independence. The nights before,
rehearsing Ukrainian soldiers
marched through the streets
chanting ‘‘Putin, dickhead!
Putin, dickhead!’’
In his speech, Zelensky didn’t
mention Putin by name. He did say
of Donbas: ‘‘We fi ght for our peo-
ple there. It is possible to occupy
territories temporarily. However,
it is impossible to occupy the love
of people in Ukraine. It is possible
to create desperation and force
people to get passports. Howev-
er, it is impossible to passport-ize
Ukrainian hearts.’’
It was not a very inspiring
speech, but it got at a fact about
the war in Donbas that is often
overlooked. It has split the coun-
try, yes, but it has also brought
many Ukrainians together as never
before. It has created a nation,
you might say, or the beginnings
of one, where before there was
only an uncertain former Soviet
republic. Ukrainians of patriotic
mind get indignant when the war
in Donbas is called a ‘‘civil war,’’
and in one sense, probably most
senses, they’re right. It was started
by and is perpetuated by Russia.
But in at least one sense, they’re
wrong: This is a civil war in that it’s
taking place within the Ukrainian
identity. The war has forced Ukrai-
nians to decide who they are, or
at least who they are not: namely,
Russians. Ultimately, that may rep-
resent Putin’s real miscalculation.
At the independence celebra-
tions, I watched the streets fi ll with
Ukrainians draped in the national
fl ag, their faces painted in blue and
yellow. It was hard to believe this
was happening in the same country
as Donbas, where I had seen little of
anything that looked like hope. The
people I met there compared the
lives they led before independence
— the pride they once had, the
sense of belonging, the centrality of
Donbas in the Soviet world — with
what they had now. The choice was
no choice at all. The war in Donbas
is complex; it is a hybrid. But the
disagreement from which it arises
is not. It is simple. It is between
people who want to return to the
past and people who don’t.
The same week, with the leaves
turning brown and an autumn chill
taking the air, Volodymyr Veryovka
recuperated at a military hospital in
Kyiv. His right arm was bandaged
and bent at a permanent angle,
held in place with a triangle of
metal rods and screws that went
into the bones. An intravenous tube
pumped plasma into the wound. A
deep scarlet groove ran from the
left side of his shaved head nearly
to his brow. The doctors had never
determined what hit him there,
but whatever it was, he was lucky
to still have his sight, and for that
matter his life. An inch lower and
it might have punctured his temple
or gone through his eye socket.
Though Volodymyr and Yaroslav
Semenyaka only met the morning
Yaroslav was killed, Yaroslav’s
father paid a visit to the hospital,
accompanied by Semenyaka’s fi an-
cée. They brought him bags of fruit
from Yaroslav’s garden. The two
men talked in a gazebo outside the
ward. Volodymyr had a vacant look
in his eye and was slow of speech,
my guess was from the painkillers.
The conversation was awkward.
‘‘Did he have children?’’ he
asked Yaroslav’s father. ‘‘I can’t
remember.’’
‘‘No, no,’’ the father said. ‘‘This
is his fi ancée.’’ She kept silent but
leaned on her almost-father-in-law
as he spoke, tears sometimes escap-
ing her eyes. ‘‘They were to have
married on Oct. 15. His contract
w a s u p .’’
‘‘He did say something about the
wedding,’’ Volodymyr said. ‘‘But
we didn’t talk about fi nishing our
service.’’
‘‘Well, he spoke of it just with
us,’’ Yaroslav’s father said. ‘‘He
didn’t talk about it with the guys
yet. He’d bought a house, renovat-
ed it. All with his own hands, all
how they wanted it. He said, ‘My
contract will fi nish, and we’ll live
like humans.’ If anyone would have
told us... .’’
He didn’t fi nish the sentence.
By that point, Yaroslav had been
buried, in his hometown, Pidlypne,
three hours northwest of Kyiv. In the
morning, mourners began gathering
outside Yaroslav’s house, its wood
siding freshly painted a vibrant
green. Family, friends, neighbors,
classmates, fellow soldiers andUkraine
(Continued from Page 47)
local veterans carried fl owers, many
of them in the blue and yellow of
the Ukrainian fl ag, all of them held
upside down, a local custom. Some,
like Yaroslav’s commander, had
traveled from across the country to
attend. By midday there was a crowd
of several hundred.
At noon, a police car, siren fl ash-
ing, pulled in front of the house, and
the crowd parted to let it through.
Behind it was a Humvee with an
open rear. A coffi n was draped in
blue-and-yellow wreaths. An honor
guard of cadets carried the coffi n
into the garden. A quartet of priests
and army chaplains in olive drab
surplices sang hymns. Yaroslav’s
fi ancée fainted and was carried
into the house. As the coffi n was
carried back out to the Humvee,
a cadet yelled, ‘‘Heroes never die!’’
The other cadets echoed, ‘‘Heroes
never die!’’ A brass band struck
up a dirge and started toward the
church, the Humvee and crowd fol-
lowing behind.
I fell in with a man in his 60s
walking with a single crutch. Hewas wearing an old telnyashka,
the traditional striped undershirt
of the Russian military, beneath
a great coat. The medals hanging
from it clattered.
He had been a Soviet paratroop-
er in Afghanistan, he told me, and
was proud of it. But he was also
a Ukrainian, from Donetsk, and
when the war in Donbas started,
he helped organize the volunteers
from Pidlypne. He had been going
to funerals like this one ever since. If
this had been a few years ago, he said,
the whole city would have turned
out. There would have been thou-
sands of mourners, not hundreds.
‘‘Now everyone is tired of the
war,’’ he said.
Though Ukrainian, he, too,
longed for the days of the Sovi-
et Union, he confi ded. Life was
dependable then. The leaders might
have been cruel, but they were hon-
est. Now it was a mess. He didn’t
know what to expect.
‘‘Afghanistan was a real war,’’ he
said. ‘‘But this war is something I
don’t understand.’’The New York Times Magazine 49CAMPS
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