Ukraine Runs Through It
Russia's full scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022 came as a shock for Ukrainians, but not as a surprise. They had been at war since 2014, since Russian soldiers in green uniforms with no insignia annexed Crimea and went on, hiding behind the back of local separatists in Slovyansk, Krematorsk then Donetsk. Russia took a territorial bite into Donbas and kept that regional war smoldering ever since, while putting all the blame on Ukraine.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine took different paths in their political development. Each of two revolutions accelerated the process of Ukraine breaking away from Russia and the Soviet Past. Ukraine started looking West for security and reliable partners even more from 2014, when Russia invaded its territory. Russia, after a very short period of relative openness during the presidency of Boris Yelcyn, reverted its course and started looking back to the Soviet era for inspiration on how to govern as soon as Vladimir Putin came to power. While Ukraine's Law on De-communication banned all glorification of the Soviet Past (and the Communist Party was made illegal), Russia did the opposite. Notorious Joseph Stalin returned as an example of a skilled leader, almost a reformer (!) while the Communist Party plays the role of state approved opposition to maintain the appearance of democracy.
The gap kept widening. Russian leadership finally decided that the Ukrainian statehood is a false creation, and in February 2022 the army crossed the international border to take what they were told and believed was theirs.
I was in Dnipro when the war started. On the very first morning a group of local volunteers which in 2014 played a central role in sustaining the first few months of aggression were back in action - setting up a center to assist IDPs and volunteer fighters. Nationwide resistance in a literal sense continued as war went on. Local citizens confronted Russian tanks with bare hands in places like Melitopol or Kherson.
I was working in Ukraine between 2014 to 2019 and ended my long-term project with a book titled Ukraine Runs Through It, where in a series of images and stories I told the story of post- Revolution ( of Dignity ) Ukraine. River Dnipro served there as a metaphor of the country, the line of reference along which I explored history, geography and East-West dynamics within Ukraine. In 2022, I returned to Ukraine where The Dnipro river once again has become one of the lines of defense, a soldier of its own kind – along with an army of real soldiers at the frontlines, IT specialists fighting the information war and volunteers in the rear, doing whatever was needed to be done.