: One of the school's security guards has joined the Ukrainian forces on the frontline, and a staff member's sister was in Irpin when it was under attack.

"She went through absolute hell getting out of there. Their car was shot up. They barely got out with their lives," Ms Lehmann Ware said.

Her assistant at the school has parents living in the northern city of Chernihiv, which was under siege for 39 days last year, and they were stuck without running water or electricity.

"They had to sneak out at night to get water and food, risked being shot. It was just horrendous, but they survived."

Ms Lehmann Ware said she and her husband havefundraised almost $1,500 for food and essentials to donate to families in Chernihiv.

Through humanitarian group Vans Without Borders, they connected with Oleh, a Chernihiv local, who has helped transport supplies to those in need.

And the couple will this week travel to Chernihiv with donated building supplies to help rebuild damaged homes.

"You've got mothers with kids sleeping on the floor in a friend's house, or in the cellar, still, because they just haven't got a house to go to," she said.

Escaping Ukraine was a harrowing ordeal that left them both with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) crowds of people or loud, unexpected noises, like hammering or fireworks, can trigger memories and cause anxiety.

"When you hear those sort of noises, you're just transported back all of a sudden, and you get that sick feeling in your stomach and your heart [is] racing," she said.

The couple isgrateful to the Tasmanian Department of Health for the counselling they provided, but they know it will take a long time to recover.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade "continues to advise Australians to not travel to Ukraine, due to the volatile security environment and military conflict", DFAT said in a statement.

They added the government's ability to provide consular access in Ukraine was "severely limited" and they could not evacuate Australians from Ukraine.

"Any Australians currently in Ukraine are urged to depart if it is safe to do so."

However, Ms Lehmann Ware said their return had been a healing process, too, and they wouldnot be travelling to theeast, where active battle on the frontlines continues.

"For those who think that maybe we're a bit crazy for coming back into a country that's actively in a war, I can understand I know my own mother took a week to talk to me after I told her we were coming back," she said.

However, she said, she hadbeen struck by the "unbelievable strength" of the Ukrainian people.

"The attempt by Putin to eradicate Ukrainian culture has had the reverse effect," she said.

"No-one speaks Russian anymore. Everyone is speaking Ukrainian. And it's just this real sense of pride in their culture.

"I think that's one of the reasons why we love it here so much, and why we have wanted to return and be a part of rebuilding the country in any small way we can."

Originally posted here:
After fleeing war in Ukraine last year, these Australian teachers have now returned to Kyiv - ABC News

Wounded people, and wounded cities.

Ukraine today is a traumatised nation, but one with a deep, burning anger the sort of fury that comes from a person, or a country, knowing that an injustice is being inflicted upon them.

And it ismatched by a fierce determination that comes from knowing that you are fighting for your survival.

If the Russians lay down their weapons, their president Vladimir Putin will need only to manage his leadership elite, being unaccountable in real terms to the people of Russia.

If the Ukrainians lay down their arms, they lose their country.

Whatever is left of the military might that Russia has brought to bear when trying to push into the capital last year would be re-energised in yet another attempt to conquer Kyiv.

Since the invasion began, Russia has spent billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives, yet itshows no inclination that it hasgiven up.

Putin's family are not dying. Cannon fodder they are not. His children, his siblings, his nieces and nephews are nowhere near the human meat grinder that is the battle for Bakhmut and so many other parts of this 1300-kilometrefront line.

Hundreds of Russians lie dead in the place where they were shot, slowly becoming skeletons in this tragic reprise of the trenches of World Wars I and II.

Putin has not given up his ambition to claim Ukraine, to make it again part of aSoviet-era-type empire.

Driving around Ukraine for the past two weeks revealed to me the extent of devastation that Putin's war has wrought upon this country so rich in history, culture and potential.

Some cities have been both traumatised and hollowed out. Kharkiv, for example, which I visited over the last week, is a sad and battered city.

Once a thriving European university town, today street after street is destroyed. Entire neighbourhoods are now unliveable and abandoned.

In the centre of the city, many buildings have had their shattered windows boarded up, but many remain exactly as they were when Putin's army fired hundreds of missiles into the CBD and residential neighbourhoods.

What were once-thriving neighbourhoods are now ghost towns, with barely a person to be seen. High-rise residential buildings have had entire fronts torn off them by missiles.

I never thought I would feel sorry for a city, but this one certainly evokes that response. Vast numbers of the residents fled last year when the city came under attack, and in some neighbourhoods you barely see a person.

In one street earlyone evening, the only person I saw was a man taking his chihuahua for a walk before the nightly curfew came in at 11pm. One man, one dogand a city that was once one of the glories of Ukraine, now reduced to a shell of itself.

Putin has not just killed people, he's wounded the souls of cities and neighbourhoods, but he has not killed these cities.

There are large apartment buildingsabandoned after being hit by missiles and one can only imagine the horror for the people who had been living there when the missiles hit.

While in Kharkiv, I was shown the video of the explosion when a missile hit a large office building in the centre of the city. The missile tore off the corner of the building in a huge fireball.

In the video you can see a car preparing to turn the corner, then the massive explosion. The people in the car would have been instantly incinerated.

Russia rained missiles down upon the city. What you see when driving around Kharkiv conclusively puts a lie to the claim by Vladimir Putin and his apologists such as Sergei Lavrov and Dmitry Medvedev that Russia has been targeting infrastructure facilities and not residential premises.

Many of the residential buildings being destroyed at the moment in Ukraine and many of the civilians being killed are being killed by Russian guided aerial bombs.

These are called guided bombs for a reason. It is, of course, possible that every so often in a war a missile will be misdirected and hit a target for which it was not intended.

However, the thousands of Russian bombs that have hit and killed civilians and civilian targets are not accidental. They are deliberate attempts. They are the deliberate,guided killing of civilians.

And why should the targeting of electricity, power plants, and other infrastructure be seen as any less serious? The reason these are targeted is to try to cause maximum misery and problems for the people who rely on them.

Scores of large apartment buildings have had much of their fronts or sides ripped off from missile hits.

In Kharkiv, air-raid sirens go off frequently through the day andnight.

After 15 months of war, locals are so fatigued that most do not even bother to go to shelters.

When the curfew takes hold in Kharkiv,it takes on an eerie silence.What was one of the most vibrant cities in Europe goes into a foreboding hibernation.

Part of Putin's psychological war clearly relies on the fact that each night, when Ukrainians go to sleep, they cannot know whether missiles will be fired during the night.

While many Ukrainians do not bother anymore to go to bomb shelters, the sirens wreak havoc on institutions such as aged care facilities where staff are required to wake the elderly through the night and try to move them within 10 or 15 minutes into a bomb shelter.

Psychological fear. People never feeling completely comfortable. This is all part of Putin's war.

However, if Putin thinks that the trauma he's imposed on Ukrainians will translate into a military victory, he appears to have badly misread Ukrainians, again.

Over the past two weeks, I've driven from Warsaw to Lviv then Kyiv, to eastern Ukraine, close to the front line at the Donbas, and north to the border between Ukraine and Belarus.

The same determination seems to arise wherever you go and to whomever you speak: Afierce belief, here, is that Ukraine is preparing for the military battle of its life.

All around, you see the reinforcement of both resources and positions and large numbers of soldiers prepared for a looming battle.

So many parts of this country are now in ruin. The World Bank has estimated that, if the war were to stop now, it would cost more than $600 billion to rebuild the country.

Apart from killing Ukrainians, the war has also smashed the economy.

It's depressing in Kharkiv to see shops either with wooden coverings where the windows have been smashed or businesses which have not been shelled but which have closed: Who wants to go out for a coffee when there's a chance missiles will be fired into that cafe?

While the war has smashed much of the regular economy, it hasseen a boost in other less-desirable economic pursuits.

There are now an estimated 80 companies around Ukraine manufacturing drones, which are being used by the Ukrainian army, either for surveillance of Russian soldiers or to drop explosives on Russian positions.

There is also a tragic boom in demand for prosthetics. Ukraine cannot import enough prosthetic arms and legs to meet its current demand.

It's now trying to manufacture its own to try to make the lives of those who have had limbs blown off as manageable as possible.

There's a symmetrical increase in this lamentable new economy on the Russian side.

Putin has announced the need for Russia to build more drones, and the Kremlin has announced that it will allocate about $6 billion towards this.

Until now Russia has been primarily using the so-called Shahid drones made in Iran.

However,Iran complicit in this killing of Ukrainians cannot provide as many of these sinister birds of death as Russia wants. Russia wants these death drones all because of one man.

However, just as there are damaged and hollowed-out cities, so are there wounded and traumatised people.

You'll often see people on crutches, in wheelchairs or wearing prosthetics.

A doctor I spoke to said there had been a 400 per centincrease in the number of Ukrainians needing rehabilitation.

The damage isphysical and psychological:spinal cords, brain injuries, limbs blown off and the less-visible psychological injuries that go with exposure to trauma and the onset of PTSD.

It's hard not to conclude that, even if this war stopped now, that it could take many years, if not generations, to recover.

Just as there are traumatised people, so, too, are there wonderful and inspirational people.

I met one when preparing a story for the ABC's 7.30 program:Nine-year-old Yegor Kravstov, who was trapped for 96 days in Mariupol as the Russian and Ukrainian armies engaged in one of the bloodiest battles so far.

A Russian missile hit his house and the wall collapsed, injuring himselfand his sister, Veronika, 15.

It also injured his grandfather so badly that he was bleeding, and it could not be stopped.

Because of the war going on in the streets around their home, they could not get the grandfather any medical treatment. He died in slow motion.

How does a boy process watching his grandfather bleed to death over three days, an excruciating and undignified death? How does he process the fact that his two dogs were killed? How does he process the fact that, when the family could finally escape, they could not find his only pet that was still alive, his cat.

Remarkably, his uncle, who had stayed in Mariupol longer, found the cat and eventually brought it to Yegor and his family in their new home in western Ukraine.

So many people have been killed here that the media can barely keep up with their stories, but there are many remarkable cases: for example, two women who were killed this week.

What had they been doing that led to their deaths?

They'd been visiting the Museum of Local History in Kupiansk when one of Putin and Lavrov's missiles blew them up.

The responsibility for traumatising this nation lies with Vladimir Putin and those around him and around the world who enable thiscommission of mass misery and war crimes.

Original post:
Ukraine is traumatised, but it is filled with a deep, burning anger and its people won't surrender - ABC News

A Ukrainian trench in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on March 5, 2023. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images

Russia is building defenses hundreds of miles away from its borders with Ukraine, fearing a counteroffensive so sweeping it could push into Russian territory, according to British intelligence.

The UK Ministry of Defence posted an update on Twitter Monday morning, noting the presence of trench networks "well inside internationally recognised Russian territory including in the Belgorod and Kursk regions."

The reason, per the update, was "Russian leaders' deep concern that Ukraine could achieve a major breakthrough."

Anticipation is building around a long-promised counterattack from Ukraine, which has for the past months been building its strength while trying to hold back the grinding advances of the Russian military through winter.

Ukraine's defense minister last week said that the counteroffensive was mostly ready to go. Ukraine has been organizing new brigades and has recently received powerful new weapons from Western allies, including the Leopard, Challenger, and Abrams tanks.

The extra troops and firepower could help achieve a breakthrough in countering the invasion, which has been mostly static for months.

However, a serious effort to invade Russia is beyond what most observers consider feasible for Ukraine, which has far fewer resources than Russia and has been focused on defending its own territory.

Ukraine hasn't made any attempts so far to occupy Russian land, and its stated aim in the war is to restore control over Ukraine's internationally-recognized territory, including the Crimea peninsula, which Russia has held since 2014.

The UK update noted that the defenses far from the front line might be more of a propaganda effort to harden the population's resolve by making them think the Ukrainian military could come close to their homes.

"Some works have likely been ordered by local commanders and civil leaders in attempts to promote the official narrative that Russia is 'threatened' by Ukraine and NATO," the update said.

The UK update noted that Russia has also been fortifying defensive lines inside occupied Ukrainian territory, much closer to the fighting.

Some of those, including the town of Medvedivka in Crimea, have been documented in photographs, including those analyzed in an April 3 article from The Washington Post.

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Read more:
Russia fortifies own territory, scared of Ukraine offensive: UK intel - Business Insider

28 April 2023

Image source, Sasha Bondarenko/Facebook

Friends and colleagues have paid tribute to Sasha Bondarenko's humour, intelligence and big heart

Former BBC News Ukraine journalist Oleksandr Bondarenko has been killed on duty on the front line in Ukraine.

He volunteered for Ukraine's territorial defence at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, working as a communications expert and media trainer and then becoming part of the military.

Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known.

Close friends said only that "death caught up with him in a battle".

Friends, former BBC colleagues and Ukraine's wider media community paid tributes to a talented journalist who went on to be a successful communications professional.

Known as Sasha or Sashko, Bondarenko was originally from Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.

He worked for the BBC's Ukrainian Service from 2007 to 2011 as a news reporter, presenter and editor of radio programmes broadcast from Kyiv. He left the BBC to work for other media organisations.

At the start of the war Sasha Bondarenko worked as a communications expert and media trainer.

At the start of the war he was in charge of special projects for leading Ukrainian communications agency, RMA, whose staff paid tribute to his intelligence, humour and voice.

He was one of many thousands of Ukrainians who have left their civilian jobs across all walks of life to defend their country from the Russian invasion.

Among well-known Ukrainians who enlisted were members of one of Ukraine's top rock bands, Antytila, who became army medics, and broadcasters Pavlo Kazarin and Yurii Matsarskyi.

A number of journalists have lost their lives reporting on the war too. A Ukrainian fixer working with an Italian reporter was killed this week as they came under fire near the southern city Kherson.

Vasyl Samokhvalov of RMA paid tribute to Sasha Bondarenko as a man who volunteered on day one: "A human with a will of steel. A human with the clearest motivation. A human with the best music playlist."

The former head of the BBC's Ukrainian Service, Maciek Bernatt-Reszczynski, said the corporation was extremely lucky to have him on the Kyiv team: "It was always new challenges with this extraordinary man. Including the last, heroic one, to defend his country from aggression."

Bondarenko graduated from Luhansk teacher-training college and started his career in journalism at a local radio station in the east of Ukraine, before working for leading Ukrainian TV channels and and then the BBC's Ukrainian Service.

BBC Ukraine's editor-in-chief Marta Shokalo (R) paid tribute to her former colleague

"I look at our photos together and can't stop crying even though I can only remember our carefree days in the Kyiv office and how we laughed together," said Marta Shokalo, BBC Ukraine's editor-in-chief.

He went on to work as a TV reporter, covering the mass Maidan anti-government protests in Kyiv in 2013-14 and later Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014.

As a native of eastern Ukraine his insight of the complexities of Ukraine's relationship with Russia was seen as especially valuable.

A keen athlete, he achieved a long-held ambition of swimming the Bosphorus. His last photo published on Facebook was captioned: "Somewhere in the Kharkiv woods."

Image source, Sasha Bondarenko/Facebook

Colleagues described an unpretentious but highly knowledgeable journalist who seemed "brilliant at everything"

Go here to see the original:
Ukraine war: Ex-BBC journalist Bondarenko killed on front line - BBC

Ukraine

Visually striking and politically strident, a new subgenre of magazines in Kyiv and Russia is sharing images and stories of the invasion to challenge the Putin myth

Steven Watson

Thu 27 Apr 2023 03.00 EDT

When 26-year-old documentary photographer Sebastian Wells travelled from Berlin to Ukraine shortly after the Russian invasion, he wasnt entirely sure what he was going to do. Many of my colleagues went directly to the frontline, he explains from a sunny cafe in Kyiv. I knew that wouldnt be my role, but I didnt know what else I should do. I spent two weeks in Kyiv getting frustrated and feeling like some kind of war tourist, and thats when I started trying to find young creative people in the city.

His first meeting was with 22-year-old fashion photographer Vsevolod Kazarin, and together the pair set about taking pictures of young people on the streets of Kyiv. Sharing a camera and an SD card, they assembled a series of street-style images, with their subjects photographed alongside sandbags, concrete barricades and anti-tank obstacles.

They thought they could maybe use their images to create propaganda posters that they could send to friends in European cities, building bridges with young people across the EU and encouraging them to donate to Ukraine.

But then they came across illustrations by the 18-year-old artist Sonya Marian that rework Soviet-era Russian paintings to explore the origins of Russian aggression. They read the text that Andrii Ushytskyi, 22, posted to his Instagram account, reflecting on his personal experiences of the war and as the texts and imagery came together, they realised they had something much more substantial than a series of posters.

The first issue of Solomiya was published in August 2022 as a big, beautiful and defiant piece of print, with the second issue printed last month. It has come a long way from the early idea of posters but the mission has stayed the same. Reading Solomiya gives an intimate account of what life is like for young people in Kyiv. It also makes it easy for readers to send support the magazine gives details of charities and organisations run by young Ukrainians alongside QR codes for donating to them.

Another magazine on its second issue is Telegraf, which was first published in May 2021 as a journal for the Ukrainian design community. The second issue was initially focused on Ukrainian digital product design and was nearing completion when Russia invaded. Priorities suddenly shifted.

From the first days of the full-scale invasion we have seen a huge surge of activity by designers, illustrators, artists and all other creatives, says editor-in-chief Anna Karnauh. These artworks have become a huge inspiration for many Ukrainians. We realised that we simply had to collect them and to tell the real story of how creatives lived and worked during this war.

Now on its third print run, Telegrafs war issue is a remarkable object, with each cover customised by hand and slogans printed on the fore-edges of the pages so that either Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine) or Heroiam Slava (Glory to the heroes) appears on the edge of the magazine depending on which way its held. It is only available in Ukrainian so far, but an English version will be published in the coming months, and Karnauh and her team hope to reach a wider audience with it.

The war has inspired magazine-makers on the Russian side, too BL8D (pronounced blood) is published by a group of Russian artists and creatives who oppose Vladimir Putins regime, and, like Telegraf, it resulted from a sudden change of plan. Originally intended as a trendbook that searched for the essence of Russian culture, the project was ready to print when Russia invaded. The team responded by scrapping their PDFs and setting to work on an anti-military manifesto, condemning the war and looking forward to a day after Putins regime has been toppled.

The magazine is based on two long interviews probing deep into Russian identity one with art historian Tata Gutmacher and one with museum researcher Denis Danilov. The interviews are presented alongside photography and illustration that create a stark and striking picture of Russianness and argue that a different reality is possible.

The entire Putin regime rests on the myth that Europe hates Russia and nothing good awaits a person outside, says creative director and editor-in-chief Maria Azovtseva. We decided to create our own weapon an art book about the imminent death of the Putin myth.

Solomiya If we were to describe life in times of war, we would use the word but, because it evokes a feeling of discomfort and ambiguity that emerges when discussing something that is far beyond our control. Ukrainians have to keep living, but must also remember that death may come at any second. Taken from editors letter.

BL8D[The magazine is] our voice against the war. It is our anger and our rage towards those who started this war, and those who still support it It is our fears and an attempt to look at ourselves in the mirror to understand how this could have happened to all of us. Taken from editors letter.

Telegraf We have collected iconic images that arose during the full-scale war, says editor Anna Karnauh, together with personal stories of people who lived in and fled out of the occupation, who instead of working in the office or sipping oat lattes on the way to design meetups, are now defending their country on the frontline.

Steven Watson is the founder of stackmagazines.com

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We created our own weapon: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine - The Guardian