It’s midnight in Ukraine. I’m writing this while on my work visit to Madagascar and I can’t stop reading notifications popping up on my Ukrainian apps:
“Ballistic missile from Kursk towards Sumy!”
“Explosions on Sumy!”
“Ballistic missile towards Kriyviy Rih!”
“Odesa and region attention — ballistics from Crimea”.
“Explosions in Kherson region — ballistics from Crimea”.
“Attention! There have been recorded flights of at least 4 Tu-95MS aircraft from Olenya. The flight is likely combat-related, which means:
- In the Engels area, they will most likely be there around 01:30-02:00 +/-
- If launches are from there, then we can expect missiles in our airspace around 02:20-03:00 +/-
- In the Caspian Sea area, they will most likely be there around 02:30-03:30 +/-
- If launches are from there, then we can expect missiles in our airspace around 03:30-04:30 +/-”
“Attention! Deployment of two submarines from the port of Tuapse into the waters of the Black Sea. Total number: up to 8 Kalibr cruise missiles”.
This means there’s going to be yet another massive missile attack on Ukraine. This means the Russian army will once more attempt to kill as many civilians as possible and destroy as much critical infrastructure as it can. And I’m sitting in my hotel room trying to get my thoughts together so I can talk to you about Ukraine, so I can talk to you about Ukrainians...
***
It’s now morning. Russia carried out a strike specifically targeting Ukrainian civilians with missiles launched from air, sea and land-based platforms.
According to preliminary data, Russia fired 38 rockets of various types:
- One air-launched X-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile;
- Four Iskander-M ballistic missiles;
- One 3M22 Zircon cruise missile;
- 13 Kh-101 cruise missiles;
- 14 Kalibr cruise missiles;
- Two cruise missiles; and
- Three guided aviation missiles Kh-59/Kh-69.
They’ve killed and injured a lot of Ukrainians today.
Russians have also programmed their missiles to hit the biggest Ukrainian children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt in Kyiv. How can one programme missiles to kill sick kids? What kind of degenerate mind is capable of that?
Russians planned the attack so that Kyiv would be targeted by multiple missiles from land, sea and air all at once, to overwhelm our air defence and kill children going through dialysis and cancer treatments in the biggest children’s hospital in Ukraine.
Ukrainians work at the site of a rocket strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Sergeu Dolzhenko)
Medics attend to an injured child at the site of a rocket strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Sergeu Dolzhenko)
Rescue workers at the site of a rocket strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Sergeu Dolzhenko)
A psychologist gestures to a little girl at the site of a missile strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Vladyslav Musiienko)
Medics carry the little girl and equipment at the site of a missile strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Vladyslav Musiienko)
A patient at the site of a rocket strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Sergeu Dolzhenko)
Water donations at the site of a rocket strike on the ‘Okhmadyt’ children’s hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Sergeu Dolzhenko)
Ukrainian rescuers work at the scene of a missile strike on a five-floor residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 8 July 2024. (Photo: EPA-EFE / Danulo Antoniuk)
Dear South Africans, do with this information what you will.
Most Ukrainians from my generation have great-grandparents who survived famine, grandparents who bore witness to the horrors of World War 2 and parents who endured the stifling grip of Soviet rule in Ukraine.
If we are here today, that means our ancestors lived through the most difficult times in our history where outside, enemies were trying to occupy our land while inside, tyrants were doing all they could to annihilate enough of us to suppress our cultural identity, destroy our heritage and erase our language.
A shattered belief
We were supposed to be the first generation to break free from all of it and start putting Ukraine’s heritage back together, piece by piece. Born in the twilight of the USSR’s collapse and raised in an independent Ukraine, I grew up with a steadfast belief that our nation would finally heal from the wounds of the past. It seemed we had a chance to freely embrace our roots, revive our culture and forge a path towards collective restoration and growth.
How naive I was.
Any illusion of a peaceful and prosperous future was shattered abruptly in 2014 with the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine. And all of the echoes of historical trauma returned, disrupting our aspirations for healing and plunging us into a new era of uncertainty and conflict.
With every explosion, every burnt-down museum, every destroyed grain silo, every executed or killed writer, poet, journalist, artist, painter, sculptor, teacher and scientist, we, as a nation, found ourselves grappling with the stark realisation that the scars of the past were far from healed.
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 1,062 cultural heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed. Russia is doing its utmost to destroy everything and anything in Ukraine of cultural significance.
Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the biggest tragedies for the cultural development of our nation happened over the past few months in Kharkiv — the heart of the Ukrainian printed word, the city that has always been the centre of publishing in Ukraine and remains so even amid constant shelling.
Kharkiv is the publishing capital of Ukraine. About 75-80% of all books in Ukraine are printed in Kharkiv. At the end of May, in the middle of a working day, the Russians launched a massive attack on one of the largest printing houses in Europe, Factor-Druk in Kharkiv. They fired missiles from a C-300 anti-aircraft system and three missiles hit the workshop and the surrounding area.
Factor-Druk printed books for the largest Ukrainian publishing houses, including Vivat Books, KSD, Ranok, Folio, Svichado and Zelenyi Pes. Every third book published in the country was printed by Factor-Druk.
Fifty people were working in the printing house that day. Seven of them were instantly killed. The bodies were so badly burnt that only two of them could be identified. Many of the staff — 21 people — were injured.
That day, 50,000 Ukrainian-language books were burnt. Russians proudly celebrated the attack online.
A month before that, another of Kharkiv’s printing houses, Hurov & K, also burnt down as a result of a Russian bomb attack. The Aurora printing house, located in the same building on the floor below, was also destroyed.
Earlier, the Budynok Druku printing house was damaged in yet another Russian attack on Kharkiv. That’s on top of the large number of Ukraine’s printing houses that were hit at the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
After the attack on Factor-Druk at the end of May, it seemed that our generational trauma, our fear of losing our recently regained national identity overwhelmed Ukraine. Books in stores sold out and the websites of publishing houses crashed under the weight of the orders that flooded in.
Journalists from Suspilne Kharkiv published an interview with Serhiy Polytychyi, the owner of the Factor group of companies.
He said the total losses amounted to around €6-million and it would take at least six months to restore the premises.
Since the full-scale war began, the printing workshops in Kharkiv have produced 200 million books, according to Polytychyi. He said this constitutes at least a third of all printed materials in Ukraine. Additionally, 30% of Ukrainian textbooks were printed here.
“I have been thinking about this since the first day of the war. My initial thought was that it had indeed happened. Publishing houses produce materials that change people’s perceptions, shape the nation, the new Ukrainian nation, and of course, I thought of it as a strategically important enterprise in a sense,” said Polytychyi.
Russian terrorists know exactly what they are targeting and why. They don’t just want to occupy our land, they want to annihilate the Ukrainian language and culture. And anyone who still doesn’t see that is either blind or a fool.
* * *
It’s two in the morning. I’ve just got a notification:
“Tu-95MS have launched missiles in the Engels region. The missiles will be entering our airspace in the next 30 minutes. Please seek shelter.” DM