Interview with Tetyana
Kyiv, Ukraine / April 23 2022.

Transcription from an interview with Tetyana on April 23 2022. 

​

-Do you want to introduce yourself?

Yes. I’m Tetyana, a 45 year old sociologist that lives in Kyiv. Currently I’m translating Ukrainian military reports to English.

-What are those military reports about? 

-From a sociologist perspective, what do you think about propaganda?

Propaganda during war time is almost unavoidable. In this case, there is propaganda on both sides, Russian propaganda and Ukrainian contra propaganda. You don't have to trust 100% what the Ukrainian government is saying. Even though I’d say that Ukrainian contra propaganda is needed for winning the war. There are a lot of different Russian speeches. One of them states that all Ukrainian people are fascists. 

-What do you think is the purpose of the war? Gaining territory?

I wouldn’t say that Putin’s goal is to gain territory. Otherwise, they wouldn’t destroy so many houses and kill a bunch of Ukrainians. I think this is about hatred and envy. In some ways could be understood as a genocide as well. Ukrainian people that know some history are not surprised about what is happening. 

-Are you talking about The Soviet Union?

Yes. The soviet union tried to ban Ukrainian language and made Russian the main language long ago. They caused the Great Famine, best known as the Holodomor, while imposing to the Ukrainian population the collectivism-communism system. Around the 1930's the Soviet central government took all the grains and other autumn recollections from the Ukrainian population, and millions of Ukrainians died from 1932 to 1933. They said that it was just a bad year, but that's not true. The Soviet army would come and take the food from the farms. Researchers found some grain bottles dug in the ground and there are registers of people eating each other because they were starving. The Soviet Union even brought people from Russia and other countries to replace the Ukrainian population, as happened with Crimea later on. 

-What happened in Crimea?

The Russian government took Crimea's people, put them in trains and took them north of the soviet union, most of them dying in the way. Then, they brought the Russian population to the Crimea's houses. They did the same to the Ukrainian population that didn't follow the soviet union, taking the whole families, usually at night and sending them to a far location from the soviet union. 

-Why would they do that?

Well, there are a lot of reasons. But I think the main one is to destroy anything that threatens Russian identity and government authority. 

-I see. Do you think Putin’s ideological motives are the main drive to carry out this siege? 

As I understood, making the war was Putin's idea for making “Russia great again”. Also, identifying Ukraine as an enemy could be a way to try to unify Russian society, with all the diversity and idiosyncrasies within the country. What I have realized is that Russian people don't trust western lifestyle. They think Ukraine has stolen money from them because most of us have a good standard of living, while a considerable part of the Russian population suffer from poverty and lack of basic supplies. A proof of that are all the things that Russian troops have stolen so far from Irpin, Bucha, Dimer, and other Ukrainian towns, such as televisions, telephones, even street lights.  

-Right. It’s unbelievable the huge amount of money that the Russian’s government is investing in the war, while some of the Russian population is struggling for their lives.

Yes, it’s really sad. Russia has spent trillions of money for the war and according to some articles I have read, part of the money was stolen. We can see that they don’t have great aircrafts or other military supplies.

-Well, turning to another topic, I would like to ask you about how you deal with this situation.

Besides my job as a translator I try to occupy my time dancing. I don't wanna be afraid all the time, looking at the news, being in a shelter or in a basement. If I can't dance, I can't live. Once the war was relatively calm I attended my first tango class. During the class we heard some shooting. After a couple of minutes listening to the noise we came to the conclusion that it had to be combat training for civilians. I think that everyone should enjoy their life, eat nice food, and speak to their friends while being careful and aware about the situation. We [Ukrainians] will continue to work, students will come back to school and that's how we fight, being alive. Our soldiers tell us to go and live, don't stay scared, don't cry, because they are fighting for our life.

-You seem pretty pale. Are you okay? Do you want to stop the interview?

Right now I feel cold and tense, after talking about the war I usually tremble. In this situation you are constantly waiting for the danger to come but you don’t even know if it will come. 

​