Just 14 kilometres from Kostyantyn Batozsky’s neighbourhood in Kyiv is the Russian frontline, where soldiers have been trying to advance on the Ukrainian capital for over a week.
“It’s a city that I don’t recognise at all,” Batozsky tells Crikey. “The streets are empty and those who have stayed are here to help. Kyiv may not be encircled but soldiers could attack at any time so everything is in flux.”
The 41-year-old political analyst has sent his ex-wife and two children, aged five and 12, to a “safe place” away from gunfire, but won’t say whether they are still in Ukraine. He can’t leave the country — men aged 18 to 60 aren’t allowed to leave without a medical exemption — but said he wouldn’t even if he could.
“It’s my duty that my kids know what happened in February 2022, that they know for sure it’s Russia who attacks and Ukraine who rebel. They have to know that their dad does his best. I never want to experience shame,” he said.
Batozsky has volunteered with the war effort since Crimea was annexed in 2014; he founded an organisation called the Azov Development Agency and helps distribute weapons, food, clothes and other supplies to Ukrainian soldiers.
Having lived in Donbass and Mariupol, he first experienced artillery shelling since 2014, and says the sound of air-raid sirens, shelling and gunfire no longer scare him.
“It’s not like in the war movies when you have a siren and you know when to seek shelter,” he said. “The flight time of a rocket is 30 seconds, so when that rocket hits it destroys everything. Most people die because of the small pieces [of shrapnel].”
Sometimes he sleeps at the volunteer hub where those who stayed sort through donations, cook food and distribute government weapons. For the past two nights he’s headed home to sleep alone in his apartment. The apartment was built more than 100 years ago and has thick concrete walls, so he feels somewhat safe.
“To go to sleep is the scariest thing because you’re losing control when you sleep,” he said. “It’s hard to sleep alone.”
Amid the destruction, stories of human resilience have emerged. Batozsky says there’s no crime or looting, and everyone still in the city helps to look after one another and contribute to Ukraine’s defence. There are 16 apartments in his building, but just three are inhabited — his parents, he says, have their neighbours’ keys so they can water the plants.
Stores are still stocked with non-perishables like grains and pasta. He still has water and electricity, and he says the government is doing a good job getting supplies to the region and military.
“There are problems but it’s not a catastrophe,” he said.
Batozsky struggles to talk about the future. He can’t think about whether supplies will run out. He doesn’t know when he’ll next see his children. Although he has put his books in a safe place, he doesn’t know which one he’d read next.
“We don’t have time to think about tomorrow,” he said. “Our job is to supply, supply. People are not thinking about tomorrow at all.”
But he believes Russia will continue advancing not just across Ukraine but across Europe, and he’s concerned the war will turn nuclear. He believes Vladimir Putin is mentally ill and has spent decades running a smear campaign against Ukraine.
“Putin is a madman,” he said.
He believes although the West is trying to avoid war with Russia, Putin has already declared war on the West and further military confrontation is just a matter of time.
Like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Batozsky is ethnically Jewish and speaks Russian — the demographic Putin has argued is being persecuted by Ukraine. Stopping Russian propaganda is one of the key reasons he stayed in Kyiv.
“Ukrainians pass memory and information on through their families,” he said. “We have been here and had hunger during Stalin’s time in the 1930s … It was Ukrainian families who passed information about [the mass shooting of Jews during the Holocaust] in Babyn Yar,” he said.
“When you have in the world a couple of million people who have different versions of history than to Russia, you cannot do anything about it. That’s our answer to Russian propaganda.”
Horrible things are happening but this is the same that has happening in Ukraine for 8 years in the Eastern breakaway provinces to Russian speakers. This is nothing new. The west still fails to acknowledge that a civil war has been happening. There has been widespread death and destruction going on since 2014 in those regions. What is happening now is an escalation due to failure of implementing peace agreements that would have made the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as autonomous regions within Ukraine. Zelensky was elected on a platform of making peace with Russia. However his agenda has been highjacked by US interests and local right wing nationalist militias who sabotaged any attempt for a peaceful resolution.
I’m with you on this one.
I don’t like War of any kind, and would much prefer to see Diplomatic solutions worked on by all sides in good faith.
This “war” has been going on for years, and multiple attempts at resolving it have failed, thus the escalation.
Thanks for this, no substitute for hearing the experiences and views from those living through this. Even better a multitude of them. My best hopes for him and his family, I applaud his courage.
Azov are as bad as ISIL.
I don’t think he is referring to the Azov battalion. Yes it apparently has many native Russian speaking members but the preponderance of Nazi sympathisers in it would not make it likely any Jewish person would be supporting it. The Azov sea was a key place invaded by Russia in 2014 so it is understandably symbolic for those resisting the invader.
You could be right, some words/names have been hijacked … gay comes to mind, when I was a kid it had other connotations.