Introduction: In fact, ordinary Ukrainians (including me, of course) are quite excited about China’s willingness to propose a peaceful solution, believing that this is a key step in solving the problem. [Text/Observer.com columnist Anton Neeleman] Before we know it, another year

introduction: In fact, ordinary Ukrainians (including me, of course) are quite excited about China’s willingness to propose a peaceful solution, thinking this is a key step in solving the problem.

[Text/Observer.com columnist Anton Neeleman]

Before I knew it, another year had passed.

For me in Ukraine, this has been a year of progress, a year of pain, and a year of great changes. My life has never been like this year, full of all kinds of joys, sorrows, joys and sorrows.

The war is still going on, and Ukraine during the war is full of tragedies. I think I am not qualified to call it unfortunate. There are still many Ukrainians struggling in the dire straits of life. "A grain of sand of the times turns into a mountain when it falls on everyone." This famous saying among Chinese friends is also a true portrayal of the reality in Ukraine.

However, tomorrow will come, and life will not only be dark night, even the faint sunshine is precious to us. Every experience I have, every cleansing of my soul, whether painful or joyful, has added something that may not be considered significant in my life notes.

Background: Joy in suffering

After entering 2023, although Ukrainians have accepted the fact that the war will be protracted, people who are hopeful still believe that the war will end in the near future.

I vaguely remember the Catholic Christmas period in 2022: It was December 27, 2022. The Christmas market was in full swing, and sparkling ice sculptures greeted tourists. During the traditional New Year celebrations, Ukrainians ushered in a rare relaxation Atmosphere.

In a street interview in the center of Kiev, people wish each other a happy new year. A kiosk was set up in Independence Square for people to donate gifts and humanitarian aid to the military, with cheerful music playing outside. Although we often face shortages of goods on weekdays, fortunately during the Christmas period, the government finally managed to maintain an adequate supply of goods, which also relieved people who have been suffering from long-term supply shortages.

People congratulated each other and talked to each other as if the war never existed. I still remember something a girl named Maria said to me in Independence Square: “Even though I’m not ready to celebrate like usual, it still needs to be celebrated. We need to give gifts etc., we need to fight this feeling of uncertainty. "

Whether you really believe it or lie to yourself, "fighting the feeling of uncertainty" has become a necessity in Ukrainian life. But many Ukrainians truly believe that the war will end in 2023.

"Cannonball Christmas Tree" in Kiev (Reuters)

Comedy performances have now become the "spiritual food" of Ukrainians. This is a coping mechanism to "fight uncertainty" and has become an outlet for Ukrainians' emotions. We face so much stress and tragedy every day that venting our emotions becomes something we must do to keep ourselves sane. Sometimes, you just need a joke that isn't funny to forget about life's troubles and move on.

Many people have even developed comedy performances into a livelihood. All kinds of humor can make us feel that life is still there, and it brings hope to people. I still remember when after a comedy show in Kiev, a woman said to the person next to her: "This is the first time in a whole year that I have laughed so hard."

But Ukrainian comedy is not undiscussed war. Although these sketches mainly revolve around the joys and sorrows of civilians, they also involve some jokes and bureaucratic antics of the authorities. For example, one show I once saw joked about how Ukrainians should get used to Russian missiles and drones because the authorities can't get weapons from the West fast enough.

Although we all know that the joke is not actually funny: it is about life, we see it more as joy in suffering. I often joke to my family now that I'm afraid a rocket will hit my building and the walls will come down and everyone will see that I haven't cleaned my apartment and that I have no clothes on.

Ukrainians now often say that our life is divided into two contrasting phases "before the war" and "after the war", and this is indeed true. Before the war, the jokes we loved to tell were less political; after the war, even the flavor of the jokes changed. For example, the EU tells us that it will provide us with "the best quality light bulbs", but in fact Ukraine is currently short of electricity and has no need for light bulbs at all. This is black humor at its best.

But I hope there will be less black humor in the new year.

Ukrainians really love watching comedies.

Advanced color: used to it.

Ukrainians are indeed used to war.

When air raid sirens sounded on the streets of Kiev, some people hurried to seek shelter, but others did not want to hide. People log into Telegram on their phones, and there are groups monitoring radio waves from morning to night to learn what kind of missiles or drones are coming. Then they decide how to respond.

Russian air strikes in early 2023 are more frequent than ever before. At first, when the air-raid sirens went off, I, like many people, watched the people around me and decided what to do. But after a few days, I also started turning to the telegram channel to better gauge the potential seriousness of the situation before deciding whether to hide or not.

As Russia's bombing intensity gradually eases, most restaurants, cafes and other businesses in Kiev are opening normally. These places are often packed with customers as I walk by in the no-longer-cold spring breeze. One weekend I even saw a crowded bungee jumping event, with people jumping from a pedestrian bridge over the Dnieper River in Kiev looking for a moment of excitement.

In the evening, I saw people walking leisurely outside the theater. Near midnight, the crowds disappeared as Ukraine remained under curfew.

However, the signs of war in Kiev have not been completely eliminated.

I saw historical monuments protected with sandbags from air strikes, saw Russian tanks on display as trophies in Kiev's historic Mikhailovska Square, saw destroyed residential buildings as a result of a missile attack As a result, people were seen driving cars with bullet holes and many large metal tank traps - often referred to as "hedgehogs" - were used to block roads.

also saw yellow and blue - the colors of the Ukrainian flag - commonly seen on fences and billboards across the city.

There are also small Ukrainian flags planted on the grass in Kiev's Independence Square. Each flag is engraved with the name of a person who died in the war. Flags of other countries that support Ukraine are also there.

In Kiev's Independence Square, a man walks past the memorial point commemorating the soldiers who lost their lives in Russia's war with Ukraine (Reuters)

One day while walking in Kiev, I met a 46-year-old woman who claimed to be the principal of a primary school. , she said she thought the war could drag on into 2024 or beyond. But she also said that at least she and her children were used to war. “With so many people dead, I no longer worry that my children and I will get tired of being attacked by the Russians.” She explained to me that the war had become part of their schooling life.

I still remember this conversation very well. She said to me: "It is not unusual for our children to go to the school bomb shelter. They are used to it now. Once they hear the air raid siren, they know there is an air raid siren." It took about two minutes to reach the hiding place. Air raid sirens were usually twice a week, maybe five times a day. Sometimes we would stay in the shelter for five or six hours, sometimes just 15 minutes."

" Six Months ago, many children panicked when they heard sirens, but we tried to make the shelter a warm, comfortable place. We painted the walls in bright colors, filled them with books and art materials, and tried to keep the children Going to the bomb shelter felt like going to outer space, like traveling to Mars. There were generators and wi-fi, so there was always electricity and internet no matter what. We provided them with lockers where they kept their Get an emergency kit with water and some favorite snacks.Sometimes naughty kids sneak into shelters and eat these emergency snacks when they shouldn’t! "

She continued to tell me her story: "I have been engaged in education for 22 years. "

" Before the war started, I opened a school in Kharkov. My school was not destroyed, but it was surrounded by badly damaged buildings. When the kids stopped coming, the school became a place where volunteers distributed food. I lived alone on campus for a while until mid-March, and then I moved to Kiev and picked up my old business again. "

" Many women and children left Ukraine, and I had many opportunities to leave, and many of my friends and colleagues tried to convince me to go abroad. But I think it's important to stay. If we leave our country, what are our men fighting for? If not me, who will do the work? It is difficult to teach children in this situation.

Children know a lot more about the world than we think. They grow up quickly, and war has become a part of their learning and life, and they incorporate it into games and wordplay. If someone is scared or sad, they comfort each other. Sometimes they will start crying because they don't know if their parents are safe. It's been an incredible, unforgettable year.

When the air raids began, our youngest children came to the shelter in their pajamas, sleepy and with their hair all messed up - you know they almost never cry. They are our little heroes. From them, I can feel the meaning of my existence. "

Ukrainian children in the air-raid shelter

In fact, what this old educator said is the true mentality of most Ukrainians, just like most ordinary people I know, they "just want to live in peace."

Most of them Ukrainians have already "coexisted" with war. They do not want Ukraine to continue to be in war, they only want peace. But our people do not know how to win peace. They can only place their hope on others. Most Ukrainians feel that the world There are smart people in many countries in the world who know how to prevent the war from continuing, so they hope that the relevant countries will lend a helping hand to stop the war. It is precisely because of this that in fact, ordinary Ukrainians (including me, of course) are willing to propose to China I am quite excited about the peaceful solution and think this is a key step to solve the problem.

Even my family has talked to me about this problem. They know that I have Chinese friends and how Chinese friends help our family, so they are very interested in it. There is no doubt about the kindness of the Chinese people: “I know we are all a little scared looking into the future, but maybe this plan can help. It talks about dialogue and cooperation, not conflict. This is important, right? Perhaps China's plan is a shortcut to achieving this goal. But of course, we need to be careful and smart and analyze all the pros and cons. "

Maybe this war will continue for one year or even several years. Although I also long for the end of the war, Ukrainians have become accustomed to the current life, or are numb. My former neighbor, 30-year-old Irene from Kiev Na (not her real name) was pregnant with her first child when the war broke out. She stayed in Ukraine to give birth to her daughter, but left for Spain soon after. The war was at a stalemate with no clear end in sight, which made her less likely to May come back soon.

"On the one hand, it is foreseeable that the war will drag on, although it is difficult to admit it," Irina said. "I just listen, analyze and understand reality, I will not go home soon. "This was her reply to me.

Obviously, living under various threats (not just war), we can realize that the most important thing is how to continue life here and now, and accept new things one day at a time. world, treating each day as an independent unit - this is how I adjust my mentality and continue to live, and the same is the current state of many Ukrainians.

Although it is hard to talk about carpe diem, we have become accustomed to the status quo.

Dark color: pain and Licking wounds

In 2023, I lost my cousin forever. His young life remained in Bachmut.

There is no need to elaborate on the pain. I still remember the scene on the day of the burial: the sun was shining brightly, and the staff indifferently threw a handful of soil into his grave. My aunt, sobbing uncontrollably, arched her grief-stricken body over her son's coffin. She pressed her face against the wooden coffin, wrapped her arms around it, and ran her hands over the cloth embroidered with the requiem pattern. His father and my uncle comforted her softly.

Due to the death of my cousin, I have gradually transformed from a novice who knew nothing about military affairs to a "military strategist". I have to say that this is an extremely black humor but not a funny joke. The only thing that

's cousin's death can confirm for me is that for both Russia and Ukraine, both sides paid an incredible price in those months of fighting in Bakhmut.

Ukrainian soldiers in the trenches of Bakhmut

Some accounts from cousins ​​can help us understand the scale of the losses.

Oleg Storoges (pseudonym) served in an air reconnaissance unit in the northeastern Bakhmut region.

Having lost one hand, he retired from the army and returned to Kiev. I met him in a cafe in Kiev on May 31, 2023, which was also the funeral of his best friend Yuri Taranuka (pseudonym). Before the war, the two had worked together in construction in Zmiv, a small town in Kharkiv.

Storoges said that he had seen many young people killed in the battle in Bahmut, and his cousin was just one of these lost lives. “There are funerals every day, and people I know often die. Storozhes, who said he served on the front line near Bakhmut for about eight months, called the Ukrainian army's losses "shocking," but added that the Russian losses he witnessed "were no less impressive." ".

Before the outbreak of the war, he was a professional online poker player without any previous military training. The only way to control his intense fear, he said, was to "completely accept" the possibility that he, too, would die.

He once told me about the military life in Bahmut. I can imagine what it was like:

Exhausted troops are often sent to the simple military rehabilitation center there to decompress for two or three days before returning. A battlefield in the mud. The rehabilitation center was a rare break for the soldiers, away from the sight of snipers and the constant sound of gunfire and splatter of shrapnel from frontline positions.

Soldiers were able to play table tennis, pray, eat and drink well, and receive trauma and meditation classes before returning to "hell on earth."

For the soldiers serving in such hellish conditions, they also feared a crude and simple fact: In order to survive, they would almost certainly have to kill, or be killed.

Oleg and his family are clearly lucky. Although he lost a hand, he was also a "blessing in disguise" and stayed away from the cruel battlefield. Obviously, my cousin and many young people are not so "lucky".

For the families of those who died in the war, "not seeing people alive and not seeing corpses after death" is the source of long-lasting pain.

After my cousin died in the war, I joined a telegram group with the intention of looking for relatives on the battlefield. Although my cousin’s colleagues have told me that he died on the battlefield and no one collected his body, I still put my hope in it. His soul can rest in peace, even if the Russians bury him.

Ukrainians join the group in a desperate search for missing relatives or to identify unclaimed war dead. Amid crude images of cold gray faces, bloodied torsos and fragments of remains, they identified the dead by identifying anything identifiable, such as scars on their bodies or rings they were wearing.

This is why in the age of social media, the internet has become a lifeline in this war. Every day, mothers, sisters, fathers, partners, brothers scour the internet trying to find any scrap of information they have shared in chats.Ironically, one of their most valuable resources in searching for relatives is the list and photos of the dead released by Russia, because the Ukrainian authorities have been reluctant to say more about the names and numbers of the dead (officially "to prevent the spread of false information" , I think they are unwilling to let the people know the cruelty of the frontline war, so as not to have a "bad impact" on their recruitment work).

This is the fate of the families of soldiers who are missing or killed in action. In an information blackout, they have the responsibility of pulling together open source information to try to piece together what happened.

Although my goals are different from theirs, I can feel it. The dark shadow of family members’ death has been felt by many Ukrainian families in 2023.

Members of the Ukrainian National Guard attend the funeral of their comrades killed in fighting in the capital Kiev (Reuters)

My year: "fulfillment"

Pain is only temporary, and after getting rid of bad emotions, busy work will eventually attract All your energy.

I have never been as busy as this year. Russian air strikes on infrastructure across Ukraine often keep me traveling. Of course, it is definitely not limited to Kiev. I traveled all over the country and used my professional knowledge. The "enrichment" of this year finally allowed me to temporarily forget the fact that my loved ones have passed away.

Since March, the Ukrainian National Grid (ukrenergo) has been preparing to merge our grid with the European grid to further upgrade the network and improve its stability. As a professional, I naturally devoted myself to this cause.

Overall, I spent the entire year doing the repetitive and tedious work of replacing old equipment, refurbishing power lines, and building new equipment.

Readers please forgive me for rambling, but I want to record in writing all the contributions I have made to our people this year. Of course, from my narrative, readers may also be able to see the true face of Ukraine’s current social life. Let me try to explain in simple terms what we do from a technical perspective.

In order to provide electricity to consumers, the power generation system needs to do two things: one is to generate electricity, and the other is to transport and distribute electricity. Russian airstrikes mainly targeted the transportation system, which consists of power lines and substations at different levels. In most cases, a substation is a network node on the power grid that reduces the voltage of incoming electricity and distributes it to consumers.

Russia’s large-scale and well-planned attacks are targeted at these network nodes. I'm sure these attacks were clearly planned with the help of Russian engineers. They also attacked thermal power plants in large cities such as Kiev, Dnipro, and Kharkiv.

A combined heat and power (CHP) station is a facility that produces both electricity and heat: it can provide heat and electricity to urban consumers during the winter. Therefore, attacks on substations are highly targeted. Once transport lines are destroyed, power cannot continue to be delivered to consumers. In fact, Ukraine still has enough power generation capacity, as well as sufficient coal, nuclear energy and hydroelectric power generation capacity, but the transmission system is being destroyed step by step, which is a huge problem.

When an attack causes blackouts in some areas, power is usually restored within an hour. This sounds fast because we switch the power line to the backup line. If some simple single piece of equipment breaks, we can restore it quickly. During the period when Russian air strikes were most frequent, we used almost all available inventory equipment to repair all damaged circuit facilities within 3-4 weeks. But there is still a type of very complex, expensive and special equipment - such as transformers, which is difficult to supply in a short time. With Ukraine's current manufacturing capabilities, it would take up to six months to make them.

If you see black smoke coming out of some places in Ukraine in some videos, there is no doubt that the oil in the transformer is burning.

Transformer substations have become Russia's main attack target

Transformers and transformer oil are now one of the scarcest things in Ukraine. In the city of Nikolayev alone, there is a shortage of about 120 tons of transformer oil. Without it, we cannot repair some slightly damaged transformers.Once the transformer is damaged, the power plant cannot supply power to the grid. If these transformers were completely destroyed, it would take a long time to build new ones. It's not something that can be manufactured in advance and plug-and-play when needed, making a transformer requires a whole industrial process. The stability of Ukraine's power grid was severely affected by the massive destruction of transformers.

So we generally ask people to reduce their electricity consumption during peak hours, because all temporary solutions cannot allow the grid to withstand the pressure of operating at full capacity. Once we find that the grid is overwhelmed, we must urgently shut down the power supply. These temporary outages can reduce load on the grid and prevent the entire system from collapsing. If people can use less electricity, the grid may continue to survive.

With the unstable power grid leaving many Ukrainians with little access to modern comforts, the drive to survive trumps all else. Many houses on the outskirts of towns or in rural areas have become crude shelters from nightfall. Residents live by candlelight, draw water from wells, and rely on firewood and body heat to ward off the cold.

Starting on November 25, 2023, perhaps because the pressure on transformers and power grids increased again, some villages and towns outside the city of Kiev once again experienced power outages, and people endured sub-zero temperatures without heating or running water.

On November 29, I went to the village of Bziv, about 60 kilometers away from Kiev, and saw 11-year-old Artem (pseudonym) helping his grandmother in the makeshift outdoor kitchen next to their almost abandoned apartment building. Light a smoky fire. The brightness inside the house was dropping rapidly and they needed to eat before the setting sun plunged their home into cold and darkness. Artyom's grandmother Irina (pseudonym) said she and her grandson have been sleeping in an abandoned apartment next door since the power cuts began.

"After the first explosion, we lost one window and two windows were damaged. After the second explosion, all other windows were destroyed," she said. "It's cold living here. It's hard to cook and we have to run between the apartment and the place where we cook."

Makeshift lean-to structures dot the overgrown courtyards of their apartment buildings, where residents gather to cook over fires Cook. I saw a woman collecting scraps of wood from a first-floor apartment to use as firewood. Another resident joked that his home was turned into a "five-bedroom apartment" after an external wall collapsed.

Ukrainian people suffering in the dark

"Here, here, here," my colleague kept calling me, and he asked me to look at the hole-riddled side of the transformer. A large number of sharp metal fragments were scattered on the nearby ground and left uncollected.

Along the way, crumbling transformers as big as bungalows stood amid protective nets of concrete and sandbags, and above us loomed the tall, forbidding Soviet-era walls of the power plant's vast turbine hall.

We put on thick work jackets and got to work, climbing poles and twisting wires together. When the power comes back on, we go to another location and repeat the process. After working for several days, many of my colleagues caught colds. Fortunately, through our efforts, the power supply was finally fully restored on December 2, and water was restored to all households.

When I packed up my tools and returned home, I felt that this was the happiest day of my year when I learned the good news that the power problem was basically solved. Fortunately, we have some breathing space again.

This tense-relaxed life style has become my normal life since the winter in Ukraine. Sometimes I even think that this is the true meaning of life - being constantly busy will make you feel that your life is very meaningful. It can also make people forget all the unpleasantness in life. But I still wish I had less work to do - if I'm busy, someone else must be suffering.

Life is like this. There is pain, but there is also hope.This year may not have left me with good memories, but the shining points of people are still shining brightly: the twinkling lights and fireflies in the family, the rare joyful songs and laughter at Christmas, the mutual help between friends and strangers, as long as you Think, you can always find the light of hope.

Chinese friends, may you be favored by the goddess of luck in the new year!

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