A year ago he was awakened at seven in the morning by the sound of explosions. Through the window she saw columns of black smoke coming from the airport in his city, Ivano-Frankivsk, in western Ukraine. The Russian invasion had begun. Three days later, after some initial moments of panic, he spoke by email to La Vanguardia and said two things that sounded self-willed: that the Ukrainian soldiers had been the best in the Red Army and that he was not scared. “We will win”, he summed up when everyone thought that Ukraine had hours left. A year later, he caused emotion to interview Yuri Andrujovich (1960), one of the great European writers of recent decades, in person at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid, where he spoke on Friday as part of the exhibition In the Eye of the Hurricane . Vanguard in Ukraine, 1900-1930. On Wednesday he will speak at the Barcelona CCCB (6:30 p.m.). And Acantilado publishes a Small Encyclopedia of Intimate Places.
Are you still confident of victory?
It is a different ‘we will win’. Like the majority of Ukrainians, I am convinced that this war has only one end. An end in which we will win. But a year ago I thought that soon Russia would be frightened by the number of coffins with Russian soldiers returning to their country and the regime would falter. I made a mistake. I thought that the capacity of Russian society was greater. The polls on their support for the war are clear, 80%. The Ukrainian victory will come in a long time, it will take many victims and the war will be very long. And hard.
Do you think in years?
For the fourth time in my life I reach a point where a question is repeated: is Ukraine going to be or not? In 1991, the uprising against Gorbachev in Moscow lasted three days. In 2004, the Orange Revolution, three weeks. In 2013-14 the Euromaidan, three months. Now maybe three years. We already have one.
Why don’t coffins work returning to Russia? Are what you call Putin’s parahistorical fantasies already for all Russians?
Russian society was prepared for this war with the ideology that has been trickling down for years. I was in Moscow when the USSR fell in 1991, and then clearly the people had the capacity to protest, to go out into the streets. But nothing remains of that society. At the beginning of the war there were some demonstrators with signs, then even that disappeared. There has been a degradation of the values ??of Russian society over the decades.
What are Putin’s parahistorical fantasies?
He has not invented them, he is also under ideological treatment from other forces. He believes that Russia begins in kyiv because the Kievan Rus [medieval federation of Slavic peoples that would give their name to Russia and Belarus] existed. And the Ukrainians would be a mistake of the peoples who have come and started to live there. For Putin, the Ukrainians were always invented by someone. The last one, Lenin. Before, the Poles, the Austro-Hungarians. Always in order to break down the great Russian nation.
What has made Ukraine endure the invasion?
First of all, Ukrainian society. In its hierarchy of values, the highest is freedom, present in the country’s shield. It will not put up with dictatorship or totalitarianism. And he has a typical trait: stubbornness. In addition, seeing how the Russian soldiers acted in the occupied territories, with looting, murders, cruelty, moved to resist.
What is it like to live in a war?
I don’t want to compare my problems with those of people who have been killed, maimed or living in regions close to the conflict. In Ivano-Frankivsk missiles hit at first but in other regions many more. We have gotten used to power cuts, we bought generators, life has not stopped. But we are losing people, the children of our friends. The son of some artist friends died recently. They have not found the body, but they have celebrated the 40-day mass. Hurts. Every time I go to the cemetery to my parents’ grave, the area where soldiers are buried under the Ukrainian flag continues to grow.
What do you think of a peace in exchange for territories?
I agree 100% with Zelenski: how can we reach agreements with someone who never complies with anything?
Does culture serve in war?
The need for culture has continued to exist. Me and my friends founded a cultural society in Ivano-Frankivsk, an underground space called Vagabundo. Since the first days of the invasion, every hour there is some event. There are concerts, poetry recitals, classes, people need to come together for culture. Before the war there were two or three events a week. Now five or six a day. It is a fight of primitive instincts, life fights against death and that is reflected in this cultural need.
