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Dafna Rachok & Ivan Shmatko "The Stoic Use of Expletives"
82 Plays1 year ago
With us in the Yellow Van this week are Dafna Rachok and Ivan Shmatko.
Dafna Rachok is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research seeks to understand how vulnerable groups in Ukraine respond to existing HIV prevention and treatment programs and how their attitudes to the state shape their desire or reluctance to seek those programs. Ivan Shmatko is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Alberta (Canada). Ivan has been a part of the volunteer movement in Ukraine since February 24. He has done research on policing in Ukraine and the imaginaries that shape how police officers see their work and interact with others. His doctoral research project focuses on the experiences of newly mobilized soldiers in Ukraine. Being on leave from their universities in February 2022, they decided to stay in Ukraine when Russia assaulted their home. Rather than escape to safety across the Atlantic Ocean, they looked for ways and means to support their homeland and their fellow Ukrainians. Join us as we talk about their #volunteering work, the importance of humour in times of darkness and why Ukrainians collectively dislike Elon Musk.
And, as always, a lot more. Thank you, Dafna and Ivan, for joining the Yellow Van.
Your bravery and empathy are an inspiration.
SHOW NOTES
Sociological group "RATING"
International Red Cross and Red Crescent
World Food Programme
Leonid Kuchma
Article by Dafna Rachok: On Trust, Transparency, and Learning from the Experience of the Extraordinary
Article by Ivan Shmatko: A Voracious Beast - Emotional Energy in the Tsunami of Suffering
DONATIONS
Come Back Alive
Hospitaliers
FOLLOW DAFNA AND IVAN
Dafna's Twitter
Dafna's LinkedIn
Ivan's Twitter
Ivan's Facebook
MUSIC
Love In The Face Of Fear, Jim Kroft
Yellow Van Stories is a Mind the Bump Production.
Recommended
Transcript
Living Amidst War
00:00:05
Speaker
And this is also part of the war. You start essentially taking chances. You're like, okay, so what is the possibility that I will be killed by the suicide drone or by the rocket right now? Well, yes, of course there is this chance, but this chance is probably small that they will hit this village, that they will hit this house. So, yeah, I will not interrupt whatever I'm doing because any... Fuck it.
Introduction to The Elevand Stories
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Elevand Stories. I'm your host and driver Bastia. I know, it has been a long time since the last episode with Nick Torshevsky and I want to offer my apologies for the very long silence. Especially because it is so important that our support for Ukraine doesn't falter.
00:00:57
Speaker
We are now one year into the war and there is no end in sight. The rape and murder of Ukrainians continue mercilessly every single day and awareness is a force that shapes political policies supporting Ukrainian self-defense.
Ukraine's Struggle and Global Awareness
00:01:13
Speaker
Or in other words, when we, the privileged who are not directly affected by the war, stop looking. We will abandon Ukraine and its fight for freedom and self-determination. The very values we hold to be universal.
Podcast Production and Future Guests
00:01:29
Speaker
Having said that, I need to be better. My solidarity counts just like everyone else's. And solidarity without action is self-absorbed.
00:01:41
Speaker
Producing this podcast comes with its own challenges and I realize that maybe an episode every week will not always be possible. But it will be more regular again than it was over the last three months. That is for sure. New guests are already lined up and I'm very excited to continue my conversations with the many brave Ukrainians who I have come to value so much. So bear with me and stick with us.
00:02:10
Speaker
So with that in mind, thank you so much for tuning in and for coming on the road with us again today. Fonzi is in first gear already and we are good to go.
Journey to Horenka and Guest Introductions
00:02:22
Speaker
So buckle up and sit back because today we are going to Horenka.
00:02:35
Speaker
Hi and welcome to a new episode of the Yellow Van Stories. Here with me today is Daphnara Chok, an anthropologist from Kyiv and Ivan Shmatko, a sociologist from Kyiv as well. I'm very, very happy to have you guys on board today to talk about a lot of things, actually. Welcome to the Yellow Van. Hey, thanks for having us. Yes, thank you for inviting.
00:02:59
Speaker
It's a great pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. I've already said, especially even on a Sunday. I mean, you guys are just amazing. Thanks for making that possible today. I really appreciate it very much. And there's a lot of things I have on my mind that I would like to discuss with you. So before we start, I'll just quickly give a short introduction of you so that everybody knows what it is that you do, what you have done. And then we dive a little deeper into some of the various topics that come to the surface.
Research and Experiences of Daphnara and Ivan
00:03:25
Speaker
All right, so Dafna, you are a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the Indiana University in Bloomington. You're Ukrainian-born with interest in medical and political anthropology. Your research seeks to understand how vulnerable groups in Ukraine respond to existing HIV prevention and treatment programs and how their attitudes to the state shape their desire or reluctance to seek those programs.
00:03:50
Speaker
February 24th caught you doing fieldwork in Ukraine, so since then you have been combining your research with volunteering efforts, fundraising, buying and delivering protective gear and medical supplies. Eva, you are a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Alberta in Canada.
00:04:09
Speaker
You have been a part of the volunteer movement in Ukraine since February 24th. You've done research on policing in Ukraine and the imaginaries that shape how police officers see their work and interact with others. Your doctoral research project focuses on experiences of newly mobilized soldiers in Ukraine.
00:04:27
Speaker
which is a topic that we have to also discuss in particular because to be honest, this is one of my greatest fears to ever have to fight a war. And it would be very interesting for me to know what has come to the surface in your research in that. So before we go really deeper into the topics, I would like to know, first of all, where are you right now? Which part of Ukraine?
00:04:53
Speaker
We are in Hornka, which is a village right to the north of Kiev. It's located between Hostome, that some of the listeners may have heard of, because Russians tried to land their troops on 24th.
00:05:08
Speaker
at the airport of Hostamo. So the facility is located between Hostamo and Kyiv, right to the north of Kyiv. All right. And just really a basic checking in as well. How are you guys doing now that it's been ever since the 24th of February? How are you guys doing in all of this? I think it's a very complicated question because on the one hand, we are
Life's Emotional Complexity During War
00:05:37
Speaker
alive, we are well, we have a place to live and yada, yada, yada, yada. So that makes us kind of okay. But on the other hand, the war is still going on. Some of our friends, they are on the front line, some of our friends, they are POWs. So that makes you kind of like less okay. So I mean,
00:06:04
Speaker
Honestly, now each new day is kind of like juggling these very, very complex emotional, it's like an emotional rollercoaster.
00:06:12
Speaker
But you adapt. You certainly adapt, I think. Most people do adapt. As one of my profs says, human beings are the beings that can adapt to everything. And I think that's pretty much what is happening here. I think this is probably... No, no, you're not interrupting. If anyone ever interrupts on this show, it's me, I suppose. You go, you interrupt.
00:06:38
Speaker
I don't apologize at all. Whenever you have something to say, it definitely trumps whatever I have to say. So you're saying that the adaptation, I also do believe this is something that human beings do have and also a kind of resilience and self-preservation, obviously, that's all kind of together and acting as one in a lot of the cases.
Social Class and War Adaptation
00:07:02
Speaker
But
00:07:02
Speaker
This is a question that just comes up now. How do you adapt to something like war? How does this happen? Maybe we can go to your article later on, Ivan, as well. You dealt with that, but now a little time onwards, how do you adapt to that? What does it mean, actually, in your everyday life?
00:07:20
Speaker
It's actually a very complicated question that could be answered in many, many different ways. I think it's very important from the start to say that different people experience war differently.
00:07:37
Speaker
The simplest thing to say would be here to say about social class, for example, right? People with different means would experience more differently because they have.
00:07:53
Speaker
different possibilities of if they can leave, if they have a car, that becomes important, right? On 24th, for example, in February we were here in this village as well, so Russians were quite close, but we had a car, so we could essentially pack our stuff there and leave.
00:08:11
Speaker
And people who don't have a car or don't have extra money, right, to spend some time away, or everything, all the belongings, for example, or the means that provide them with living.
00:08:33
Speaker
are located in the place they are living. For example, they are farmers, I don't know. Or they live out of their garden. There are many people in Ukraine who do that. So they cannot live because they know if they live without their gardens, they will not be able to survive. So all those things influence how you experience war. Even small things like having a car, relatively small things.
00:08:59
Speaker
But at the same time, it also depends on where you are, right? You can be in a Marupal city when there is fighting and it will change how you experience war in comparison to you being in leave, which is also from time to time bombed by
00:09:23
Speaker
hit by rockets but so there is war is there right and you can feel economic repercussions of what's going on you can feel psychological impact and so on but it's still a different experience
00:09:39
Speaker
And those are just a few aspects of the question because, as I said, it's a very difficult question and it can change through time how you experience war because there are many people repeat now when there was a last time a few days ago when many Ukrainian cities were hit by rockets.
00:10:03
Speaker
And she had UAVs, right? Suicide drones.
Humor as a Coping Mechanism
00:10:12
Speaker
Many people posted the same phrase actually on Twitter and said privately and so on and so on that it was scary on the 24th.
00:10:26
Speaker
But now it's not scary, right? It was scary for the first time, but it wasn't scary because on the first day of the invasion, also Russians used a lot of rockets. And the reaction was very different. So there is this kind of, once again, adaptation. How you perceive war changes through time and you do adapt, it perhaps has some
00:10:53
Speaker
you have perhaps to pay some price for those kind of adaptations, they are not free, but at the same time you adapt, you experience even the same events like being in a city that is hit by rockets differently.
00:11:11
Speaker
So yes, it's an extremely complex thing that requires a separate discussion. But at the same time, I must say, Daphna already hinted at it. She mentioned humor. I think there is something very specific about how Ukrainians do experience war. And one of the things that has to be mentioned is that
00:11:33
Speaker
Ukrainians do use humor to adapt, like a lot. If you go on, I don't know, for example, Ukrainian Twitter, you will see that it's full of memes, jokes. Oftentimes those are very dark jokes. Well, of course. I mean, of course. One thing to be overly, I don't know, cruel and terrible to perhaps people from Western countries, for example, I don't know, outside
00:12:03
Speaker
But I don't think humor should ever be judged just for my side. We should be able to laugh at everything. I think this is a basic, basic requirement, especially in the worst of times. Like someone just said, just quickly, if people say now is not the time to laugh, they haven't understood the severity of the situation. And I do stand by that. So I don't think it can be too dark. As long as it gives some relief, it is good enough. And that can be for anyone.
00:12:29
Speaker
So it's just just a side note here from me. So you're preaching to the choir. I understand exactly what you say. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, this war also has this kind of cultural dimension because Ukrainians in general have this tendency of making fun of almost everything and oftentimes making this kind of sarcastic, ironic, dark jokes. And this war only intensified it because Ukrainians
00:12:59
Speaker
Many Ukrainians used those cultural tools of making fun of everything and just adapted them to the war to perhaps sometimes cope with what is happening, sometimes just to enjoy your time even while
00:13:19
Speaker
there is fighting and so on. And many of the jokes emerge out of soldiers from the front lines, for example. So it's not something that you can see, for example, people making fun of, I don't know, being hit by rockets or whatever of war in Western parts. No, it's not. It's like even people who are as much involved as one can be, they still make fun of it all the time.
00:13:46
Speaker
I think that's why you need comic relief the most. That's why I think that also makes sense. I mean, look, I'm saying all of these not being familiar with war in a practical sense at all. I'm fully aware of that. But I do believe when you are, you know, really facing darkness and terror, then it is when you need humor the most, I suppose, to keep you maybe a little bit centered, at least that's how I imagine it. And that's kind of what you are saying as well. As far as I understand it.
00:14:15
Speaker
I would like to add one more thing. War is a weird thing. When you experience it through media, and I worked with some journalists in Ukraine during this war as well, what you get, the impressions that you get about the war is that it's some kind of
Daily Life and Media Portrayals
00:14:37
Speaker
permanent suffering, permanent destruction, permanent violence, and things like that.
00:14:52
Speaker
At the same time, when you are in a place where there is a war, once again, I already mentioned that it may differ from place to place. But generally, even for soldiers, even in cities that are sieged, it's not like that.
00:15:18
Speaker
So we were in Macalaya, for example, the city near the front lines, right? And with terrible atrocities committed there as well. Yeah, but daily life doesn't look like people are afraid and hiding all the time. Daily life there, for example, looks like
00:15:42
Speaker
There are some cafes that are still open and you go to a Georgian restaurant and have khachepui and have some lemonade and some nice coffee.
00:15:53
Speaker
And then you have a walk through the streets, or go to the boardwalk, since they have a nice boardwalk, and so on and so on. And then in 10 minutes, you can be killed by a rocket, right? It's not a constant, constant, permanent suffering, it's like...
00:16:14
Speaker
Your daily life goes on. Obviously, your daily life is impacted by the war, but still, you are not fully 100% concentrate. Yes, people on the streets talk about the war all the time. Children recreate the war when they play, and war is everywhere. But at the same time, it's not like rockets are flying every minute and everybody's hiding all the time.
00:16:37
Speaker
It's some kind of war is normally some kind of mixture of what people would call normal life and some horrible atrocities. And it's just what you experience as war is you go about your normal life more or less. And then once again, in 10 minutes, you can be hit by rocket or you can hear an explosion somewhere or whatever.
00:17:07
Speaker
And temporality does this, right? It's not how it is portrayed in media.
00:17:13
Speaker
I think that's very good and this is why I was looking forward to our conversation so much because obviously you as a sociologist and an anthropologist, you always differentiate and that's very good because very often we have too little differentiation, I believe, and we always paint things with a broad brush and you making those differentiations I think is incredibly important. So that's why, like I said, I was really looking forward to this conversation very much
00:17:40
Speaker
So I think what you're saying also is that the knowledge of war already is part of the suffering. It's not just the actual, like you said, because it changes, front lines change, realities change, there's adaptation, but the knowledge of it in your head, that it's at the back of your mind, this is maybe already part of the, maybe not even suffering, but part of the situation, the challenges you find yourself in during war times.
00:18:08
Speaker
just the knowledge itself.
War's Impact on Daily Routines
00:18:09
Speaker
Could I say that? Is that stupid? Oh no, it is by no means stupid. But I would say, and also this is part of what experience of war feels like that probably you don't often get from media, it's that
00:18:28
Speaker
It's those very small routine things that the war prevents you from doing, or it alters how you do it. And for me, also this experience of war, it is...
00:18:41
Speaker
also about this inability to do things as you were doing them before the 24th, right? Because yes, you know that the war is going on, right? You know that there are explosions, you still have these air raids, alarms,
00:19:03
Speaker
um going off on your phone and by the way there is an air radio yes yeah okay yes yes absolutely what there's an air raid now yes yeah but we can continue anyway okay you have to tell me if it's fine we don't hide it's fine i mean there have been like thousands of them already and yes i know but
00:19:32
Speaker
This is also part of the war. You start essentially taking chances. You're like, OK, so what is the possibility that I will be killed by an Iranian drone? By the suicide drone or by the rocket right now? Well, yes, of course, there is this chance, but this chance is probably small that they will hit this village, that they will hit this house. So, yeah, I will not interrupt whatever I am doing because I mean,
00:20:00
Speaker
Wow. You know, this is the most stoic fuck it I've ever heard in my whole life. I mean, really what you're describing there, it's really like stoicism in its purest form. I take my head off to that because I think really it goes also with the adaptation you've already mentioned, but also this goes with some sort of inner conviction that you are actually letting on to. So I really take my head off to that. But
00:20:26
Speaker
having said that nonetheless, if you hear something nearby or something, please just let me know and disappear, but I know you will. I don't have to tell you that. Fine. As long as you think everything is okay. So just to quickly, in my head also, so basically some of that is also that it really infringes on your freedom of thinking, doesn't it? Because
00:20:47
Speaker
whatever you do, whatever you think, whatever used to be routine is always now counter-checked by your knowledge of a war going on and basically scanning everything in front of that background. Could you put it that way or is that not even the case either? You just really put it away sometimes for days or hours totally, but it's something that's ever-present, isn't it? Isn't that one of the big challenges as well or the suffering of finding yourself in a war?
00:21:19
Speaker
I think yes and no. On the one hand you constantly have at the back of your mind that there is war and it at the same time also changes the things you do. I mean it once again differently but impacts
00:21:37
Speaker
everyone's life, it may change. For example, Dafa went for a conference some weeks ago, months ago, and he changed how much time she spent on going there. Before the full-scale invasion, there was a direct flight from Kiev to the place where the conference took place.
00:21:58
Speaker
which is like four hours on a plane and I'm there. And now, because there were no flights from Kiev for an obvious reasons, I had to go to Budapest to take a not a direct flight from there. And essentially- To go to Budapest by train. Yeah, I had to go to Budapest by train and essentially to get from Kiev to the place where the conference was, I had to spend 40 plus hours on the route, so like 10 times more. Wow.
00:22:21
Speaker
What changes things like I don't know there is no it's okay but for some for a few months in the late spring early summer and there were problems with gas.
00:22:33
Speaker
With gasoline for cars, it was hard to find. So it changes all these kind of small daily things that you do, and it stays in your head as a background knowledge of the reservoir, and it may change something.
Mental Focus Amidst Conflict
00:22:49
Speaker
It's a consideration you take into account when doing your daily things. But at the same time, I would say also no. I mean, it's not something
00:23:01
Speaker
It's a contextual thing. You have this knowledge that there is a war, you know mostly how it will impact your daily routines, and you apply that knowledge whenever it's applicable. So whenever, for example, if there are problems with gas, you know that there are problems with gas caused by the war because Russians hit
00:23:27
Speaker
some infrastructure, and you adapt accordingly, right? You try to change your routine accordingly, for example, change your means of transportation or change how you, well, buy that gas, right? Find ways to buy that gas for your car. But at the same time, I wouldn't say it's a constant, this kind of
00:23:56
Speaker
discourse of trauma like thought that is constantly in your head and you are traumatized and you see it and think about it more.
00:24:11
Speaker
In this kind of trauma-like manner, I'm not sure if I can explain it. No, I think I understand what you mean. I can try to go on a little bit further about what you said, because on the one hand, I think this knowledge of war, it definitely impacts your concentration.
00:24:31
Speaker
It impacts your ability to concentrate on things. You're focused, right? You're focused. That's kind of what I meant, yes. It's very difficult for me to be focused solely, for instance, on my academic work, when I know that there are, for instance, some rockets hitting one of the other cities where I have friends, where some of my participants or colleagues live. So there is this kind of constant jump in us, so to say.
00:24:59
Speaker
But on the other hand, I think at least like for me, this adaptation to this war, it was like a little bit like stadium, you know, there were different phases because for the first like three weeks of the war, I was literally and figuratively speechless.
00:25:20
Speaker
I was lacking words, I didn't know how to describe it, because it was a new experience, right? And I don't think that it is the kind of experience that you can ever be totally prepared for, because obviously you read different life fiction about wars, we watch different movies about wars, but
00:25:40
Speaker
this felt experience of war, it's very, very different from the one that you're usually getting from different media. Popular culture as well. I mean, most of us know war through popular culture, what I mean by that movies, like you said, and obviously that cannot be a reality. Yeah, because in these movies, in different books, when you're reading about the war, war is also presented as this total destruction, right? Yeah.
00:26:10
Speaker
it doesn't really immerse you into this as much as the real world does. So I was speechless for the first three weeks, but then partially through humor, partially through this step-by-step normalization, I started finding
00:26:34
Speaker
ways, finding words to talk about this, maybe to describe this experience in somewhat lame way, so to say, because when it's a new experience, you still have to find a proper angle, right? To be able to talk about it, to be able to describe what it really feels like.
00:26:55
Speaker
But just to kind of go along with what Ivana has just said, I don't think that there was this continuous trauma. This experience was not something that put you forever in this mode where you cannot think about anything else but the war. I think that this is this, I don't know, cunning
00:27:21
Speaker
aspect of this war experience, it's that you don't really know when some of these things will manifest itself. For instance, I was away from Ukraine for the first time since the full scale invasion started a few weeks ago. I was away on a conference and
00:27:45
Speaker
I was sitting there. It was a nice sunny day. People around me were just going along with their lives. And for the first day, I was basically crying. I was like, it's so normal here. People don't talk about war. How is this possible? And then there was an airplane flying in the sky. And I was the only person who looked at the sky and who was a little bit uncomfortable by the sound of that airplane.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yes. Can I ask you something quickly? Just very quickly, because if you sit there in this place, where were you? It's not of no importance actually. I was in Spain, I was in Malaga.
Global Empathy and Personal Urgency
00:28:29
Speaker
In Spain.
00:28:31
Speaker
If you are sitting there and you realize that it is of no concern to people, isn't that also disheartening a little bit? Because for you, this is the most important thing in the world right now, this war, that it needs to end. You need the support of people. And obviously, you cannot expect that everybody is the same for everyone, but isn't it a bit disheartening to sit there and realize, okay, this is not number one on everyone's agenda.
00:28:55
Speaker
at the moment. Other people still have their own lives or is it something you expect or something you're like, yeah, obviously this is how life is. You focus on whatever is closest to you.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yes and no. Sorry. No, no, that's very good. I have a tendency to ask these questions today, the yes and no questions. Because on the one hand, of course, I would like everybody to constantly, remember to constantly be aware of what is going on in Ukraine, because it's very dear to me. I want this horrible war to be finished.
00:29:31
Speaker
As soon as possible and I wanted and with Ukrainian like an equivocal victory But on the other hand, I also understand that How you think about this kind of event events it's also determined by the distance often like by the social distance that you have to certain events right and I don't know maybe I will not say the right thing now, but I
00:30:01
Speaker
There are a lot of suffering that is happening in other places, right? And, I mean, there is a genocide of Uyghur people going on. I mean, there is war in Yemen going on. There are... Currents? Yes. Yes. That are bombarded by Turkey. Exactly. And by Iran as well now. And by Iran as well now, apparently, yes. So, like, on the one hand, yes, of course.
00:30:29
Speaker
every single person to care about Ukraine. I want them to support Ukraine. But on the other hand, at this global scale, I understand that. And I also experienced it. I mean, I know that empathy is limited, unfortunately, right? So on some level, I understand why they are going on with their lives, why they
00:30:56
Speaker
If they care, they don't often show it and why there is this normalcy around them and they continue to go with it seemingly not caring. Yeah, the world would go into shambles, I think, if everyone would
00:31:20
Speaker
care as much about all the suffering that is going on in the world as people who are engaged in that suffering would hope to, would like to. It sounds terrible, I know. But that's the reality. If, for instance, I would imagine myself thinking all the time and carrying as much as
00:31:52
Speaker
someone engaged in that suffering things I should about all the wars that are going on, but they're just wars, right? More social, science, lingual, structural suffering. So people who are dying of hunger, illnesses that could be treated but are not treated because of
00:32:11
Speaker
Well, economic inequality, essentially, because they don't have means present, right, to treat because they don't have access to clean water, for example, and so on and so on. I would go mad. And if I go mad, those people wouldn't get better because of it, right? Nothing would change. It's just that I would go mad.
00:32:36
Speaker
And that's all. So on a practical point, I don't think it makes sense for everybody. And that applies to Ukraine. I don't think it makes sense for everybody in the world constantly thinking and tearing themselves apart because of what is happening. At the same time, yes, there is some kind of
00:32:56
Speaker
We have to find the... some kind of... in Russian it's... so golden middle... middle ground, right? But you've translated literal golden middle. Between this kind of not caring at all, like going on with your life, whatever, which many people do, and that shouldn't happen.
00:33:21
Speaker
And going completely mad, thinking every minute about all the suffering that is going on because it's not practical as well. There must be a certain awareness and a certain awareness that drives you to try and change the situation, help people that need help. But at the same time, it shouldn't go overboard so that you become essentially
00:33:57
Speaker
Because you're overwhelmed and maybe this is just how I see it as well. Maybe there's also an energetic
00:34:06
Speaker
You know an energetic cap to some degree empathetic cap as well I mean if you run through the world taking on the suffering everybody everybody day every day it will overwhelm you and maybe stop you this isn't Basically what you are saying. So I think that's that's a very good way to put it to
00:34:24
Speaker
And once again, I admire your kind of stoicism in this as well and the way you are able to differentiate after all this time now already. Which brings me to the question you've already hinted at that. I would like to know from you because you are very much into volunteering now or into volunteering. That sounds like it's a hobby. That's not what I mean. I mean, you are volunteering a lot. You spend a lot of your time volunteering in the war.
00:34:52
Speaker
And this is something I would like to get into, obviously your experiences, but also before then I would like to know how did you experience the breakout of the war, the 24th of February? How did you experience that?
00:35:07
Speaker
That's a good question. Sorry. It's not a yes or no question, right? I started nervously laughing, because there is a lot to unpack. Because we were in this very house, my parents, they really know. Sorry, just quickly, Daphne. Just quickly, because just also to understand, you're not actually, we weren't living in Ukraine, right? You were actually just there for projects of yours, right?
00:35:32
Speaker
We came at the end of summer 2021. Yes. We returned in August 2021 and I was planning to spend two years here doing my fieldwork research. Okay. And I didn't really plan to be volunteering during the war that I can say the certainty.
00:35:56
Speaker
Actually, before the war, we were moving from Poltava to Kraviri, and then a few days before the 24th, we came to Haudenka, to my parents' house, because we were just visiting them.
War's Onset and Emotional Transition
00:36:11
Speaker
And they were planning to go on a vacation abroad, so they essentially asked us to stay in the house. Well, to visit your brother. Yeah, to visit my brother and my brother and his wife. They had a child not so long ago, so there was this, blah, blah, blah, whole family thing.
00:36:26
Speaker
And so they left on like the 20th of February and they asked us to stay in this house for two weeks to look after it. And we said, yeah, okay, we can do that. And this house, it's very close to Istanbul Airport. It's like five kilometers away from the Istanbul Airport. And so the night from the 21st to the 24th.
00:36:47
Speaker
Um, we are trying to sleep, but the dog cannot sleep. She starts barking in the morning and we have no idea why the hell she's early morning. Yeah. Yeah. And we are trying to call her. We are trying, I don't know, like to pamper her and to do everything that we can, but no, she's just inconsolable. And then, um, I opened my cell phone and I see the news. Russia is bombing Ukraine and I'm like, okay, probably something.
00:37:17
Speaker
Uh, like something should be done about that. We have like to make plans, what we have to do. And then I go to the bedroom and I wake up Yvonne and I remember. Wait, no, you wait for a while. For all this time, she's reading news. I was
00:37:36
Speaker
There was something happening, I'm sleeping. I'm sleeping, y'all do that. I was sleeping for like 15 minutes and I was thinking like, what should I do? Should I wake him up? But I mean, like it's still war. Maybe I should give him like another hour to sleep because it's like five in the morning and blah, blah, blah. So I have this, you know, like misgivings. And then I come and I wake you up. And I remember how I said like, honey, wake up. I'm sorry. It's so early, but the war has kind of started.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah. Which is why you obviously wanted to let him sleep an hour longer or something because you knew when you wake him up, like from this moment forward, things are going to be very different. Yeah, we didn't sleep the next night. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So I think you will be very considerate, Daphna, in my opinion, anyway. Well, but we were quite
00:38:30
Speaker
Prepared as much as one can be, because unlike many people in Ukraine who I would speculate, not just didn't believe that the war is the first continuation is going to happen, but I think they actually didn't want to believe that something like that
00:38:54
Speaker
would happen because believing in that would mean recognizing that you live already in this kind of
00:39:03
Speaker
new world that changes everything and break up your life and makes you do things differently, which is a very hard psychological thing to do. But we kind of expected it. We were among those people who expected it, perhaps because it was a little bit easier for us. We are not set
00:39:31
Speaker
grounded perhaps in Ukraine. Once again, we have students abroad, we don't have
00:39:39
Speaker
what is property or whatever here, businesses. Life is not rooted here so much. Perhaps that's one of the reasons. I don't know, but we expected it. We had some plans for what to do. We woke up in the morning. Obviously, we started to read news from different sources. We understood what is happening, more or less exactly. So general directions of the attack.
00:40:07
Speaker
where Russians are coming from. We understood that one of the directions is from the north, from Belarus, which is close to us. We understood that they are landing airborne troops in the hostile aircraft, which is super close to us. Then we
00:40:27
Speaker
went to the street, smelled some smoke, heard helicopters flying and stuff like that. Essentially heard some explosions. And in some hours, at 3 o'clock, I think, so it took some time. We adjusted, we talked about, we were monitoring the situation. We decided to pack quickly.
00:40:50
Speaker
And then we picked up some of our friends and those were five people, three dogs in the car. And we went first to the Western Ukraine. The plan was we move out to the safety and then we decided on what to do because
00:41:15
Speaker
In occupation, you can't do much unless you're specifically trained or you have very specific plans on what you are going to do. So rationally, it's a better option to leave to the safe place and then from there start to help if you want to help.
00:41:33
Speaker
How did you feel at that time though? I mean, you're just saying like you heard explosions. I mean, how did you feel? Like this is something you've never come across, I suppose. And all of a sudden something like war is so close to you. Like how did that make you feel? Because you explain it like kind of very matter of factly now, you know, like when we did this and we did that. But I'm sure you must have been in some kind of shock when that happened, right?
00:42:00
Speaker
Or does that come later? That's why I'm asking. Does it come later? Is it at the time? I mean, I had this experience once. I was once hijacked, right, with a gun to my head. And then they took my car. And I remember, though, I wasn't shocked at the time at all. That only came much later while it was happening.
00:42:16
Speaker
I was actually very calm and I knew what I had to do. I knew I just had to do what they said, keep calm. And only when they had left and gone, I was still lying on the ground thinking, okay, they'll come back now and shoot me. And then I realized, well, but you could get up now and just make it more difficult for them, right? So, but while it's happening, you're very calm. So, how was that for you actually?
00:42:38
Speaker
I think we were more, we were very concentrated on the algorithm of what we should do, what we should take with us on determining the best road to live Kiev and the best Kiev. Shame on you.
00:42:57
Speaker
And the best, I said key. No, no, no, no, it's always key. And determining the best, like pick up spots, pick up locations to take our friends.
00:43:12
Speaker
I remember that... Just sorry, Kyiv is a Russian pronunciation, Kyiv is Ukrainian, and that's... I was just going to go into that, there was a phonetic dispute, right? Yes, exactly, yes. Not understandable, perhaps, for most of the foreigners. Right, yes. Slav's talking about... When you pronounce Ukrainian series in English, it's...
00:43:32
Speaker
I don't know. It's always difficult for me because it feels like unnatural to do that because I know how to say them in Ukrainian. And then when I have to transliterate them in my head, some kind of bastardization of Ukrainian. I have that with German cities as well sometimes, even though they come close and there's also English terms, but sometimes it's very weird. Very, very weird. But just for the record so that everybody understands. So what is the proper way to say it? Kyiv. Right? Kyiv. Kyiv. Kyiv.
00:44:02
Speaker
I know it's difficult for her. I think that there is this sound in Ukrainian, which is difficult to pronounce for many foreigners. Yes. Well, I'm struggling, so I'm definitely one of them. It's fine. Even it's just like, let's not bother with this guy. It's like he's not going to get it right. No, it's fine. I was joking when I corrected him.
00:44:31
Speaker
No, of course. But it's very interesting because obviously phonetics is a very big part of all of this as well, as far as I've understood. The writing, the language, because this is where a lot of the cultural appropriation has also been leaving its mark to some degree. Yeah, it's because...
00:44:53
Speaker
Russians essentially spend a lot of time raising those issues, right? Trying to imperially say that there is no Ukrainian, that it's just a dialogue of Russian and yada yada. And that obviously pushed many Ukrainians to, well, to highlight the differences, so to say, right? Demand foreigners, for example, to pronounce K, try to pronounce K Ukrainian way and
00:45:23
Speaker
And all these kind of things. Because when you're constantly told that the language doesn't exist and you're just a small Russian, naturally at certain point you want to show no, it's not like that.
00:45:44
Speaker
These phonetic differences, they also come to play this funny part in this war, for instance, with this war, Pala Nica, which is basically a loaf of bread. In Ukrainian, it means a loaf of bread, and this bread is usually made from wheat or rye, but we can debate all that stuff. But essentially, in Ukrainian, there is this war, Pala Nica.
00:46:07
Speaker
And this word is really difficult to pronounce for people who are Russian speakers because this is not really common in Russian language. And so there were like a lot of jokes and memes in Ukraine, especially at the beginning of the war. So like if you really want to tell Ukrainian from Russia, just like ask them to pronounce this word.
00:46:34
Speaker
And there were actually cases that Russian spies were caught by it because they couldn't pronounce it. Yes. Wow. I mean, this is, you know, language is so important. And also just to get back, like really in Russia, Ukraine has been called Little Russia, like really all the time. Right. I mean, this is just
00:46:55
Speaker
This is showing the extent of how much there has been this supercilious attitude, I would say, towards Ukraine and how Russia is just still its big daddy and has to determine everything that's going on there.
00:47:10
Speaker
Um, so, but we interrupted you Daphna, sorry, that was, that was me about how you went to Kiev. We took a little bit of a side stroll there. Okay. I love talking about all this like linguistics, the things that become prominent, uh, in this work, but yeah, so it wasn't 21st of February. We heard these explosions and we were really concentrated on this like small task at hand of like how, um,
00:47:35
Speaker
how to organize the evacuation in the practical and the optimal manner. But on the other hand, I also remember that how I was kind of falling on the ground when I was hearing explosions. And I also remember how I was trying to cover the dog with my body, because she was really scared. She was still a puppy at the time. Probably, I don't know, maybe it was a very stupid thing to do, but still I was pretty
00:48:07
Speaker
I was worrying about her because she didn't really know what to do and stuff. And I also remember that we were in a little bit of hurry and that we couldn't really locate the keys for some time because even though we were trying to stay calm and practical still, it kind of gets on your nerves. Like all these helicopters flying, the smell of smoke. Of course.
00:48:32
Speaker
sounds of explosions and then actually we located the keys, we put everything in the car, we closed the house and we left.
00:48:45
Speaker
But I think about emotions. I think obviously there was fear.
Emotions Evolving from Fear to Anger
00:48:50
Speaker
No one will tell you all I was fearless or whatever. But I think predominant emotion was anger. I'm always skeptical about
00:49:09
Speaker
even about my own recollections of such events in the past, because we as human beings tend to sometimes describe it in a manner that is not how it was going on. But I think the predominant emotion was anger. We were pissed off. And I think that
00:49:35
Speaker
pissed off because of this kind of full scale invasion because how it was performed, right? Essentially to simplify it was perceived as some kind of simplification and bully, right? Someone tries to impose control over you as people
00:50:00
Speaker
over your country and spends a lot of time on this because it started a long, long time ago. We perhaps we can debate on where exactly, but in 2004 there was an orange revolution putting, right, congratulated Yanukovych at the time and spanned out that he won, which he didn't. Eventually, another guy, Yushchenko, became a president. That was the first revolution
00:50:30
Speaker
Orange Revolution. And at the time already it was seen that putting investing a lot of different kinds of resources into pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, trying to control politically Ukraine
00:50:46
Speaker
as it became clear later because of some kind of imperial ambitions because Ukraine is so important symbolically for Russians for some reason, for the Russian imperial project. So they spent many many years on this and then in almost 20 years essentially they understood that it's
00:51:09
Speaker
not working, that Ukraine is still not controlled by them, that Ukrainians don't want predominantly to be a part of Russia or to become this kind of Belarus right now, formally independent state, but essentially a state that is controlled by Russia
00:51:30
Speaker
almost fully. And eventually it led to this kind of reaction, if I can't control you more or less peacefully,
00:51:42
Speaker
I will just, yeah, make you by force, like make you mind by force, something like that. And that created just a very common reaction. It wasn't just us, many people got really pissed. So that's why this war is, perhaps we'll talk about it later, I don't know. But that's why this, it changed the character of war.
00:52:07
Speaker
Or in many respects, it will sound, perhaps for some, too much. But I use it more analytically than as propaganda words. It impacted how the war is going on. And the war became a little bit patriotic, total war. Because I can explain what I mean by that. Many people with different views went to war or went to volunteering to help.
00:52:37
Speaker
like many, many, I don't know, thousands of millions of people, if there are even polls that ask people if you either volunteered to fight, volunteered yourself, or donated money to volunteers, for example, or directed to the people that are fighting. And I don't remember exactly the numbers.
00:52:59
Speaker
remember some of the numbers because I was editing the chapter where I used them yesterday. And so this sociology group called Rating, which is like one of the like trustable sources of who performs falls in Ukraine, they did such a... So a Ukrainian group? Yes, it's a Ukrainian like sociology. Good ones, they do good falls in Ukraine.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, there are different types of crap. And so they did this poll in April 2022, and they were asking people these questions like, are you fighting yourself? Are you donating money to the armed forces? Or are you working in the critical infrastructure to keep up all these communications running? And essentially, like 80
00:53:46
Speaker
Like more than 80% of people, they belong to this group that are already doing something for the war. They are volunteering, or they are donating, or they are fighting themselves, or they are working in this critical infrastructure, which is... Yes, and the second part of the argument why we can call it a patriotic war, great patriotic war,
00:54:06
Speaker
a term applied to a different word normally here, is that people of very different views want to fight, right? So you can see that it's not just people, for example, with nationalist views, people who fight for the state, well, because it's a state and I belong to it and yada, yada. But people with liberal views, people with left views, anarchists, for example, right, who
00:54:36
Speaker
essentially kind of don't fight for the state right as such and I would explain it both of those facts that many most of the people are involved in more efforts and that people with very very different views are fighting or volunteering is because
00:54:57
Speaker
I think, and that's a speculation, but I would explain it because there was this kind of feeling of anger and being pissed off by someone trying to impose their will by force, right? It's quite a common feeling, right? Many people get mad when they see this kind of raw force going on.
00:55:18
Speaker
when they see that someone is just trying to forcefully make someone do something, people get mad at them. And it just happened on this kind of, on a bigger scale of one country trying to impose their imperial bill. And it's not limited to Ukraine either, because that was one of my first emotions
Volunteering and Global Response
00:55:37
Speaker
as well. I was incredibly pissed off when I heard. I also remember when I first found out 24th, because usually I get up, I read the news as well, you know, which is sometimes maybe also not the best idea, but I do it anyway.
00:55:47
Speaker
And I was pissed off. And this can be an incredibly powerful and creative force actually being pissed off. And that's exactly what you're saying. So I can relate to that. I think it goes for a lot of people. Also, when you say,
00:56:04
Speaker
about, first of all, the Great Patriotic War is usually referred to as the Second World War, right? In Russian culture. And so maybe this is another part to break this away. Your patriotic war for Ukraine is maybe going to be this one, another way to just break it apart a little bit.
00:56:23
Speaker
So, those are very, very interesting points that being pissed off, I think, is a very, very strong force to be reckoned with. Now, you explained how you got out of close to a hostel, your parents' place, Daphna, right? And you moved out, you moved everything.
00:56:41
Speaker
When did you realize that you wanted to do the volunteering and how did you think you would do the volunteering? Because you also said for three weeks you were kind of speechless a little bit, you didn't know what to say, you had to collect yourself a little bit. How did you then come up with the idea of volunteering and what you wanted to do?
00:57:03
Speaker
Actually, I think that we knew that we would try to volunteer even before something happened. So there were these discussions whether something is going to happen. I don't know, two weeks, one really before the 21st, because I think for the whole February people were expecting, right?
00:57:28
Speaker
The 16th of February, it was named by American and British intelligence at the invasion date. Then there was the 20th of February. So we were talking about it among ourselves. And we were saying that, OK, we want to volunteer. We want to do something if something happens. Of course, we were imagining what we would do. So the thing that we were imagining we would do, it is a different thing than we
00:57:58
Speaker
ended up doing because well, reality is infinitely more complex and there are way more factors that you can not really take into account when you are making your grandiose plans.
00:58:13
Speaker
while we are thinking it's all red. Yeah, yeah. So there isn't, you can't see, right? The air raid. So this is about the air raid. Oh, or you can see this way. Yeah, so essentially I can see now it's basically the map of Ukraine and it's all red, right? Yeah, because there is an aerial art everywhere, essentially. Yeah, so yeah.
00:58:32
Speaker
Wow. No, no, no, this is this is good to know also what situation you find yourself in now. Yeah. Sorry, Daphna. Yes. And so we kind of like started volunteering from like day one after we left here because he came up with this idea of translating
00:58:53
Speaker
I think if you don't mind. From the very start we were thinking about doing something what I call imperfectly physical. I mean actually doing something with our hands.
00:59:07
Speaker
moving something, driving something, I don't know. But we couldn't find anything, no. We donated blood a few days before the war, in expectation of the war, just in case, before the full-scale invasion. And after it happened, we were calling to donate blood, but you would call and those centers that
00:59:32
Speaker
Collect blood. Collect blood. They were like saying, no, we don't need more more blood because we are full. So many people came to donate blood. Once again, talking about this kind of, right? Total character of war. So many people went to do something to help that they didn't need more donors because if they were full with blood, so many people came. And then you would call to some centers, volunteer groups that already existed.
00:59:58
Speaker
And all of them would say no we have so many volunteers that we will not be able to manage more we don't need you it was everything was packed with people who wanted to do something the same was going on actually near the military recruitment offices.
01:00:17
Speaker
There were lines of people who were trying to get weapons and volunteer to the army or to territorial defense forces, which is part of the army, but oftentimes separated into entities. I mean, this is a very important thing to explain, that we were trying to do something, but
01:00:37
Speaker
But every time we were calling somewhere, they were saying, so many people came, we don't need you. We couldn't find the place. So you were turned down. Yes. Yes. Which must have been very disheartening and frustrating, actually. No, it wasn't.
01:00:54
Speaker
Perfect. On the one hand, yes, because it doesn't allow you to feel useful, but on the other hand, it's very inspiring because you see how many people actually volunteer that. You see the announcement, you write, you call these people like 15 minutes after you saw these announcements and they're like, no, like, sorry, we already have like a crew to do whatever we need to do. Announcements like, for example, border services at certain points, they posted
01:01:22
Speaker
an announcement like we need people with scars who would help us to move things around. And then I called them in about an hour after I saw the announcement and they immediately said, no, we have so many people that already called, we don't need you. This kind of thing is great.
01:01:43
Speaker
Amazing. So what we're thinking about still what we can do, and maybe you will talk about it since it was your idea about this. I don't think we should go into detail. You can also go into detail, whatever feels right to you. Got involved into things that you can do
01:02:06
Speaker
quickly by yourself with just your laptop. We were engaged in some internet activism, essentially translating
01:02:17
Speaker
at the time doing the thing that got a little bit controversial for some translating into... There were first videos of captured Russian soldiers in Ukraine. And at the time we thought that it was very important because the vibe before the war and during the first hours and days was that Ukraine will lose in three days or whatever in five days, there is no hope. You can see it
01:02:44
Speaker
even laser weapons that Americans and the British were providing. They were providing weapons for the insurgency, essentially. Yes, small anti-tank weapons. Or the Germans in the beginning were just sending helmets and vests, for instance. That has luckily changed. Even intelligence services and the public and journalists were expecting this Ukraine will fall.
01:03:12
Speaker
It was important to show that Ukraine is fighting and that Ukraine is not falling. And we thought that we can do it by the first videos in Ukraine of captured Russian soldiers. And it was a mass, like many, many captured Russian soldiers.
01:03:31
Speaker
But we understood at certain point that we get that information, but people who read in English don't at that time. Afterwards, it became institutionalized, secret services started to do it themselves, and on a much bigger scale, so we stopped our activity. But at the beginning, no one was doing it, kind of. So we started to do it. We started to reorganize a bunch of people,
01:03:58
Speaker
who would transcribe, make transcripts, and put those transcripts on videos. And we would post those videos with captured Russian soldiers online. With English subtitles. With English subtitles. So that people abroad could see that Ukraine is not following. In fact, here are captured Russian soldiers. And we were doing it for some time. Some people were engaged. But at certain point,
01:04:29
Speaker
I talked to one of my acquaintances that I knew from our student activism when we were students in Ukraine. And he told me that he was in this territorial defense forces volunteer in his sense that we don't have almost anything except an automatic gun. Like we don't have bulletproof vest, we don't have any kind of equipment and so on.
01:04:56
Speaker
And I understood that despite this kind of so many people went to volunteer, the existing infrastructure, the existing organizations
01:05:11
Speaker
they still cannot cope with the needs, right? So there are many, many people who want to do something, but still, despite that, needs are not covered. Because most people want to join the already existing initiatives, but they don't organize anything themselves. And existing initiatives, they just cannot handle so many people coming, right? They cannot grow so fast. They cannot manage so many people.
01:05:40
Speaker
So we understood that we just need to know everything ourselves, not just call somewhere and say, hey, do you need volunteers? But essentially organize everything from the scratch. And that's what we did. Become a hub in a way also. That's what we did. We went into our car and went to Lviv, packed our car with supplies, all kinds of medical supplies.
01:06:08
Speaker
and want to give. And we didn't have a very well developed plan or anything. We just were bringing stuff and then suddenly it started to grow by itself.
01:06:25
Speaker
Sometimes we would start to get calls from, hey, I'm Zitlana, I'm calling from Ivan, because I know you are going from this place to this place, can you help me with this and or this? And we didn't know neither Zitlana nor Ivan, who gave her our contacts, because
01:06:46
Speaker
It started to surface through some kind of people that we didn't know, but we were generally saying... Which is always a good sign, because it's showing that it's growing and it's catching on. Because so many people needed something. But once again, there was not enough help going on, despite this kind of thousands of people volunteering.
01:07:09
Speaker
And then we would be, there were many, many checkpoints, obviously, military and police checkpoints. We would be stopped on checkpoints oftentimes, and we would be asked, where are you going? Or what are you doing? We would say, hey, hey, as a car respect, we are volunteers, breeding this and this, whatever, bulletproof vests, medical supplies, whatever.
01:07:32
Speaker
And they would say, oh, we don't have bulletproof, can you bring something to us? So this was another way of this network is growing. And eventually we ended up with a huge, huge, huge network of very different people that was constantly growing and growing.
01:07:50
Speaker
And we started to do it as a full-time job, essentially going from one city to another, going to the Western Ukraine, packing our car with whatever. I also think that how it grew, I mean like one of the indicators that
01:08:09
Speaker
These are like typical show group. It's that like we kind of like also had to like split functions. Yes at one of the times because He was driving because like he knows how to drive fast. I am as much slower driver But I know how to coordinate stuff and so like at a certain point I just stayed in our committee because we were supposed to leave there at some point and
01:08:33
Speaker
And I was just like staying there and I was basically like taking orders, so to say, from people. And I was also then like finding like other people who have the stuff that we need, like collecting donations and basically like fundraising. Yeah, like fundraising. And then I was essentially like telling him, so like, so there is like stuff A waiting for you at a location B that needs to go to location C. Can you please like do the logistical thing, please?
01:09:01
Speaker
But before that, we were just driving together. I was driving most of the time. She was on the phone constantly communicating with people from whom we can buy something. So I would just take it for free, depending. It was a complicated operation and talking to people who needed something coordinated of when we can meet them, where we can get stuff, like doing all this kind of logistic stuff.
01:09:26
Speaker
that we're driving with, we're both packing, also talking with friendly initiatives, all kinds of friendly initiatives. And we were together for some time then separated, but did the same and then the nature of volunteering changed because
01:09:44
Speaker
War is also a very rapid thing, like needs changed very quickly and volunteering depended on how those needs were changing. Because at the beginning, for example, almost everything was needed. Suddenly, you would get many, many people displaced and many, many people who went into the army. And obviously, even for the rich state, it wouldn't be impossible to quickly supply
01:10:12
Speaker
hundreds and hundreds of thousands more of troops, right, with everything needed. But Ukraine is a poor state, so it was a completely impossible task. At a certain point, for instance, the Minister of Defense said that during the first months, I don't remember exactly of what period she was talking about in the first months, 85, if I'm not mistaken, percent of all bulletproof vests in the army were donated by, were brought by volunteers, not by the state.
01:10:42
Speaker
You can imagine how much is that? Hundreds of thousands. Yeah, that shows the scale of missing stuff. There are many, many initiatives that helped. Like us, they could work in different, slightly, depending on how
01:10:59
Speaker
how they're organizing, what kind of resources they have. And then eventually volunteering also went into some kind of specialization. So volunteers started to specialize. Some volunteers would get the stuff from cave and would bring it to the east, for example. Some volunteers would not fundraise, but would just coordinate what is needed with this specific unit on the front line.
01:11:26
Speaker
some volunteers would fundraise and buy. Later on, more specialization appeared. So efficiency was just rising, basically, by having clearly defined... Yes.
01:11:42
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. Correct. Many initiatives have started to coordinate more and so specialize more. Some people knew better how to bring it to the front line. Some people knew better how to undrace and procure and so on and so on. And except for the
01:11:58
Speaker
big initiatives, like there is essentially two largest, I will forget something. The World Food Programme, because this is something that I read in your article, Daphna, that there is the big organisations. But that's not what you were going to say, Ivan. I meant Ukrainian initiatives, more of a war effort focus.
01:12:25
Speaker
Provenice Rim and Pretuva Foundation. What do they do usually? Did they exist before the war? Yes. Both of them existed before the war.
01:12:38
Speaker
What did they do before the war? What was the key question? They came back alive in English. They were war effort-centered. They grew substantially after 24, but they existed for some years. I think they started to exist after 2013. 2013, yes. Okay. Yeah, so they were war effort-related. They don't do humanitarian stuff.
01:13:06
Speaker
except for what they helped veterans of the war, with after-war adaptation. Yes, dealing with post-traumatic stress, for instance. Yes, all those kinds of things. But everything else they did was more related.
01:13:28
Speaker
so they train troops by blood supplies, by buying supplies, and so on. The Katoa Foundation also does war-related efforts, but they also do some humanitarian help.
01:13:40
Speaker
Those are two biggest Ukrainian initiatives that existed before, and still exists now, grew substantially. Yes, Pritul Foundation is, for example, famous for first fundraising in just a few weeks or a week. I don't remember exactly. Money for three biorectors that were eventually donated.
01:14:10
Speaker
They were raising for three biorectors, but they became famous that they gathered so much money that they were able to buy four biorectors. But eventually they didn't buy software donated, but instead they bought a satellite. All right. But biorectors are missiles, right?
01:14:29
Speaker
Those are unmanned aerial vehicles. Unmanned aerial vehicles, yes, that's it, yes. Then became famous during this war. There are even sons about them in Ukraine. Turkish-made unmanned aerial vehicles. That's a questionable history because they were developed to fight insurgency in the mountains, so they were developed to fight Kurdish people.
01:14:55
Speaker
But the producer of them sympathizes with the Ukrainian cause, so he often domains and helps and he's open to it. But those are not just for reconnaissance, they can do both reconnaissance and bomb themselves.
01:15:18
Speaker
And then they use those money to buy the whole satellite that helps Ukraine in the military. So volunteers in Ukraine bought the satellite. You can think about this in that way. And the problem is that them actually bought the aircraft because it was important for them. And they procured their license essentially to buy military equipment nowadays. So this is crazy. Yes. Those are the biggest foundations they do.
01:15:47
Speaker
and can afford themselves to do bigger things that small volunteering groups cannot do. Just quickly, with the communications and the satellite, I mean, it's something that is so incredibly important. So it's also what you said in the beginning that these news clips or these clippings, whatever you want to call them of surrendering Russians, for instance, that you made them available to the public at large outside of Ukraine. I think that's an incredibly important task that you did there because
01:16:17
Speaker
You know, a war is fought in the hearts and minds of people, I think, in a big way. And you also said the bully Russia and you were afraid it was an oversimplification. Maybe it is to some degree, but I also think it's very valid in that particular case.
01:16:33
Speaker
to look at it that way, because that way you have a clear focus and compass of who we need to support. And that's obviously Ukraine, because when there's a bully on the playground, you don't stand by and just watch what develops, but you will have to see what goes on, because next time you're on that playground, that bully might also turn to you. And I think that's very apt. So that's why communication in that sense, outside of Ukraine,
01:16:59
Speaker
to have people support the cause of Ukraine. And then we also get to weapons, biorectors or high mass. You know, now I think Germany are sending these iris, um, air strike missiles, iris. Yes. I'm still not that, you know, that great with, with the weapon systems and everything, because I'm getting there a little bit at least to know what's, what's, what's being shipped.
01:17:23
Speaker
And in order for that to happen, there has to be good information and Ukraine has to keep on reaching the minds and hearts of people. So this is why satellite and also Starlink of Elon Musk, which has also helped, I think, significantly in keeping communications. I'm not advertising Elon Musk. I have a lot of problems with Elon Musk. So don't take it the wrong way. Let's say it. He is a fucker. I'm not afraid to say that. I'm not afraid. Elon Musk, if you're listening, go fuck yourself.
01:17:52
Speaker
He is not listening. I let that stand. Sorry. He might. He might at some point. Who knows? Who knows? I share that opinion. If you do, go fuck yourself, Yoma. No, seriously. Because the way he used the word Ukraine for self-promotion is just... I don't know. It didn't before the word. She's a Greek. No, of course. He exploits his workers. No, definitely. But I mean, just like the word.
01:18:19
Speaker
kind of like before this whole incident, a lot of people in Ukraine, they had this positive image of him, but now everybody kind of knows that piece. Yes, I think especially after the last tweet, not the last one, but one of his tweets where he basically stated the piece for Ukraine and how it could occur, like basically to have Ukraine as a neutral state in between. I mean,
01:18:47
Speaker
It was just a bunch of bullshit. I think with that tweet, the latest, he left, he lost all support in Ukraine because it was just, I think even Andre Melnik, I think the chief diplomat in Germany, who is not known for mincing his words. He even said, with all due diplomatic respect, go fuck yourself, Elon Musk. I think he was right, yes. He's not a representative in Germany anymore, by his own.
01:19:12
Speaker
No, he's not. He just left. And to some degree, I'm actually a little... I think he overdid it sometimes, but to some degree, I also think he made some very strong points and arguments and also exposed the hybrids also that we have in Germany, to some degree, a lot of the times.
01:19:29
Speaker
Um, he will be missed at least from me, not by everybody, but, but from my side, he will be missed. Um, so, um, getting back to that. Yes. So some very important, um, things, uh, satellite and, uh, and, and to keep that communication up and going, you have, you are still doing a lot of, um, showing a lot of support and fundraising for the defense forces.
Challenges with Humanitarian Organizations
01:19:54
Speaker
Aren't you even, you, you have a focus on that as far as I understand.
01:19:57
Speaker
or is that not correct? What do you mean? You still provide a lot of support for the armed forces in Ukraine. I think in provision runs and also getting stuff to the soldiers, basically.
01:20:17
Speaker
I think me and Daphne, at a certain point, for various reasons, we burned out. It was already hard to fundraise. We knew that that moment would come. And other reasons, we decided to leave volunteering.
01:20:36
Speaker
It took a while because it's kind of hard to leave volunteering. Sorry, it's just like some people, they were like laughing at me because I was telling them that I'm stopping to volunteer for like a few months. And each time they would see me, I would say that, yeah, yeah, we are just, we will just like procure this one thing. And then it's the last thing and we'll stop. Because people continue to call and ask for things. It's hard to say no.
01:21:00
Speaker
But essentially, we almost completely left Ontario, almost completely because there are still some things pop up here and there. We help here and there. And obviously, we will continue to donate to other big initiatives.
01:21:16
Speaker
Or small initiatives, does that matter as well? Big initiatives, meaning like Come Back Alive. Yeah, and our friends from the frontlines. It's like initiatives that are Ukraine-based and not this international... You can talk about it more later. Yes, I would like to get into that because you have raised a couple of very interesting points there. Yes, but we almost completely left volunteering.
01:21:43
Speaker
So I wouldn't call us volunteers anymore, so sometimes we do something, but it's not like a full-time thing anymore. I think also because at a certain point,
01:22:01
Speaker
You were talking about how needs were changing, right? And at the second point, the needs that you have are really specific. So I need this thermal image here, or I need this kind of thing. And we were still procuring those. We were still delivering those. But I also think that at a certain point, these big foundations come back alive. And also the Ukrainian state, they also started procuring more stuff. So there was not as much of a demand
01:22:30
Speaker
for like volunteering as it was at the very beginning. When the full scale invasion just happened, the volunteers like Yvonne and I, they helped to kind of like saturate the army with the things that were needed, right? But then step by step, kind of like the state and all these like combat collides,
01:23:00
Speaker
like a kind of a foundation, they were able to sort of go to pick up the slack. And so we also kind of like felt that, okay, if we withdraw right now, it will be kind of like a fair deal.
01:23:20
Speaker
Also, it's what you said in the beginning. I do believe you need to have energy to help. And if you do this day in, day out, it will be very difficult to uphold an energetic level where you can continue doing that and continue doing that in a way that it's really helpful. So I think that makes absolute sense, at least to me.
01:23:45
Speaker
But there has been something, you have an article which I will link to as well in the show notes for everybody who wants to read the whole thing. And you talk about your experience as a volunteer. And you also tell two stories basically. I just want to quote from the one and want to ask you about that in a little more detail. You wrote, there has been a lot of anger on the part of Ukrainians aimed at the big organizations like the World Food Programme or the International Committee of the Red Cross that haven't done much to help since February.
01:24:12
Speaker
There has been also a lot of anger aimed at the organizations that have been unwilling to change their operational rules when helping people who are fleeing the war. Can you elaborate on that a little bit, please? Yes, definitely.
01:24:29
Speaker
There was a lot of talk about how efficient these small-scale volunteering campaigns have been precisely because they were able to be flexible and to respond to the needs fast. Because if a person is on the front lines and they need a bulletproof vest, they can't actually wait for three weeks or for a month for the vest to make it to them, right? They need it.
01:24:59
Speaker
And if you're this kind of like low grade volunteer as a waiver, you don't have like a lot of these like reporting rules. Everything is based on trust between you and people who donate to you, between you and the person you are buying this vest from and essentially this thing. So this really
01:25:24
Speaker
um gives you some um like some pluses in the sense that you're able to accomplish this thing fast right so like here is this need in a few days or in a week like here are the things that uh you have asked for but with this uh big organization they still
01:25:47
Speaker
For some reasons, they were very reluctant to change, to ease all those reporting requirements. And this is also partly a criticism that can be applied to the Ukrainian state and to the armed forces, because for every little thing that you provide to someone, there has to be a paper written, whom you have provided it for, what were the money that you bought it with, and stuff like that.
01:26:15
Speaker
And as you can imagine, this really...
01:26:21
Speaker
makes this whole enterprise of volunteering much, much, much slower. And especially when you're working with humanitarian needs, when you're working with displaced people, people who need food, people who need hygiene items, people who need some medical supplies, really this slowness contributes to suffering. It creates more suffering and sometimes it creates death.
01:26:50
Speaker
And this is one of my huge problems with this big organization because by not
01:26:58
Speaker
by not being willing to compromise some of these requirements of transparency, of reporting of paperwork and blah, blah, blah. They were essentially creating more suffering. They were essentially creating more death. And that's one point that I want to make. And the second point, it's also that some of the organizations like Red Cross,
01:27:23
Speaker
When they come to Ukraine and they are trying to organize some kind of humanitarian corridor, they work in such a way that they need to secure the agreement of all sides to organize the corridor.
01:27:39
Speaker
just doesn't really work in conflicts like this. Because I mean, Russia, the war in Ukraine lasts from 2014, right? And since 2014, there have been many instances when Russia gave a certain promise to Ukrainian side and then they broke it. I mean, like Ilovaisk, when Russia promised those Ukrainian soldiers that were captured, they were surrounded in the Ilovaisk.
01:28:06
Speaker
they promised them like a free passage out and then they just shot at the soldiers as they were evacuating essentially. And I mean like for many Ukrainians it was like the last drop. They said like no more. This side cannot be trusted. So it's really a moot point to negotiate with them and to try to organize evacuation of people
01:28:30
Speaker
with their yes, because they will not give you this yes, or if they give you this yes, they will then break it. We have seen it many times. And yet, a lot of international organizations, they said that, like, no, this is how we work. We are providing humanitarian corridors only if we secure yes from both sides.
01:28:52
Speaker
And in some instances, it led to the situation like in European, the town that just like 15 kilometers from here. It was heavily shelled. A lot of people were dying there. And those international organizations, they said, like, no, we couldn't secure the UCS from the Russian side. So we cannot really help you to organize the evacuation on this day. And so Ukrainian volunteers, again, people just like usual people like you and I who had their cars.
01:29:19
Speaker
they were risking their lives and going there and taking, filling their cars with people, cats, dogs, whomever they could rescue and driving them away to Kiev. So yeah, that's the second story. And also, sorry, there's just like a very minor circle. And is that a lot of this organization like for instance, World Food Program,
01:29:42
Speaker
They work in such a way that there is a guy sitting somewhere like in England, in the first world, to whom part of these duties of humanitarian effort are being outsourced.
01:29:59
Speaker
he has like celery, he has nice like first world celery and then this guy he outsources some of these duties to the next guy who also has this celery and then this guy outsources some of the other things to another guy and so there's this whole chain
01:30:14
Speaker
of outsourcing happens and then you as a person on the ground in Ukraine, you end up driving those fucking world food packages for your gas money on your own car and you spend your time to drive it to the people who need it and also some of these reporting requirements also fall on your back.
01:30:35
Speaker
which feels profoundly unjust and unfair. I mean, like, I don't really mind using my time, using my money, using my car and blah, blah, blah to help people and to drive food packages to them. That's not the point. The point is that how this whole
01:30:53
Speaker
distribution chain is organized, it's profoundly unfair because there's people on the ground here who do the greatest chunk of the work and we are essentially
01:31:06
Speaker
left to do it all for free. It's a good feeling of doing something good. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not just like saying like, give me all this money, but just like, there are more efficient ways to organize how this humanitarian aid is distributed. Yeah. So what you're basically saying is that it relies heavily on volunteers, right? That are investing their time, their own resources and get nothing in return, basically.
01:31:36
Speaker
Yeah, you can just kind of like feel good for being able to help people, but it just, you know how much money these organizations have, right? And sometimes I was thinking like, if, if Anna and I had that amount of money, oh my God, we could do like so much, so much good here, we would be able like to scale up our like organization. We would be able to buy like not 10 bulletproof vests, but the 100 of them, because sometimes
01:32:06
Speaker
the amount of orders, the amount of requests that we were getting from people, it was much more than the amount of money we had. And it was really a horrible decision, like whether you would buy 10 bulletproof vests and 10 helmets or whether you would buy just like 20 bulletproof vests and so you would leave like some people essentially without helmets. I hate to be this like arbiter of who lives and who dies, you know?
01:32:37
Speaker
Oh, of course. I don't think, I mean, anyone in their right mind would like to be that. How do you think that can be improved? Because the thing is, you know, I think this is not just for organizations, humanitarian organizations. I mean, you see that in politics as well, you know, very often.
01:32:56
Speaker
things just get stranded because the administration or beast has grown so big that to get things moving takes so much effort that a lot of the energy gets lost in between the cogs of the machine. So how, according to you, do you think this could be improved by more decentralized kind of work efforts? Do you see any other way of dealing with it?
01:33:22
Speaker
Well, part of the problem is bigger than this institution, this big organization, right? Because it's this kind of...
01:33:31
Speaker
how we, it's this problem of modernity, so to say, sorry, I'm being like very social science and anthropological right now. But it's awareness. Yes, but it's how we do things in the latest century, right? We value these kind of like transparency things because we kind of value all these reporting things to make sure that like all the paperwork is right and blah, blah,
Decolonization of Humanitarian Aid
01:33:57
Speaker
blah, blah, blah. So it's not really an easy fix.
01:34:01
Speaker
But on the other hand, to make some improvements here and now, so there has been a lot of talk happening about decolonization of humanitarian aid, right? And one of the ways to decolonize it, it's precisely to ensure like a more equal distribution of resources. For instance, we can cut the middleman because we don't really need like three or four people in between the
01:34:28
Speaker
UN office and people in Ukraine, the volunteers in Ukraine who do all these works, because I think more money could be streamlined directly to local organizations who do a bunch of work. I don't really remember the numbers right now, but there have already been some preliminary studies showing that local organizations, they get
01:34:51
Speaker
I don't know, like 1% of like all these like funding that big organizations like World Food Program or Red Cross are getting, but they do, I don't know, like more than 80% of all the jobs. Yes, all the humanitarian relief on the ground. So we can start just by doing something about that we can start just like with distributing like all these funding more equally, we can just again, like cut on
01:35:20
Speaker
cut the middleman, we can just like do away with all this like outsourcing, right? And then we can also probably have a discussion about like all this like, transparency and reporting requirements about like, whether we really need to adhere to all those rules and procedures at the extraordinary times.
01:35:39
Speaker
whether really these two pieces of paper, they are the worst few lives that are being at risk while you're filling in this paperwork. Yes. I think what you're saying is very, it makes a lot of sense also to me. I mean, I do work with NGOs and stuff as well, so I have some experiences in that field, but not to the degree that you do, and also not at war times, which is an entirely different thing altogether.
01:36:08
Speaker
But I think that's a very good point to take. The thing is, it becomes an industry as well. This is what sometimes people don't realize. We look at NGOs, we look at organizations like the Red Cross, but in the end,
01:36:27
Speaker
They are an industry and there are people who make a living through that and who also have vested interests in having, you know, very, very cynically, but also in, you know, conflicts is where they make their money.
01:36:43
Speaker
Obviously, this is part of the problem and decentralizing it, like you said, going to the ground roots, local communities, local organizations, maybe have a registry on a UN level of who will be getting support is a very good answer to that. Let's see what happens. I mean, maybe somebody will hear this besides Elon Musk. So that would be our wish at least.
01:37:11
Speaker
Do you guys have a little more time? Actually, our time is up. I just want to know if you guys, because then I would just do my last two questions maybe, even though there's still so much on my list, because you guys are just incredible to talk to. So tell me. And of course. Yes. Yeah, I have time until desserting.
01:37:35
Speaker
Okay, let me try and get it wrapped up before then, but thank you so much already. Then, you know what I would like to...
Anger and Social Science
01:37:44
Speaker
I would like to... One thing that I would like to know from you, because you said also War makes one a quick learner.
01:37:54
Speaker
And I think that's after everything we've talked about, it makes perfect sense and I think we understand why. What I would like to know from you is of all the things you learned in terms of your volunteering or ever since the 24th of February, Mary, even a bit wider, what is the most valuable you've learned? The question goes to both of you, of course.
01:38:24
Speaker
It's definitely not a yes or no question, so good as for that. Yeah, I learned my lesson. I'm asking open questions now, which is the one on one of interview techniques. Yes.
01:38:43
Speaker
Can I get again more social science and anthropologically? If you're not tired of that? No, not at all. That's, I mean, I obviously I got, I understand who I got into the van. So of course, all means, please.
01:38:57
Speaker
So of course, there were a lot of practical things that I learned since the 24s and even a little bit before. But I mean, since I kind of normalized the full scale innovation a little bit and found this voice again and started talking and thinking about it,
01:39:24
Speaker
I was constantly thinking about how we often underestimate the power of collective negative effects.
01:39:36
Speaker
I often see it in Ukraine and I know that I am a part of. Ivana was talking about this feeling of anger, this feeling of being like pissed off, right? And I think that like, theoretically, we haven't really appreciated how powerful and in many ways like creative these
01:40:05
Speaker
power can be. Because quite often we are talking about like, oh, yes, this feeling of anger, this feeling of that these being pissed off and blah, blah, blah. Those are like negative emotions, right? And there is this like culture of positivity usually, right? We have to smile to people and the
01:40:28
Speaker
you know, Oh, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. Thank you. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we there have been like a lot of especially like in North America, right? Training site, how to escape this like negative thoughts. And so there was a lot of these focus on positivity. And as a social scientist, I have been constantly thinking about these, how you can harness these like power of collective negative effects and how
01:40:56
Speaker
immensely creative, it can end up being. So that is like one of the things that I have. I don't know if this is the thing I learned, one of the things I learned, but it's definitely one of the things that I have been trying to think about that. That is one of the things that I was wondering since the start of the full scale invasion.
01:41:20
Speaker
Well, that's a great answer. It's social science, but I think it's a great answer because it's true. First of all, we have this expectation of goodness. I absolutely agree with you. The hedonism that is part of our society focuses on that. How can everything just be always good for me? And we underestimate the creatives.
01:41:45
Speaker
the creative power of negative emotion, like they're being pissed
Facing Harsh Realities for Change
01:41:48
Speaker
off. Or I also believe we face so many crises at the same time. I mean, the climate crisis, you know, instead of just being like, yeah, it's all going to be fine. I think the power of positivity in that sense is actually the problem because we're like, yeah, it's going to be fine. Technology will find a way. Somebody will invent something and will all go away. No, I think actually a lot of the times we have to tap into that anger and that being pissed off and then turn it into a creative force to be reckoned with.
01:42:13
Speaker
So I think that's a very, very important aspect you just mentioned there. Thank you very much. That's very inspiring. What is it for you, Ivan? What has it been for you? You had a little more time to think about it now, you know? Yes. I wouldn't say that there was anything that would reshape my view.
01:42:34
Speaker
that we change how I think so in that regard I wouldn't say that there is anything that I learned obviously I learned a lot of small things like a lot of things about the weapon or the army or the war right itself but also just boring day-to-day simple things but
01:42:57
Speaker
I got even more enforced and that's perhaps aligns well with what Daphna said, but about a slightly different thing. I got reinforced in a thought that there is a lot of hypocrisy going on once again, when people in the first world or North America, I'm not sure how to generalize, talk a lot about
01:43:29
Speaker
There is a lot of sentiment. I don't want to see that. It's triggering. I'm not going to watch it. I don't want to listen about it because it's about something horrible that is going on. And I will just stay blind to it. Don't show me that. You can get it a lot in university, for example.
01:43:53
Speaker
Don't tell me this thing from a horrible film because I will be triggered. Don't tell me this because it's super bad and I will feel bad about it.
01:44:03
Speaker
And I've been thinking a lot, like, things like that were going on about the war as well, right? Don't show, don't talk about this, right? Don't talk about masculinity, don't talk about this, don't show me videos or photos of this. And I've been thinking a lot, it's a very privileged position. And it's a position that is very much hurting people who experience those horrible things.
01:44:29
Speaker
that are predominantly experienced not in the first world, but unequally distributed to the places of suffering, which means poorer places, places of this kind of structural suffering.
01:44:45
Speaker
Those things mostly happen there, not in the first world. They happen in the first world, but not on the same scale. And by staying blind, by refusing to watch and see, you allow yourself to close your eyes and do nothing about it, right? You just want to be not hurt yourself. Instead of yes, no matter how it is, how hard it is,
01:45:15
Speaker
do know about it in order to change it. Because if you stand behind you, there is a big probability that you won't have enough energy to change it.
01:45:33
Speaker
You have to face what's going on in order to change what's going on. The point is not to stop talking about it. The point is not for that not to happen. And then if that doesn't happen, we are not going to talk about it.
01:45:48
Speaker
I think there's even a more extreme to what you just said, Ivan. I think a lot of the times what I see is it's not just that I don't want to hear about it because it triggers me, but instead of seeing it and staying away from it, we look at it as a pretext to make ourselves victims, right? Like, for instance, I don't want to hear about let's stay in the first world, let's stay in America because you said it. For instance, you know, like Black Lives Matter.
01:46:14
Speaker
or the discrimination of black people in the United States, you know, rather than hear about it or saying, I don't want to hear about it. Part of the white population instead is turning themselves into victims of black racism.
01:46:30
Speaker
right? So there's even this other extreme where it turns to that or critical race theory is something that shouldn't be taught in school, which is something I don't want to listen to it, but then you take it to the other extremes and actually victimize yourself, even though you have no entitlement to that whatsoever. So I think that's a very important point. And I see that not just in the United States, also, to be clear, I see that in Germany as well. I see that in a lot of other European countries. I mean, Italy has just had a landslide victory. Okay, maybe not
01:46:57
Speaker
landslide victory, but a victory of the far right. So we see that these tendencies are there. So to be mindful and to be conscious of that is very important. So when there is ever any sort of discrimination, listen to the people who say that they are being discriminated and you will learn from that.
Volunteering's Impact on Agency
01:47:21
Speaker
And tapping into that a little bit as well, have you had an experience during your volunteering as well that has been very memorable, very moving that you remember very well? Yes, definitely. But can you say about any single experience?
01:47:46
Speaker
See, that was a close question again. I don't learn from my mistakes. It's hard to say. Would you care to share it with us? That would have been the logical next part of the question. There were many moving parts and obviously that's part of the volume that we did was... We did it for us because it was much easier and you felt yourself nice when you helped people and people
01:48:15
Speaker
saw that and were thankful and you were happy that you helped those people, right? It's a very nice emotion to have. But it was also a nice distraction from all this dome scrolling. Yes, you have, as I already wrote somewhere, you get your agency back by actually doing something, right? It's much more psychologically
01:48:43
Speaker
hard for you to just stay a passive victim and observe what's happening without actually trying to change it, at least somehow. But I'm not sure. There were many people that were very thankful and
01:49:05
Speaker
Anything particular? I think I'm just becoming callous because yes, there were, of course, some of these things, but it's really difficult for me to name one sometimes because just so much was happening in this very condensed period of time. Yes. Is it also to some degree, I don't know, because if there's so much happening, is it also a bit
01:49:35
Speaker
I don't want to say blurry, but has it kind of shifted into one big experience? Could you put it that way? Rather than little individual experiences, it is one big hole in a way. Yes, definitely in general, the time was experienced very differently during the war. Many people in Ukraine say that
01:50:03
Speaker
were stolen from us. In a sense, obviously, there was a spring and the summer is the point is that time was experienced very differently. You wouldn't experience summer as here it is a summer I go for vacation. Oh, I don't know. It's hard to explain. But you at certain point you find yourself at the end of summer and you're Oh, there was a spring in summer. Okay, I didn't mention it. You didn't experience summer as a summer because the time was fell
01:50:35
Speaker
I have no words for it. You are so concentrated on this media task at hand that you don't really pay a lot of attention to the weather, for instance, because I remember that it was, I think, mid of July and I was like, why am I feeling so hot? Why it's so warm? And then I was like, oh, yeah.
01:50:58
Speaker
It's July. Maybe I should change these like winter boots for sneakers. You know, it was this kind of thing. I didn't even realize it. Something like that. Yeah.
01:51:14
Speaker
Well, OK. I mean, I think that paints a quite a good picture as well. Dafna, like I said in the beginning, you did like a research on the correlation between people seeking HIV treatment and their trust in the state. This is a bit of a break now, but I would like to know, first of all, what were your findings then and whether that has changed over the course of the war, that perception of people of the state?
01:51:46
Speaker
So it's an interesting thing to talk about because before the full scale invasion, a lot of people, like a lot of my participants, a lot of people that I was hanging out with, and I was mostly hanging out with people who use drugs, street sex workers,
01:52:10
Speaker
also like women who, women who inject drugs and a lot of these people, they were really, they were often like mad at state institutions like providing, providing HIV services. They were also like mad at state institutions providing these
01:52:29
Speaker
um methadone and buprenorphine treatment this like this medicines that uh people with the opioid use disorder have to take every day in order to be able like to uh function normally and people were met with the quality of this medicine people were often like mad at the infrastructure that is happening so they were
01:52:50
Speaker
you would often hear how they hate the Ukrainian state. You would always hear how bad things are. But on the other hand, the Ukrainian state has been expanding its presence in these harm reductions here, year after year after year. Because for a few years already, a lot of these state clinics, they have been providing methadone and buprenorphine that was bought
01:53:21
Speaker
with the Ukrainian, with the money from the state budget, right? And also like this state was steadily expanding its presence in the sphere of HIV reduction, HIV services and the reduction of HIV burden. And it was like really interesting for me to see how on February 24th, all of these people, they were like one, I mean,
01:53:49
Speaker
Fuck this invasion, whatever we can do to help Ukraine, to essentially help survive the state that we have been hating so much, we will do that. And so people started waving masking gnats. Some sex workers, they were baking bread and sending it to the armed forces. They were also fundraising and helping their own community.
01:54:12
Speaker
So essentially, they were also immersed involved in this war effort from day one. And when I was talking to them and asking them like, so like, what happened? Like, what kind of like motivated you? It was really funny to hear that, well,
01:54:34
Speaker
Of course, like I'm paraphrasing, but essentially they were saying like, oh, like we have come a really long way here, right? We have been like pushing this, like government officials, like the state officials in the health care sphere, like, or in some other sphere to do this for us and to do this for us. And we, like, as all these like marginalized communities, we already had some dialogue with some of these state institutions, for instance, with the public health center that answers to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine.
01:55:03
Speaker
We have already had so much going on for us. We were already kind of like a voice to be reckoned with. And we really understand that if Russia comes here, all these methadone programs will be closed here. There won't exist a single harm reduction program here. That we will be essentially like left to die. And we just cannot afford that for ourselves, for our communities.
01:55:31
Speaker
So we stand here and we fight. Wow. So basically, the way that I understand that though, is that through this full-scale invasion towards its citizens, the Ukrainian state, not to say how it was before, not to really be judgmental about that too much, but it has
01:55:56
Speaker
gotten a lot more legitimacy in a way. Could you put it that way? That there is a wider acceptance of the Ukrainian state and its efforts towards its own citizens since the outbreak of the war? Or would that be too simplistic? I am not really sure that it is the best way to put it because I don't think it's about legitimacy. I think it's about this possibility of dialogue and these
01:56:25
Speaker
self-recognition on the part of this like many vulnerable groups that like we are like for so to say that if you are not listening to us that we can make you listen to us so
01:56:42
Speaker
And it's also like a recognition on their part that if they live on the occupied territories and a lot of them, they have like relatives of France who stayed on the, the occupied premier and died because well, all the carbon reduction programs were closed. Like some of these people whom I also know they're still in prison in the done it and so-called done as people republic, basically like for having some methadone on them.
01:57:11
Speaker
And it's also this kind of recognition that our very survival depends on our ability to be this kind of force that can negotiate with the state, that can negotiate with the government.
01:57:29
Speaker
if I am being clear at all. And this is actually the thing that you have in Russia, right? Because Russia doesn't really fund all these harm reduction programs. A lot of people with HIV, they're not provided
01:57:45
Speaker
they're not provided treatment, free treatment from state budget, right? And all those kind of things that we were taking for granted in Ukraine and that we were like criticizing because like, oh, like we don't like this and we don't like that. They kind of like appeared with people, so kind of like saw them in the new light.
01:58:07
Speaker
But at the same time, I think you can see it even through this war, many people stop themselves short from saying everything they want to say because of the war.
01:58:24
Speaker
People still have, you can see, still have this kind of attitude that is common in Ukraine. We had only one president that... Served two terms. Served two terms, right? People start to hate the president and the president is the main figure in Ukraine, political figure. Who was with two terms? Kuchma. Kuchma, yes, of course, yes, yes, of course, yeah.
01:58:53
Speaker
People immediately start to hang politicians who get into power in Ukraine. And you can see through this kind of examples, and in general, people are super, they suspect the state very much, even to the point, skeptical, even to the point where it's completely unproductive. Ukrainians are really
01:59:19
Speaker
I would say weird in a way about the relationship with the state. The state is never really trusted much, never really...
01:59:31
Speaker
followed in many ways, except for this war, because it's so existential. But in many ways, initiatives of the state and so on. Ukraine is a weak state, but not in a sense as a weak state is often used as this kind of almost as an odd amount of failed state. But it's weak in terms of it's very hard to implement some state policies. It's very hard to go on and force people to do something like
02:00:00
Speaker
Like it depends is a simplification, but in general, Ukrainians are weird about their relationship with the state and state is always hold to the most harsh account it can be hold. Yeah. But has there been a shift? That's what I meant by legitimacy in the sense, because legitimacy, I don't even mean like from, you know,
02:00:30
Speaker
jurisdictional point of view, but legitimacy in the minds of people because, you know, if you think of the state contract between the people and the state, inside the minds of the people needs to be something, okay, the power holds this power over me to some degree because of this and this. This is what I get in return.
02:00:47
Speaker
Right. So has there been a shift, let me put it another way, that maybe in the relationship between the state of, between the Ukrainian state and its people since the outbreak of the war? It's very hard to say, but I would say my guess would be that after the war ends, or if it's frozen, then after it's fearless, then Ukrainians will more or less go back to what they did before the war, which is
02:01:16
Speaker
fighting constantly, arguing about stuff, not trusting the state, trying to leave parallel to the state, always working in gray zones in terms of law, like, no, this is not completely illegal, but hey, I can do this, all this kind of informality to use Red Alert social science.
02:01:40
Speaker
Again, informality is so like what oftentimes people from the West call corruption, right? But it's not quite corruption. It's not always about bribes. It's more of exploiting gaps and exploiting some gray zones and yeah, leaving peril oftentimes to the state, not contrast state, but not
02:02:04
Speaker
quite in the stage. There are many very not unique in no way it's unique, but the constellation of those practices is unique. Practices are not unique. Sorry, I just kind of like going back like to this day and like to this like
02:02:21
Speaker
question of whether everything changed after February 21st. It can be illustrated by some memes on Twitter. So last Monday Kiev was hit by Russian rockets, right? And one of the rockets hit the glass bridge in the very heart of Kiev.
02:02:42
Speaker
And that glass bridge, it was built by Kiev, Mayor Vitaly Klychko, a few years ago. And though that glass bridge, it was hated by people from Kiev from the moment it was built, because people were like, how?
02:02:59
Speaker
Sorry. Um, people were saying like, Oh, click. Oh, he did. He doesn't spend money for the things that are really necessary. It was just like a corruption scheme. He was like laundering money by building that glass bridge. We don't need a glass bridge. He'd better invest those money in transportation. It was unnecessary. It's very expensive and blah, blah, blah. And why there is glass and the glass will break very soon and
02:03:24
Speaker
So this thing was hated, you know, but like when the Russian rocket hit those bridge and the bridge didn't break, people and gear, they were like, this is our glass bridge. How do you dare to hit it with a rocket? And I think this attitude is pretty illustrative of what has been going on in Ukraine about this. It was illustrative of this relationship to the state in Ukraine.
02:03:54
Speaker
state is not perfect by any means but this is our fucking state and we will decide what fucking happens here like and we will decide what to do with our politicians so like don't you dare to kind of like
02:04:09
Speaker
step on our territory. And we can quarrel about it, but it's our quarrel and it's not your fucking quarrel. So, you know, this is also to delineate that in that sense. Most people don't fight nowadays for Zelensky or even for the state in a sense entity of the state itself. Many people fight
02:04:35
Speaker
for Ukraine as this kind of cultural political space where we can decide, motivated by anger towards some bully that wants to decide for us. But almost nobody in Ukraine fights for Zelensky or whatever, or fights for this kind of state institute
02:04:59
Speaker
and agencies and departments and bureaucracies, I don't know, for all the things that comprise the state, right? There would also be a very small, thin foundation to stand on if you just fought for one guy. I think the bigger the idea, the better also in that sense.
Post-War Ukraine and Cultural Symbols
02:05:21
Speaker
I mean, all of that can change and most of you guys wouldn't mind. It's not about that.
02:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, so there is probably those institutions wouldn't probably obtain legitimacy. He's still criticized in Ukraine right now.
02:05:46
Speaker
things they should for right now during the war, how they criticize and what they criticize. But it doesn't mean that people are somehow the landscape institutions, state institutions became super legitimate.
02:06:04
Speaker
in the eyes of the people. I don't think so. That's also very good, I believe, because obviously there will be at some point, you know, politics as usual. And I mean, as usual in the sense that, you know, right now, a lot of energy is obviously consumed by the war. And obviously, I mean, obviously,
02:06:23
Speaker
But there will be a time, and I hope, we all hope, as soon as possible, where war will not be on the agenda anymore, and then you will have to focus on other things again. And then there needs to be a critical public in a democracy to make sure that things are going the way that a majority hopes them to develop. So that's good.
02:06:44
Speaker
Yes. So one last thing that I have to ask you, because this is also about culture, right? I mean, the whole podcast also started with my perception that there's a big cultural appropriation on the Russian side of Ukrainian culture. That is a bigger part of the problem and it also
02:07:06
Speaker
paved the way to the gas dependency in Europe, Germany, and so on and so on. And like this, you know, change by trade and all of this bullshit that was obviously completely flawed and everything. So I always felt this was also at the heart of this conflict that especially the West and the rest of Europe always saw Ukraine a little too much like how Russia is looking at Ukraine, like little Russia, right? This is part of the problem.
02:07:36
Speaker
I have come across your article and I'm not going to read the full thing now, Ivan, because we've spent a lot of time talking on a lot of interesting issues, but there's something that came to mind that I would like to know from you both. And it's about what, let me just find it quickly, Randall Collins. You write about the sociologist Randall Collins and how he introduced the concept of emotional energy. I'm just going to read out a few sentences and then I'm going to ask you my question.
02:08:02
Speaker
So you're right. Sociologist Randall Collins introduced the concept of emotional energy, a resource that emerges out of our everyday rituals. Successful rituals produce high amounts of emotional energy, making us feel satisfied, energized, and even ecstatic sometimes. It drives us to be active, show initiative, and be creative.
02:08:22
Speaker
We store some of the emotional energy from successful everyday rituals in symbols, the reminders of those encounters and possibly even moments of collective effervescence, the moment of pleasure from losing oneself in a conversation or perhaps a rally, a sports game on a stadium, collective singing of an anthem." So after everything that we've talked about, I think that a lot of this
02:08:46
Speaker
plays a role in this as well, right? And I would like to know from you, those symbols that Randall Collins is talking about, and as you point them out, what are they for you in the context of Ukraine? Do you have some symbols for you that are really Ukrainian for you and that you feel that are being attacked through this invasion and through this war? What would you make those symbols out to be? That's a really good question.
02:09:18
Speaker
I mean, it can be anything, right? It can be food, it can be a building, it can be like, but I'm thinking of it in cultural terms. Maybe you don't and you don't have to, but it would be interesting for me to know how you look at your country in that sense, what your symbols are. So there are certainly there will be symbols for me that hold these kind of emotions or emotional energies that are related to that conflict.
02:09:45
Speaker
I'm not sure about what they are. I think I will be able to tell you in a few years or something when I will see something and start to cry. Something that would be just completely normal for others, but I will just see it and perhaps cry or whatever. But I think for Ukrainians, that's a really good question. I've never thought about it.
02:10:14
Speaker
Obviously, there can be this kind of obvious examples of the flag and whatever the answer. Well, partly music, I think it became a symbol for me, actually, and for many Ukrainians. There are songs that really bring about a concentrated
02:10:36
Speaker
that symbolize very much experiences through this war. There is a song, an old song actually from the beginning of the 20th century, where you would say Chevanna Kalina, that became suddenly a symbol in Ukraine for many people that holds a lot of emotions. It's not an anthem, official anthem or whatever.
02:11:06
Speaker
I will link to it in the show notes too. Can you translate it? I don't know the name of this plant in English that's mentioned inside out. You'll have to translate it yourself. I will translate it later. Absolutely, we'll get to it. I'll put it in the show notes as well.
02:11:32
Speaker
You can find a page of the sun on the wiki. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. There are some other suns that would be surprising perhaps for the people to think about as this kind of national almost anthems, but there are... Oh, they're red.
02:11:53
Speaker
viburnum in the meadow. It doesn't sound as poetic in English as it is in Ukraine. No, it doesn't. That's often the case, isn't it? That's often the case. Yes, because the name of the plant, it's very, like, same thing as the way it sounds in English. And yeah, it's just like, it kills the magic. Yes. Anyway, I think there is a lot of going on with the music in Ukraine. And certainly,
02:12:24
Speaker
in my case as well. What did you say? I was, I don't know, maybe I'm just like being petty, but I'm just thinking about these stamps, this, you know, that after the Moskva cruiser was sunk by Iranian forces, the... The flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, basically. Yes.
02:12:48
Speaker
Yes. So the Ukrainian post, it printed this famous term about like the Russian worship, go fuck yourself. And one of the... Oh, wow. Okay.
02:13:02
Speaker
They printed a stamp of the actual ship and it said, go fuck yourself. Yes, and there is a solution basically like giving a finger to the same king worship. And the first printing of the stamp, it was so popular, though they printed like one million stamps that it was like immediately sold out and they had to print also like the second.
02:13:25
Speaker
the second batch and like one of the guys who were like helping in our volunteering, he was in the military and he was also like helping the armed forces with supplies, he gave us those steps. And you also asked before about like one of the moments that we were kind of you know like oh and melting down during our volunteering and I thought that
02:13:51
Speaker
One of those moments when he just gave us those stamps, it was such a kind of movement. Moving. Yeah, it was very moving. And also these small, sarcastic images of this sinking worship, they contain so much.
02:14:10
Speaker
But that leads us, I think Randall Collins probably would be surprised, but humor, I think humor became, many jokes became... Back there, right? Yes. No, right now, I mean, meme kind of jokes, repeated phrases, words from the jokes became those symbols that hold...
02:14:33
Speaker
a lot of emotional energies. For example, me and Daphna, we oftentimes refer to memes from this war, and definitely they create a lot of positive emotions. Oftentimes, those are memes connected to famous in Ukraine. I don't know, Bobovna, for example, Bobovna is Ukrainian. It's famous in Ukraine. Bobovna is a cotton in Ukraine.
02:15:02
Speaker
But in Russian, you will understand why I'm saying all of that. But in Russian, there are two words, клопок, which is кото, бовно, and клопок. Which is like a loud, a slap. This kind of noise from the slap, or perhaps if you fear the baboon, that will be клопок.
02:15:27
Speaker
Ah, okay, okay. So Chlofoc and Chlofoc are written in the same manner, with the same letters. The same letters? Yes. Ah, really? Okay. But the difference between the meanings is this press, right? Chlofoc? Yes. And if I'm not mistaken about the origins, at certain point, and there are many stories like that and jokes based on that, but this is the most famous,
02:15:57
Speaker
Russians were trying to portray themselves in the comments to one of the publications as Ukrainians to show that some Ukrainians... I don't remember exactly to show that some Ukrainians don't like the Ukrainian authorities or whatever. They were trying to do some kind of informational warfare. And Google translated Russian into Ukrainian.
02:16:26
Speaker
And Google Translate does not know, do you mean, right? Because you don't put a stress. So they were talking about explosions in some Russian cities that are near the front line.
02:16:47
Speaker
and they meant Chlopoc, so, because, complicated, because in Russia they don't say that there are explosions, it's this kind of Orwellian language. They say that there is... It's like the same as military special operation, they don't say explosion, but they say something, okay, yes, okay. They say that explosions, they say Chlopoc, this kind of sound of a piercing bone happened.
02:17:14
Speaker
So it's a euphemism. Yes, exactly. So they were trying to say in Ukrainian, pretending to be Ukrainian, that there was this kolapki. But Google translated that as bubble-ness or cotton. And they said there was some cotton in those cities.
02:17:40
Speaker
Ukraine. And now every time something explodes, some airbase explodes in Crimea, for example, or whatever. Ukrainians say that there is a cotton going on. And there are bags with this, there are t-shirts with this, pictures on the internet. It became like a huge joke. Ukrainians all the time say, oh, there will be another cotton soon.
02:18:11
Speaker
Thank you for sharing that. That's so beautiful because it just, you know, this is the intention of this podcast also to have also culture as it is developing. And this is something that you've just explained there. And that's wonderful. It's really beautiful.
02:18:25
Speaker
Listen, now I know there is so much more to talk about. I would ask Ivan, if you agree with me, maybe we can reconvene at another time to talk about your findings and your research into soldiers that have been conscripted and are going into war. I would very much like to dedicate some time to that. If you're willing to, it would be fantastic. But today,
02:18:48
Speaker
We will close with the one question that I have for you. Just which Ukrainian aid should people who have the means and the time donate to? What would you recommend? I would recommend a big one. I trust it very much. They know what they're doing. They're trying
02:19:14
Speaker
How do they do exactly? They try to help Ukraine win the war. They help the army quite professionally. People who work there, most of them have war experience and are actually specialists in one sphere or another.
02:19:32
Speaker
so they actually know what they're doing. Perhaps the better option even would be to have some of the very small initiatives, but in order to do that, you have to know people. They don't have a website. There isn't just some people who, for example, we have a friend who is a doctor and she provides soldiers with medical equipment.
02:19:55
Speaker
But she doesn't have a website. It's hard to find. It's hard to do it. So it's better. If you provide the link, if you provide me the links, I will just put them in the show notes and people can find it. That's probably the easiest. Also hospitaliers to that because they are kind of also
02:20:11
Speaker
like not such a big organization as Kambakalai that Yvonne was talking about, but they are also very known and they are trusted and they're essential tactical medical battalion in the armed forces of Ukraine and they evacuate a lot of civilians, they evacuate a lot of wounded soldiers and they also provide a lot of medical aid.
02:20:36
Speaker
All right. I will link to that. And if you can think of anything else, send it over to me. I will include it on show notes so that people know exactly where to go. And even to the places that are hard to find for someone who's not familiar with Ukrainian webpages. Yeah, we can also add an
02:20:55
Speaker
As many as you like, there's no limit. Yes, there's no limit. So in the article I've fixed is that those are the leftists who support... And the authoritarians who are now fighting in the armed forces. But they also provide some humanitarian aid to hospitals and whatnot.
02:21:15
Speaker
I will link to that. Guys, thank you so much for your time. I took a lot more time than I told you to, because it was so interesting what you had to share. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I wish you really all the best, of course, and I hope that this air raid will end very soon. Oh, it ended. It ended. It ended. Okay. Okay. Well, that's at least some good news to some degree, even though it happens thousands of times, I know.
02:21:45
Speaker
Thank you so, so much. All the best. And we speak soon. Ivan, we will speak again. Sure, of course. You said you would be okay with it. I'm looking forward to it already. Okay. Now enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Have a nice one. Thank you for inviting. Bye. Bye.
02:22:02
Speaker
And with this, we are at the end of this week's ride in the yellow van. Thank you very much for coming along today, despite the very long wait. Thank you Daphne and Ivan for your trust in me and the work we do at Mind the Bump Productions. It means the world to us. The links to the initiatives of Come Back Alive and others mentioned by Daphne and Ivan you can find in the show notes if you are looking for opportunities to support Ukraine and have a buck to spare.
02:22:30
Speaker
If you are Ukrainian and would like to come on the show, or if you know someone who should, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are always happy and grateful for anyone reaching out to us on www.yellowvanstories.com, where you can also leave us your general feedback or ideas for improvements, like, let's say, more consistency and more regular episodes. I hear you.
02:22:56
Speaker
Next week's episode is already produced and edited, so if you want to join us again and find the time, we would welcome you back next week for a brand new episode. Until then, keep loving in the face of fear and stand with Ukraine. Take it away, Jim.
02:23:24
Speaker
With a lot of scones, I break a shame There's a dream I breathe Gone loving man and those in need And I know my attitude disturbs you and so I should And I know my better scenes are troubling too
02:24:23
Speaker
in the face
02:24:28
Speaker
Oh
02:25:20
Speaker
All you learn, all you stand is for your rights