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Barbed wire and plastic flowers - fragments from Ukraine


In 2017 the Berlinale presented the Ukrainian documentary "Shkola nomer 3" as part of the Generation 14+ programme. Three years later a Ukrainian Filme made it into the programme again: "The earth is blue as an orange", providing insight into life in the Donbas - the border region between Ukraine and Russia. For even if presence in media decreases, the war on the border continues. 

The following text is a media-extraction: a collage of current Facebook posts of people I met on my trip to Ukraine in 2017. It is an attempt to convey the feelings of people whom, as an outsider, I cannot put into words. This is how this picture of current times is created, supplemented by analogue photographs taken during my journey to Ukraine.

BARBED WIRE AND PLASTIC FLOWERS 

About the Ukrainian normandíö, or the village Berdânsʹke, where the sea was mined. 

Today the cemetery is placed in front of a stone monument to the victims of the Holodomor, all over the square, which grows into an apple orchard that was bombed in the 1950s. The farmers are the goats, and the... 

The Soviet authorities destroyed the whole place in a few days. 

Тобі ще багато чого є, що сказати. 




People still die for their flag, for language, songs, history. 

75 years ago they were brutally deported from their homeland and oppressed while in exile in Central Asia by the Soviet rule under Joseph Stalin. Nowadays, after Russia's annexation of Crimea, and with the arrests, kidnappings and other human rights violations against Crimean Tatars in the peninsular, really feels like history repeats itself. 
#crimeantatar#deportation#humanrights#kyiv#ukraine 

Таня говорить з Настею про 
дискримінацію жінок на фронті, 
ЛГБТ-активізм та про підтримку, 
якої потребують ветерани. 
Show translation 

Saw me this, your, "my thoughts are calm" 
... well, something like that. 
Not honey, but not buckwheat either. 
Buckwheat with naked honor. 




The Konduktorka says: "Touch!" And I wonder what she has to do with it. 
That damn bus, gray city. Two doors, one in the front, one in the back. 
When I open my eyes: destroyed hospital, monument, plastic flowers.

 In the new episode of "Lives of Others" about what it is like to be a woman in war, 
a veteran koö in civilian life and in Ukrainian society. The link to the material is in 
the first comment. 
Read 

When the whole life is like a "непозбувна бентега" 

Woman waits to attend the memorial service for the victims of a UIA 
flight PS752 at Kyiv Boryspil airport. 
#kyiv#boryspil#flightPS752#memorial#ukraine#planecrash 

I love to travel with "Google Meps" where you can watch the streets. 
I sit in a room near Compas, and she says, "Ilya, what are you doing?" 
I say: "Travel! Aida with you!" and then we visit Washington, near the White House,
then New York on the Statue of Liberty, and end up in the fields of Paris." 
Rate this translation 

"I dream of being back in my own house and to sleep in my bed in a nightie. We have been sleeping in our clothes for so many years When they start shelling you immediately run to the cellar - there is no time to dress." 




I was 12. My father was eating dinner and 
there was a news report on TV about the Maidan. 
The news made me happy, but his words were a white noise. 
In a few weeks he's going to Russia and he's not coming back. 

Do you see the machine? Now we bring the wire and connect us to you.

The most important question is like the song of the hill. Who the hell did I give up?
23.02.2020, Liv Thastum

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