Kaniv Residents Share Their Pain
By Tarney Baldinger
On Valentine’s Day, a Sock Hop and Spaghetti Feed will be held at the Sonoma Valley’s Women’s Club to raise funds for Sonoma’s Ukrainian Sister City, Kaniv. To provide context for that event, the Sonoma Sun reached out to residents of Kaniv, through Tarney Baldinger of Sonoma, who maintains a years-long relationship with many Kaniv residents. What follows are the thoughts of several Kaniv residents about life under siege.
Writes Baldinger of these reports, “ Ukrainians, by nature, do not complain. They are reluctant to speak about the war and instead speak of inevitable victory. We must understand that when there is no electricity there are no elevators, no pumps for water. When there is no water, there is no heating for most homes. Stored drinking water freezes solid. Don’t even think about toilets! They are experiencing historical cold and snowfall. Next week it will be down to five degrees in the daytime and minus seven degrees Fahrenheit at night. Kaniv’s population is about that of Sonoma Valley.
From Lyubov Minenko, the artist whose work Baldinger displays in Sonoma:
“How can you convey to the readers of Sonoma the terrible crimes that Moscow is committing and what inhuman crimes against children and the population of Ukrainians, of the drones, which hunt for buses with people sitting in them and hit them right on the go, and hunt for children to destroy them right on the playground?”
From Olha Isaeva, who lives up in the hills in her own house. Her husband has been missing in action for three years. As she says, she is neither a wife nor a widow, and until the death of a soldier is verified, no survivor’s benefit is paid.
“Winter is very difficult, and the enemy takes advantage of this. Every day there are alarms for missiles. Constantly on alert. The power outages are very annoying. We don’t have power long enough to wash and dry our hair. Everyone solves this problem independently. I installed an inverter back in the summer. My neighbors have a generator. Some have light bulbs on batteries.
“It is especially difficult for those who live in apartment buildings, especially with electric heating and electric stoves. It is very difficult and painful when our soldiers are brought to Kaniv on a shield. Yesterday they buried our Hero. And last week too. This is how we live. Spring is coming soon and we are already sowing seeds for seedlings. Everything will be Ukraine.” (A motto often repeated).
From Svitlana Yakimenko, who taught for many years, until the strain of constant interruptions with air alarms, plus the exhausting challenge of teaching children who are traumatized and exhausted from lack of sleep due to attacks, led her to resign.
“It is a very difficult winter, it is cold, the heating is powered by a pump, so you have to turn on a generator. Gasoline is expensive and such heating costs three times more. The temperature in the house is 48 degrees F. Electricity can disappear for six hours and at any time. Therefore, the phones are discharged, and phone calls are constantly interrupted. For many people it is problematic to cook food if there is no gas. And all this against the background of shelling and air raids.”
Iryna Rozhkova, works in City Hall and lives in the nine-story apartments not far from the Hydroelectric Station, a major target.
“In a recent heavy attack, a total of 22 multi-story buildings (6, 10, and 15 floors) were damaged, 10,681 windows were broken in 2,293 apartments; 4,604 residents were injured and their property was damaged. The epicenter of the explosion fell on us. The hydroelectric power station is not functioning. It supplied electricity to Kyiv and was the main supply for Kaniv.
“Our children suffer the most. In the cold, it is very difficult to quickly gather children in kindergarten, 2, 3, 4, 5 years old. Sitting for several hours in a cold shelter. It often happens that there was a power outage, and an hour later the power was back on and so on all day. At night, it is especially difficult with small children. This is when there is no light and often no heat. My granddaughter is nine-years old, she no longer remembers peacetime. After the explosion in the destroyed apartment, she just sat quietly in the corner, on the floor, among the rubble, without tears. It is scary what is happening in the hearts of our children. She knows that her dad went to protect us, but in this terrible war our children, civilians, are defenseless. While the world ‘decides’, constantly ‘worried’ we are destroyed and killed every day. They do not understand that they are the next ones.
‘This is the hardest of all the 12 years of war. The light is on for 1.5 hours and you have to do everything in that time. It’s very motivating. You act more effectively. We haven’t had windows installed yet after the explosions, so it’s cold and dark in the apartment. In the City Hall where I work, the rooms are very cold, 48-52 degrees. But we work, we try to have time to do our work. We understand that it’s not easy for everyone, especially our defenders. There were frosts down to minus-2, now it’s 17 degrees F. It’s cold. Big cities are freezing. The central government has already contacted us about housing people who were left without heat, and housing from other regions. Over 600,000 people have fled the cold in Kyiv. We will solve this. If we don’t help each other, we won’t pass another “test” of humanity. We live, work, donate – no options!”
Today, in a difficult military time, when there is a lot of pain, humanity and kindness and willingness to help and support one another are valuable qualities. They are the ones which make us human – rebellious and free. Our cats were rescued by my son while he was on a combat mission in the forest. Not losing humanity on the front, in civilian life – this is the main thing.
But we are ALIVE! WE LIVE! We work despite the frost, anxiety, shelling … It’s much harder for our defenders! They are holding back this Russian horde. So while they stand – we LIVE!
From Lyubov Minenko regarding the sadness of Ukrainians as the U.S. effectively abandons them. “If only we were heard, because in such conditions as now, we are trying to survive and fight against the aggressor and occupier.”
(Photo: A war memorial in front of Kaniv City Hall – Submitted photo)
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