When signs of resistance and resistance in Ukraine end | The Russian-Ukrainian War

Ukraine, a country with Evolutions in which scientists show a combination of modern and traditional values, has always been a weak sign. We are well versed in the art of finding meaning where perhaps there is none, of seeing more than there is.

And then the war with Russia gave us a whole gift of new images: a Ukrainian tractor pulling a Russian Tank that embodies the heroism of farmers, and a kitchen cabinet left solid on the wall of an overflowing building became a sign of a destroyed wall became a sign of a destroyed wall became a sign of a destroyed wall became a sign of invincibility.

After that we had a collective number of our warships known as the “Ghost of Kyiv”, the Sharsship Warkva, burned by the burning poet of Ukraine, and the fury of the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, found in a small city outside Kyiv, to name just a few. At one time, they all seemed so important, so comforting in their ability to imbue battle with prognostic effects and deep meaning.

The first spring of full-scale war caught the desperate desire to be strong and invisible. Everything was symbolic, from the socks in the blue and yellow dresses to the traditional braids of the girl inspecting the trunks of the cars at the checkpoint. The smallest details were invented as fakes of resistance, filling us with a belief in our own strength and inflexibility. We created memes and invented symbols faster than we could put them into our cultural code. We thought that all this would save us. It probably did.

But all symptoms have one thing in common – they die with time. As people who hold on to themselves, they believe in themselves and live by them.

After the spring championship 2022 come summer, autumn and winter. At some point, a startling realization began that we had been in this for a long time. Before us lay a great amount of work, pain, suffering and loss. We lost loved ones, we buried the poets and pains of the film, we were torn, maybe we quarreled, and, in the end, we will die. Not all of us. But some of us.

Roulette spins – red or black, life or death. You never know when the next arrow will hit and it will be buried under the rubble. And you can’t calculate the trajectory of Russian rockets to take shelter in time. It is a long game of survival.

We did not notice when the signs started to disappear, losing their importance and allure. A tractor pulling a tank? Relax … Now we are talking about generators, blackouts and FPV drones, which are previously needed for industrial purposes. A closet in the wall? It’s just in the closet on the wall. As of mid-2024, Russia had destroyed or damaged more than 250,000 buildings. Everyone has a closet – several, in fact. We have grown tired of staring at the prices of managed apartments.

The ghost of Kyiv? We buried so many pilots who were living, breathing symbols. Warship Moskva? In the past three years, we have lightened a third of Russia’s black sea fleet, with some driven from the black sea by threats to our military capabilities.

As for me, I had some favorite signs – or rather saw them – of mine. I found one of them long before the first missiles flew towards Kyiv on February One night. It appeared in the year 2015, when I started to take up arms to protect the integrity of my country’s territory in the east.

Before leaving the military training ground, I bought a metal mug with oranges painted on it in a shopping center in Kyiv. I grew to love that mug and foolishly take it with me everywhere, turning it into something boring and wishing it a special meaning.

It stayed with me for the entire 14 months I worked in 2015-16, 10 of which were spent on the front line. It worked for me like nothing else had ever worked for me before. Later, back in civilian life, I took it with me to the mountains, to the wilderness. For a long time, it worked for me in the studio where I worked as a singer.

And then, at the beginning of March 2022, I took you with me to the battle. I told my stories about my brothers – about it, explaining its importance. The soldiers who were with him knew how important this mug was and how long we had been together, that’s why, when we moved to a new situation and the whole unit rushed, that unit wanted it very important to their commander.

At the end of spring 2023, when Bakhmut, who suffered one of the bloodiest battles in this great battle of this war, was finally killed to death and our troops, took out the shells, burned, my double was thrown as a cover to distract the Russians from the troops who left this city. We spent several days under a shifting fire without any hope of strengthening or leaving that trench filled with corpses.

When the order came back, I left everything that could depress me, because we were facing a bad situation for miles under the bombardment of the enemy. When in that trench, scattered with the bodies of our soldiers and literally plowed by shelling, I left my mug behind. My symbol of steadfastness, my faithful totem, an heirloom my children will not inherit.

It was a shame. But the manifold increase in my chances of survival was very important. My life was more important to me than some common household item, no matter how much I invested in it.

Symbols die when drudgery sets in and heroism becomes the norm. Fatigue blurs the line between scary and routine. In the last 18 months or so, it seems that it is not a new brand. The number of memes and glossy cartoons has decreased significantly.

We are finally tired of this military oath, just as we are tired of this endless war. We grew up and got tired of ourselves. And that’s not a bad thing. People cannot live in a constant state of development. We have become pragmatic and rational. We are the only signs we have.

Everyone who is always unapologetic, who carries work and gives, who is in charge of the front line and every last ounce of buying the last car to buy Drones Globe, who tries to Live their life despite everything. We are symbols: worn out like old winter coats, but real.

We are people who just go on living and fighting.

This document was written within the joint initiative of Ukraineworld, the Ukrainian center and the Ukrainian pen. Translated by Helena Kernan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.