I live in Odesa, the seaside city in the south. It is one of the safest places in Ukraine right now. Nevertheless, people are preparing to defend the city: locals are enrolling in Territorial Defense units and providing the armed forces with food supplies, clothes, medicines.
I feel a big tragedy (not love) in the air. I hate Putin and all Russians responsible for this. On the other hand, I feel a surge of pride for my nation.
I was born in Avdiivka, Donetsk oblast. I suffered from all the horrors of the war since 2014. I feel pity that an 8-year Ukrainian-Russian war and more than 14,000 casualties failed to prevent this bloodshed in 2022. Literally three days before the invasion I felt that something would happen soon. Given the US intelligence data, the Ukrainian government and people were aware of Putin’s despicable plans.
I would like everybody to realize the scale of the tragedy. My people are dying. While I am writing this email, a great number of people not only defend my country, but die for it. I don’t feel good when I have tea with biscuits while knowing that my friends are holding guns.
Russian soldiers are not people, they are monsters. They say they have to obey orders, but there is no excuse for any orders that aim at killing innocent people (not of strategic importance), children (16 deaths), shelling ambulances with injured civilians, after killing soldiers who are on their own land, who cannot lay down their arms, because they were born on this very land. Russians fire rockets and vacuum bombs. They are not shelling military infrastructure as they claim – liars! They are shelling hospitals, private houses, kindergartens, and residential buildings. When they try to occupy Ukrainian villages, towns, and cities, local people are full of determination to stop military vehicles with their bare hands while singing the national anthem and waving Ukrainian flags.
Ukrainians do not want to be saved by Russia. We were free, we are free, and we will be free. We were allowed to speak both the Ukrainian language and the Russian language.
I want you to publish the truth (but quite often the truth does not coincide with economic interests). I think it is easy and fair, isn’t it?
Ukraine asks the USA to close the sky. So do I. We appreciate help from the US. Unfortunately, we would not be capable of defending our land without your numerous arms supply.
In my opinion, the western media should be posting photos of our destroyed cities, photos of our soldiers and civilians. Of course, I would like to see my president on the front page, and indeed he was on them.
Actually, I am grateful to each country for the ammunition supply and large amounts of dollars and euros. Yeah, I would like Western media to publish that Ukraininians appreciate all the financial help. We want to be able to cover our needs by ourselves, but it was hard to do that before the war and I hope it will be much more probable after the war.
I used to think that there was something wrong with Ukraininas as Western countries did not want us in the EU and NATO. I am proud to be a Ukrainian now. I am proud of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. I cannot imagine how brave and fearless a person must be to resist the Russian monsters.
Glory to Ukraine!