'A Missile Cannot Stop Us:' In a Ukrainian City, Life and Work Go On After Russian Strikes
Chernihiv is resilient but it has open wounds from the war
In April 2024, I traveled to Chernihiv, Ukraine with a group of German journalists; the following post is based on the trip.
CHERNIHIV, Ukraine -- Chernihiv is a Ukrainian city of some 285,000 people located about 60 kilometers from Russia. From February 24, 2022 until April 4, 2022, the Russians held the city under siege. About 70 percent of the city was destroyed and hundreds of civilians were killed. Two years after liberation, the scars of war remain. Some buildings remain destroyed, windows are blown out, and there are still burnt-out cars. However, life goes on: people go to their jobs, kids go to school, and shops are open.
While the city is not close to the frontline, its proximity to Russia makes it a frequent target for missile strikes. (It is more difficult to defend against airstrikes closer to the border.) These missile strikes happen so frequently across Ukraine that they become background noise in the news cycle; often, there is only a wire story about them. On the trip, I spoke to two people who were doing their jobs after fatal Russian strikes damaged their workplaces. Each showed a passion for their professions which did not dim despite the horrors of war.
Serhii Moisiyenko is Director of the Taras Shevchenko Chernihiv Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre. Moisiyenko grew up in Soviet Kazakhstan speaking Russian, but his parents are from Chernihiv. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, his theater switched from Russian to Ukrainian. He speaks Ukrainian now. Despite Putin's claim of protecting Russian speakers in his war, Moisiyenko wants nothing to do with Russia: "the Russians destroyed my house and my car, and not a single Russian will enter this theater," he said.
On August 19, 2023, the theater was hosting a drone exhibition, which organizers described as a "closed meeting of engineers, military, and volunteers on military technologies for the front." Organizers said that while the event was public, the location was not. The air raid siren sounded at around 11 a.m. and about 90% of people, Moisiyenko estimates, went to the basement. Minutes later, an Iskander-M ballistic missile exploded above the theater. While everyone in the basement was safe, seven people in the vicinity were killed and over 144 were injured. There is still damage in the theater. "This is the Russian world," he said.
The organizers of the drone show came under criticism from Ukrainians for holding the event in a civilian area. On Facebook, Sergiy Fursa, deputy director of Dragon Capital, an investment company, wrote: "Didn’t the organizers have to turn on their brains and think that such an event is highly likely to become a target for Russian missiles?" However, Masi Nayyem, a soldier, lawyer, and public figure, said the blame ultimately lay with Russia: "The Russians could have hit it with ballistic missiles even without the event that took place there. As they have done hundreds of times before."
Despite the deadly attack and controversy surrounding it, Moisiyenko has been trying to make the theater a place where people could enjoy a sense of normalcy. The theater hosted its first show after the attack on September 28. The theater also hosted a Christmas play for children. (Ukraine recently changed Christmas Day to December 25 from the Orthodox calendar.) He said that people were coming to the theater dressed nicely and treating themselves to coffee and cognac.
Nevertheless, the war has been straining his operation. He said that it was exceedingly difficult to find working-age male actors for his troupe of 75, as many are serving in the army or have been killed or wounded. He joked that he will soon have a "theater of pensioners and women." Nevertheless, he said: "Ukraine is unbreakable and a missile cannot stop us."
Across town, a boy had been born a few hours before our visit in the hospital where Dr. Lydia Lavrik works as the director of the gynecological ward of Chernihiv Central District Hospital. She estimated that the number of babies born in her hospital had gone down by about half in 2023, although she was hoping that the number would return to the pre-war level.
As Russians began to encircle the city on February 24, 2022, Lavrik managed to escape to her home outside the city and was not able to return for over a month. The next day, the hospital was shelled and the doctors and nurses of the gynecological ward had to move into another building where they worked during the siege. Part of the hospital -- including her ward -- was rebuilt with help from the International Red Cross and the International Medical Corps.
On the morning of April 17, 2024, three Russian Iskander missiles slammed into the hotel across from her hospital, killing 18 and wounding 60. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack would "not have happened" had Ukraine received air defense missiles from Western partners. At the time, U.S. congressional Republicans had held up a military aid package for six months; it passed on the day of our visit, April 24. The inside of the hotel was completely exposed to the rain; it looked like an open wound on the city.
The attack destroyed the newly renovated windows and some of the doors of the hospital. Nobody in the hospital was wounded. Lavrik held back tears, saying that once the hospital workers came back to the hospital, they "started crying because they saw that there is damage again." Volunteers began clearing the debris, "because it was very painful to see…and they wanted to clear it up soon" so that the hospital could resume normal operation.
She said, "It's unbelievable how this is still happening in the 21st century." As the tour finished, the air-raid alert app sounded on our smartphones. We left the hospital, and she ushered her patients into the shelter.
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