As the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine arrives, author Olia Hercules recalls those first horrifying days, and the pride she feels as she watches her home country’s fight for survival
This week it will be one year since the war started. When I think back to the last week before the invasion, I think about coffee and seeds. I remember that my brother, Sasha, who lived in Kyiv, was working on his startup business plan in a cosy café, sipping flat whites; I recall that my mother, who lived in the countryside in Khersonshchyna, was sorting through her handmade seed packets, preparing for the sowing season in March. Here, in London, I was doing both, the coffees and the seeds, and to me, those two rituals – one so modern and one so ancient – were great signifiers of stability. They’re also something that most people in the UK can easily relate to.
In a country where you can drink flat whites and sow tomato seeds, how can you also have tanks grinding down the streets? How can you have strangers with guns, that come from thousands of miles away, breaking in and barking at you that now you are either one of them or you’ll be taken down to “the basement” for “re-education” or worse? It’s just absurd.
