By Tarney Baldinger
I wanted to share with the people of Sonoma the experience that children in our sister city, Kaniv, have been having during this time when the media is giving almost no attention to the Russian war on Ukraine. So I reached out to several of my friends and they wrote back some very powerful impressions.
Svitlana, a longtime French teacher of all levels, left her job because the strain of trying to teach was damaging her health to a dangerous degree. She explained that while adults may ignore air alarms – and usually do – the schools must respond. And the children are often already exhausted from being awakened during the night by the sound of drones and artillery. She writes, “The life of children in Ukraine is very difficult now. Children are traumatized by constant bombing, lack of sleep and chaotic learning and spending time in bomb shelters. Many children lost their parents at the front or during the bombing. But Ukrainians are strong-willed people and survive in any conditions, even when they are on the verge of destruction. Children participate in public life, support soldiers and try to help raise funds for the front. Some children give their own savings to help the army. Recently, the Alley of Fallen Soldiers opened in Kaniv.” One of the daughters of such a soldier is shown in the photo, Polina Bereza.
Lyuba Minenko, the painter, writes, “How can children speak about these ‘tortures of Muscovites?’, if you know about the horrors that Russian soldiers in the territories they occupy commit against the population, because when they entered the house of a young couple and in front of them killed their month-old baby, then brutalized them and finally killed them.
“Our children know all the thousands of similar crimes, from calls from the front lines. The horrors that Muscovites commit in our territories are known to our children by their parents who are at the front, because it is the occupied villages or cities that are being recaptured by our soldiers who find these crimes and pass them on to us.”
“One of the most tragic events in this tragic war was the bombing of the theater in Mariupol, a beautiful, cultural city on the sea. The Muskovites were bombing intensely and hundreds of people took shelter in a theater. And naïvely assuming that all human beings deeply value children and want to protect them, the Ukrainians wrote the word “children” in very large letters on the ground on all four sides of the building. They might as well put a target on the roof. When you’re trying to eliminate a people and a culture, of course you want to get rid of the children. Ukrainians could not conceive of such a thing.”
Tarney Baldinger explains about the art work: “Ukrainians see meaning in many elements of nature. One child’s image is rich with them. The stork is a dearly loved symbol of long life and loyalty. A stork will return to the same nest for decades and they mate for life. And yes, they bring babies. It is a great tragedy of this war that many fly thousands of miles to return to find not only their nest gone but the chimney gone and the house gone and the Village gone. I don’t know quite what they do. It hurts just to think about it.”
Main Picture: “The heart of a hero has no dimensions”
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