SABALDASHOV VICTOR VICTOROVICH

– Written by Sabaldashov Victor Victorovich Translated from Ukrainian by the author and copy edited by Stephanie Coughlan

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

I went from Mykolaiv city to my native village. This is where I started writing this diary.

I didn't volunteer for the military, I’m not the "Ghost of Kyiv", I didn't tell a Russian

warship to go fuck itself and didn't do many other things.

However, I am also fighting my own war.

Uncle Vitya

I sleep in three pairs of pants and four socks without undressing at night. I haven't shaved or washed for three days. My mobile phone is always on the charger. My favourite cat, Eva, is always sitting next to me. My backpack with money and documents is always ready. I call the same friends twenty times a day in rotation. News in the Viber group and local publications are always streaming. For the first time in my life, the shelter is not a warm bed and a greased right hand, but an old basement. And all this happened not because I finally fucked up, but because

There is a WAR in my country.

Today, I had to sit for an hour and a half in an old basement built by German colonists in the 19th century and listen to the sounds of sirens, and then – what is even more frightening – to the sounds of possible explosions. This is a deep basement made of shells. A long corridor leads down to it and closes with an old red wooden door. Inside, in the center, lies half a bag of potatoes in a net, a shovel, a crowbar, a hammer and an axe. On the right are three wooden chairs and a single bed. At lunch, I brought a box of twists, red peppers, salads, and bottles of water. This basement is very cold and incredibly sad. The sadness is compounded by the fact that it is not ours, but our neighbour's seventy-year-old uncle Vitya’s. A few years ago, his mother, Zina, died. She always went to the village market at 6 a.m. and never returned emptyhanded, even though the market didn’t open until 7 a.m. No one knows how she did it. Aunt Marusia, who on her deathbed repented to drinking vodka, left this world several dozen years ago. In the end, it was not the vodka that killed her, but cirrhosis of the liver.

Uncle Vitya, who was Aunt Marusia's drinking companion, drank even more after her death. As a result, his children and grandchildren abandoned him, the yard was completely neglected, and, according to my grandmother, snakes lived in his old well. Today, I sat and looked at Uncle Vitya, who was talking to my grandmother. They gabbed about the 70s. Not the stereotypical reminiscing of rock-n-roll, drugs and how they drove drunk on "Zhiguly" and beat up the locals, instead they discussed who lives where now, whose land will belong to who, and, finally, the fact that we are not safe in this basement. Uncle Vitya said that this basement will be destroyed by the slightest wind.

I put my hands on my head and such hopelessness prevailed in my soul that I dreamt of becoming a bird, a cat, staying in Europe and working for free – anything – so that I wouldn't be here. Anywhere but here. Uncle Vitya continued to talk. And I wondered – was it really like that in USSR, in 1941? Could they really sit and talk like that in besieged Leningrad, where shells blew up every day and people drank water from puddles? And when the next sirens sounded and the bells rang in the local church, I continued to listen to Uncle Vitya. On May 29, he will turn seventy years old. And then I thought – what if I should start talking? During these times, is there anything important? Money? Life? The world has moved on. I understand that man is the strongest creature on the planet. No one but he can withstand EVERYTHING. However, I don’t want to improve this. I don't want people to die from our bullets one day. I don't care if Putin is sentenced to three castrations in a row. I just want to keep sitting and listening to Uncle Vitya.

Joe Biden

A typical morning consists of coffee and a cigarette. Then the usual several-hour news marathon, nerves and stress. I decided to dilute them by offering my younger brother, Sasha, the opportunity to do DDoS attacks on Russian sites. But it turned out that my personal IT guy installed an incomplete version of Windows, so I couldn’t install the attack program. I got a little upset, spent half a day trying to start the flash drive through the BIOS, couldn't do it and decided to go smoke the last cigarette. When I opened the pack, I saw that there were two cigarettes – and I was indescribably happy about that!

Basement Diary

News about Russia's nuclear readiness and Belarus’s invasion came in the evening. I began to get very nervous, took two sedatives and watched Nickelback's clip "Someday" ten times in a row. It calmed me down a bit, but at 9:02 p.m. the sirens sounded. I was the first to fly into that fucking basement. This time, we sat with a candle, and it was already more like besieged Leningrad. Uncle Vitya said that he would not go down here again. After fifty minutes, we returned back to our beds.

Before that, I called my friend Gesha in Mykolaiv, and he entertained me with a funny story. Imagine Putin has a large instrument panel where, in addition to other red buttons, there is one with the name of my village written on it. And I imagined that right then, he is sitting with Kremlin advisers shouting at him and petitioning him not to fire. He presses the button. The rocket flies around my village, and an hour later, Zelensky calls Biden and says, "That's it, Joe, I'm going to surrender. There is no strength. This village is the last straw." "No, Volodya,” Biden replies, “this is the last straw for me as well. In the evening, I will send special NATO forces."

“Thanks, Joe!”

Grandmother Ganya

Grandma is celebrating her seventy-eighth birthday today. In this regard, she asked my mother Lena to go to the centre and buy tangerines. Mom explained that she couldn't do it because a war was going on. Instead, I went. I made coffee, finished the last cigarette and went to the shop. I wanted to get some fresh air and chill. In the evening, I went out into the backyard, grabbed a broom and started sweeping up straws, tree scraps and trash. The wind was blowing outside. I looked at the washed clothes that swayed under pressure and remembered that, as a child, I always helped my grandmother sweep the whole yard. I always hated doing it. But then I went outside, took a broom – one sweep, two sweeps – and all the grief and anger went away. This process took about two hours, including the removal, and therefore, my grandmother and I were immersed in conversations about everything. When I left the village to study in the city, I always returned home. Every week. Once, I decided to stay for the weekend in Mykolaiv. I had to arrange a whole lecture to my mother that everything would be fine and I wouldn't be walking late at night in the centre of Mykolaiv. But as time passed, I fell out of youthful freedoms and plunged headfirst into a worthless routine. And one time I came home and realized I’d grown old. I suddenly became an independent man, who now had to solve his own affairs, fight for saving money and curse the wasted weekend.

I came to the house and sat down next to my grandmother. No one in our family had ever sat next to her like that. Now I see not her silhouette, but my mother's, going out in the morning to the summer kitchen. Grandma watched a program on the Russian TV channel, where a nineteen-yearold girl was happy that she had found her biological parents through a DNA test. Grandma kept saying something. I was looking at the screen and a visceral sadness came over me. Who knows how much time we have left? How many more times will I see my grandmother? How many more opportunities will I have to say something to her and hear the answer? Her loneliness is felt not because she sits in her room all day and watches TV, but because people who can talk to her pass her by. Then I began to think about my pets which were left in the city – Robert the rat, the birds and the turtle. They are still locked in the apartment. The poor creatures rummage around the apartment looking for food. They wait for me, but nobody comes. They are afraid and very, very lonely. We didn't need a war to realize that we are all totally alone. Our resilience is in the belief that it will all come to an end. And what then? We'll go back to our favourite routines, go clubbing, film hookers, and on weekends do laundry and buy a new Robert. There are things that can be replaced. The only thing that should not be changed is people. People don't change.

Putin

In the afternoon, I made myself some coffee and went into the forest. I stood, looking at those places that I love to visit so much. There was silence all around. The birds echoed. Our cat, Marquis, ran after me all the way there. He rubbed against my legs and yearned for petting. Somewhere in these sleepy forests rests my beloved dog, Bimka. At the age of seventy, I will move here myself. Someday, I will be buried here. On Halloween, I will rise from the grave and have a whole evening to walk around the village. First, I will go to my house. Through my favorite forest. But I will see completely different people there. A young married couple will be working in the backyard while their little child runs after the dog and reaches out for mom. They will smile. Maybe one of them will remember that we gave them that smile. Blood and suffering fall on each generation's shoulders – this is the price of freedom. Millions of victims have laid their heads on the cross before Calvary to deserve the right to live. But while my heart is still beating, I would like to

ask:

"Mister Putin, what the hell?" Seriously, the fuck? You are the same age as Uncle Vitya, but I don't hear ideas about world domination and nuclear war from him. I'm sure you take pills for diarrhea and hemorrhoids every day. Your great mind throws out such spontaneously evil declarations that even your assistant’s hair stands up on his testicles. And what are you doing all this for? Because of that young prostitute who refused to get into your car on the Kyiv highway in 2013? Vladymyr Vladymyrovych, how would you act in her place? She saw an old grandfather, realized that you could impress her with nothing, and refused you. And what did you do? Went to a club, got drunk like a pig (with your sick heart), sniffed "coco" and decided to get off in front of her? Woman is a creature, but autonomous. She will not give in to such blatant attempts to show off what you haven’t had for a long time.

Finish it, Vladymyr Vladymyrovych! At least in that way...

Stepfather

Happiness is in the little things. At 7 a.m., my mother came into our room and said that our stepfather, Pasha, had gone crazy, stayed up all night and wanted to take us to Lviv. She said we should pack our bags right now. Our stepfather came after, began to cry and asked us once to get up again. I quickly got up, dressed, went outside and smoked a cigarette. I stood and thought that every day of the war is unique. It brings another kind of fuck: Ukrainian nuclear power plant caught fire, Belarus invasion, only two cigarettes left. The last one upset me the most. Logic kicked in after a few minutes and I began to imagine how we were driving a dead "Lada" car for a thousand kilometres through the countryside, roadblocks with machinegun queues, dug-up roads, no gas stations and a fucked-up stepfather. We would have to turn back. I shared this information with my mother, who shared it with my stepfather. He took two tablets of sedative and calmed down. Apparently. Because after that, he sat and watched a USSR film. And I went to the shop with my mother. There were no cigarettes. I instructed my mother to visit our neighbor on the way back. Rumor has it that she sells cigarettes illegally. Mother returned empty-handed. I was extremely upset. As is appropriate at such moments, tunnel vision kicked in as I went on a hunt for information – googled the news, trying to find confirmation of my fears to build on my nervousness. But there was no confirmation. Then, in our Viber village group, a man wrote: "I'm in Mykolaiv, who needs cigarettes? There's Marlboros and Rothmans". I called and asked for two packs of Rothmans. An hour later I was standing in the city centre, near the store. A white car drove up. The man took out the Rothmans. I handed over the money. We exchanged a few words about the state of affairs. Then parted ways. I would go home, happy as a lark. Happiness is in the little things.

Occupant

At 8:25 p.m., I was petting my cat and saw a glint of light in the window. I thought: "Must be a car." And then it dawned on me that there could be no light now. There's a curfew. I got up, opened the window and saw that it was coming from our neighbor, Krusir. The light hit the sky. I passed this information on to my mother. She went to the bathroom, looked for a long time and came to the conclusion that it should be okay. "Krusir cleans the sewers. And so no one sees that he drains all the dirt to the deceased neighbour – he does it in the evening." And I fell asleep.

In the afternoon, I saw enemy ravens had flown into our field. Their herd screeched uncontrollably, sat down on the territory of the grass and began to peck the young sprouts of the future harvest. It was clear from their crazy eyes that they are robots, and have poison – like in the third part of "Resident Evil" – and they will start attacking and biting me. I put down a cup, took a small stick and shouted "Fuck off!" and ran through the garden directly towards the enemy. Ravens immediately took off and rushed towards Russia with curses. They were overtaken by my curses: "Fly to your fucking Russia! Although you still have nothing to eat there!"

Death to enemies!!!