One Year Later

Yesterday marked one year since Ukraine was invaded by Russia. I wrote a couple of posts around that time, hardly daring imagine that twelve months later, the people of Ukraine would still be fighting for their freedom, their identity, their homes, their very lives. 

One year. Twelve months. Three hundred and sixty five days. Eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty six hours. Five hundred and twenty five thousand, nine hundred and sixty minutes. Thirty one million, five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to live every moment in the heart of a war.

 

It makes me think not just of Ukraine but other countries whose people have lived with war, or my parents' and grandparents' generations, who had lived experience of war's devastating effect on home soil. I frequently feel guilty when I find life difficult, challenging, at times overwhelming when I look around me and see what is going on elsewhere in the world. 

The Ukrainian people, led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have shown a strength and resilience that is nothing less than astonishing and a lesson for us all. I wrote a year ago about overhearing colleagues complaining about their treatment at work and comparing it with what was happening in Ukraine and Russia. Today, people were noisily complaining about the shortage of tomatoes, cucumbers and other food - mostly 'out of season' items or food no longer grown in significant quantities in the UK - which juxtaposed and jarred with the minute's silence and reflection on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

 

I wonder, if we were to be subjected to an invasion, a conflict on our home soil, could we as a people manage thirty one million, five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds and counting? Half? A third? A twelfth of that? 

A little under a year ago, I wrote about Ukrainian duo Ptakh_Jung aka Anton Dehtiarov and Volodymyr Babushkin, in particular their song Dnipro, inspired by and named after the country's fourth largest city, At that point, the song had been out for a couple of months, released in December 2020 well before the invasion began but which resonated in the new context and environment that it existed in.

Ptakh_Jung started posting music via Soundcloud in 2016 and there are some beautiful ambient/piano-led pieces, taken from gigs or film soundtracks. YouTube also has plenty of live performance excerpts. Bandcamp has their officially released music available for purchase. Apart from the aforementioned and recommended Dnipro, their first release in 2018 was the Black Period EP/mini-album, a "cosmological fantasy" played out over four songs and just over half an hour. In 2020, the third track, Monika, was edited to accompany the short film/video that leads off this post. 

 

Sadly, there have been no further releases from Ptakh_Jung since Dnipro in December 2020. Their Facebook page has also been quiet, the last post photos from a gig in Kyiv in May 2021. I hope they're safe and well. My thoughts, hopes and wishes are with them and their families.