To prevent the cemeteries from replacing the cities. Why Ukraine is extremely needed more weapons

"We are not only fighting for ourselves. We are fighting for the world in which it is safe to live. Is it appropriate to ask for more weapons at this stage? We are desperately in need of it. We need support because, despite the fact that after 10 years of war we became Stronger, better and wiser, we are just people. " The thought usually happens in the middle of the night or at dawn. Russians seem like to kill defenseless and helpless.

They cannot do it at the front - they were reflected there - so in the middle of the night missiles on maternity hospitals, high -rise buildings, stations, metro stations, schools, libraries. The worst during the attacks is the endless messages we send to each other. The most unclear is the question "How are you?" This question flies over Kiev, Odessa, Kherson, Dnipro, collecting answers. "It fell near. " "I see fire. " "We are all right, but it burns here. " "We are gone in front of the house.

" "The smell of death, my Anya said it smells like death. " However, there is no alternative. It is a question that, for all its meaninglessness, cannot be left unanswered. Silence means misery and death. We, the people of the decade of war, are used to it. The world speaks of the second anniversary. It is wrong: not two, but 10 years since the Russian troops have annexed Crimea and invaded the Donbas. It is not quite correct to call it an anniversary.

In the Ukrainian language, the period of time equal to the year is determined by two words: "anniversary" and "anniversary". "Anniversary" often concerns Panahaid, and the "anniversary" is more inherent in the celebration of life. In our memory and calendars settled so much sorrow that it has now become a monument.

But despite all the "anniversaries" in Ukraine for centuries - Baturyn massacre in the eighteenth century and Emsky decrees of Valuyev in the nineteenth century, shootings in Bykivna and Sandarmos, the Holodomor under Soviet power, the murder Kakhovskaya dam - we are still here. We are still fighting for the Anniversary, for the anniversary of our victory. In the last years of the war, much has changed.

In Mariupol there was a community center "Hubududa" - a place where they taught Japanese language and computer literacy, where they conducted presentations of books and concerts, where people studied to be businessmen and active citizens, where they drew, sang and developed projects for environmental protection. A friendly city. After a brutal multi -magnifying siege led to his capture by Russia in the spring of 2022, "Halbudi" had to move.

Today it is in Cherkasy, a city in Central Ukraine, there people are repairing drones. So much remained unfulfilled. Even more fates that were heroic in the war, but whose carriers can no longer do what they may have been destined to write books, open restaurants or find medicines for Alzheimer's disease. Their smiles now exist only in the photos. Among the things that have changed are probably the desire to tell the world what the Russians have done and do with Ukrainians in the past and today.

It used to be so acute, so resonant, creating for me the second "I" - "I" with the stories of killed friends and pictures of mass burials, as well as with a firm conviction that every death, every grief should be told, documented and revenge. This feeling went. There are also stories, photographs and beliefs. But I no longer want to talk about this world. The world is competent. He has access to the Internet, news; He can see everything himself.

I am grateful to thousands, and possibly, millions of people who we no longer need to explain or show anything. They simply supported us in Lithuania and Australia, the United Kingdom and Norway, the USA and Morocco, Japan and Estonia. I was lucky to know some of them by name. I was lucky to meet them - fearless and good people - in Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv, and even in places where the front line is a kilometer. On the other hand, nothing has changed. We have the same sense of clarity as in 2014.

The same faith, the same love, the same rage. Do I want to go back to my pre -war, what I was in 2013? No. I do not want to be among the lie about "one people" from which genocide, wars and murder will grow again. I do not want to return at a time when Russia's attack was inevitable. I want us to win and not to be war. I think a lot about the fact that in the first months of 2022 we could not survive. It was my biggest fear.

But the experience of those unnoticed war years, when Ukrainians fought with Russia supported in the East of the country, gave me strength and ability to be stable to withstand. I left Donetsk in 2014. In 2022 she decided that I would no longer run anywhere. I never felt better. I have never been and would not be better than in the first months of a full -scale offensive to Kiev. According to the poet Sergei Zhadan: "To be sunflower in the fields of Donbass means to know how to live and what to die.

" I was a sunflower on the streets of Kiev. This year brought a new fear. I thought about the weapon we are so desperate today. I started to look for answers, and whether they give it so slowly not in an attempt to prevent Russia's total defeat, as some think, but simply because it does not exist. "And what if they really don't have it?" - I asked my friend, who is now a warrior. "All the same," he replied. "We stand. We are fighting. We tolerate. " My friend-warrior knows how to reassure me.

Before the war, he was an accountant. Now he is an artilleryman. And a little philosopher. We all try to stand up for ourselves. For different people it means different things. For some, it is to hold the front line. It is the weaving of kilometer camometer nets, the continuous evacuation of the wounded, the donation of all money to the military. For others, it is the teaching of children, baking bread, care for abandoned animals, narratives of anecdotes.

Whatever we do, we all stand for ourselves right now, when we have a chance to break free from under the occupier's boots forever. Be free, be alive. Now that our chance to exist as a political nation, as a community, as a state is equal to victory in the war. We are not only fighting for ourselves. We are fighting for a world in which it is safe to live. Is it appropriate to ask for more weapons at this stage? We desperately need it.

We need more weapons so that children's literature does not become literature for the dead; so that the cemeteries are not filled with dead poets, dead villagers, dead engineers; To prevent the cemeteries from replacing cities and Russian missiles are not aimed at our hospitals, schools and homes. We need support because, despite the fact that after 10 years of war we became stronger, better and wiser, we are just people.