This is the last issue of The Counteroffensive sponsored by The Daily Kos. Thank you to Markos and team for helping us get off the ground! To help us with continuing publishing our work from on the ground in Ukraine, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription.
It’s the screaming that gets me.
As a former U.S. Army combat medic, the blood and gore doesn’t affect me very much nowadays. I trained for that, studied it, and feel as comfortable as one can get, really, in its presence.
No, there’s nothing that troubles me more deeply, nothing that keeps me up at night longer, than the horrific agony laid out by a tormented woman or child.
I’ve often said that being a war correspondent is like carrying a cup around. You travel from place to place, and everywhere you go, people are having the worst day of their lives. And they trust you enough to pour a little bit of their grief in your cup.
And from there it accumulates.
The documentary ‘20 Days in Mariupol,’ which was released this month, encapsulates that experience. It chronicles the frantic, desperate, fearful first twenty days of the Russian full-scale invasion from an encircled Ukrainian city.
An explosion is seen in an apartment building after a Russian tank fires in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 11, 2022. Still from FRONTLINE PBS and AP’s feature film ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
I can picture those first days well. The AP team which filmed the documentary endured far greater risk to stay behind and document the atrocities in Mariupol. Meanwhile, I had joined the exodus of civilians – a mass of millions of people – leaving the capital city of Kyiv and its surroundings as the Russian military tried to encircle it.
"Wars don't start with explosions, they start with silence,” the film begins.
And it’s true: the morning of February 24th, 2022, I left my hotel in search of a car to evacuate our team. The streets were eerily empty. I recall, too, on the second night of the invasion, sitting with a large number of people in silent shock, waiting in a bomb shelter in Vinnytsia, a city in central Ukraine.
People take shelter in a youth theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 6, 2022. Still from FRONTLINE PBS and AP’s feature film ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
I remember the sleepless nights, with lights off and the glow of cellphones lighting up large rooms, everyone unable to rest, glued to social media for the latest scraps of information from the frontlines.
I remember the sense of unity and spirit of purpose as nearly every single person offered to volunteer – some people putting tape on windows; others making camouflage nets by hand; while those who could offered up their homes and businesses to the mass of displaced people. Many others volunteered to go off to combat, never to return.
I remember the hallmarks of the conflict: Shrapnel marks on the buildings, broken windows, refugees with cats and dogs and rabbits in tow, children dragging bags far too large for them to carry.
"I don't want to die," says a child captured in the documentary. "I just woke up from bombings today."
The experience of war is first and foremost the suffering of those who are not fighting. Civilians almost always outnumber the combatants, and these defenseless people are scared and scarred.
In '20 Days in Mariupol,' the documentarians capture the raw essence of that fear and anguish.
"My baby, oh God!" cries out a mother as emergency workers attempt CPR on a child.
The next shot is a child, naked except for a coat placed over her body.
She is shown intubated and lifeless.
Despite their best efforts the medics, nurses and doctors couldn't save her.
Ukrainian emergency workers evacuate injured pregnant woman Iryna Kalinina, 32, from a maternity hospital that was damaged by a Russian airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine. The documentarians that were on scene that day would later release the film ‘20 Days in Mariupol.’ (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
I recommend this film for the same reason that I warn against it. It is searing. It lacerates your soul in the same way that war does with its pointlessness and its travesty. But it is necessary.
"This is painful to watch,” acknowledges the narrator. “But it must be painful to watch."
Several times while watching the documentary, I wanted to pick up the laptop and hurl it across the room. Whether it was anger or unacknowledged sadness I am not sure. But I did want it to stop. At other times, I found myself zoning out, disassociating from the film, before coming back to the screen.
The documentary settles on the image of an 16 year old boy with his legs blown off. He was beyond saving. His father approaches the body and wails, producing a sound that can only emanate from the deepest point of the darkest pool of anguish.
It’s Biblical. Primal. Animalistic.
The child's body is later put in a black bag and unceremoniously rolled into what would generously be called a mass grave, and is probably most aptly described as a narrow trench.
Mstyslav Chernov, Vasilisa Stepanenko and Evgeniy Maloletka are the three Associated Press journalists who risked their lives to sneak this footage out of Mariupol, narrowly escaping the encircled city and making it to Ukrainian territory so that now-infamous images of Russia’s attack on the city’s maternity hospital could be broadcast.
Photographer Evgeniy Maloletka points at the smoke rising after an airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
Many of the images in the film would be too graphic for the evening news. But it’s the honest truth of what war takes from those who are subject to it.
The reality leads to a sort of calloused cynicism that arises from the documentary. Does the story-telling make a difference in the grand scheme of things? The world is aware of the atrocities and the crimes. And yet, it continues.
"We have seen so many dead people, dead children –-- how could more death change anything?" the narrator asks. A mother, who has had two of her kids killed, puts another question to the camera: “Who will return our children to us?"
There is nothing that can really be described as combat in the film. And that too is the experience of war. Simply put, war for most is just the enduring. The suffering. The pointless and inexplicable violence.
And it is against this endless injustice that ‘20 Days in Mariupol’ finds common cause with our project, The Counteroffensive.
We can’t turn away. We can’t close our eyes. We can’t stop telling the personal stories.
To do so would be a betrayal of all those who have poured a little of themselves into our cup.
The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber!
Hello to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
Here’s what we have today: Moscow has suffered a significant drone attack overnight, after Putin talked peace during a Russia-Africa summit.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia is expected to host a Ukrainian-organized peace conference next month to draw the outlines for negotiations.
Let’s start in the Russian capital: Moscow was struck by a Ukrainian drone attack early Sunday morning. Russian authorities have reported that they electronically jammed two of the drones, causing them to fall in the Moscow City business district. Footage of the attack shows a large explosion erupting between tall buildings.
Screengrab from a video showing the explosions in Moscow.
On Saturday, Putin spoke at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg with representatives of 49 other countries in attendance. The summit came on the heels of Russia's withdrawal from a grain agreement that has now endangered parts of the world's food supply, with many African leaders unhappy about the risks to their citizens. They left the summit with no new deal in place.
Putin said during the summit that he does not reject the idea of peace talks, but blamed the Ukrainians who are engaged in a counteroffensive. For what appears to be the first time, he said that negotiations could not take place while the Ukrainians were fighting. Ukraine has said one of their conditions for peace would be for Russian troops to leave occupied Ukrainian territories.
In a sign of just how much of a pariah he has become, Putin will not be attending an August conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, due to an International Criminal Court warrant for his arrest. Attending that event will be left to his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
Separately, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine are planning a peace summit next month with the help of approximately 30 other Western countries.
Saudi Arabia is set to host the Ukraine-planned discussions, after previously being accused of profiteering off of high oil prices at the outset of the Russian invasion last year. While Ukraine, Brazi, India, South Africa and the United States are expected to attend, Russia is not invited.
Finally, in an announcement timed to mark the anniversary of the Olenivka Prison Massacre one year ago Saturday, the Security Service of Ukraine concluded that a thermobaric weapon was used to kill over 50 Ukrainian POWs in the attack. The UN earlier in the week had dismissed Russia's claims that the Ukrainian servicemen were killed by Ukrainian HIMARs.
This story was written by The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, which publishes regular intimate stories on the war in Ukraine, live from Kyiv. You can keep up with The Counteroffensive by subscribing free or paid here
Tim here: I toured Poland last month with members of the Kaplan Public Service Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging the military-civilian divide.
Together, we visited a refugee center near Warsaw, where those displaced from the war in Ukraine were still living.
The conditions were spartan but clean. In a giant room that would have once been a warehouse, hundreds lived in an open space with plywood for walls and blankets for doors.
The goal is to educate the children there, but the center is viewed as a transitional space, one in which students could continue to learn, with the hope that they would eventually be placed in local Polish schools.
A classroom for Ukrainian refugee children.
Children fleeing war still remain children, and the artwork they produced at the refugee center reflects that. Many of the children report that their paintings are based on dreams they’ve had.
Ivanka, 13 years old, from Volyn Oblast, writes that she drew a hamster named Vasylka –-- she painted him because "when I look at him, I feel happy."
Vasylka the hamster.
This painting, drawn by Maja Tkachova, depicts a frog holding a bible, standing on a cloud in one of her dreams.
Maja’s frog with a bible.
An artist known only as Dylan had a much simpler message: Мир, or Mir – Ukrainian for ‘Peace.’
Dylan’s art for peace, in the colors of Ukraine.
And here, another child called Sprophie drew a piece based on a "mysterious dream" she had –-- a family of colored mushrooms that "enjoy life without worrying about anything."
Happy mushrooms.
A letter from Saskia, a fifth-grader at Keys Middle School in Palo Alto, Calif. hangs on the wall here, sending her best wishes to the displaced children of Ukraine. Obviously, it was much appreciated, and much-loved, and is now on permanent display.
I wonder, do our readers know anyone who knows Saskia to pass on the gratitude from the folks here?
Saskia’s treasured letter.
Adults paint at the refugee center too. I’ll leave this here without comment.
Art that is, shall we say, more grown-up.
Finally, today’s Cat o’ Conflict was drawn by a fourteen year old at the refugee center near Warsaw. She said she drew two cats flying to another planet –-- two because it showed that when you're not alone, and when you have support – you can overcome all difficulties, "even in space."
Today’s Cat o’ Conflict.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Tim
This story was written by The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak, which publishes regular intimate stories on the war in Ukraine, live from Kyiv. You can keep up with The Counteroffensive by subscribing free or paid here
