While we tend our graves, vanquished Russian troops are heading through Belarus in a cloud of radioactivity after literally digging up the past
Odesa is being shelled from the sea and from the territory of Russia, but people do not panic. They live almost normal lives. Like all Ukrainians, they have just celebrated grobki, or “little graves”. These are what we call the special days in spring when we honour the memory of deceased relatives and friends. At this time, all Ukraine dedicates itself to the care of graves in the cemeteries. Some people from Odesa will have removed the old foliage from the graves and also repaired monuments and fences destroyed or damaged by Russian missiles.
Many cemeteries in Ukraine have been destroyed or damaged by Russian troops, including Kyiv’s Berkovtsy Cemetery, near Tupoleva Street, where I grew up. Some cemeteries have been bombed; others have been run over by Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers (APCs). Russian sappers have also left booby-traps in many of them. The authorities tried to persuade Ukrainians this year not to visit those cemeteries that were, or are still, being occupied by the Russian army. However, Ukrainians are used to doing not what they are told but what they consider necessary.
Andrey Kurkov is a Ukrainian novelist and author of Death and the Penguin
