Defender’s Diary: Yaryna Chornohuz

Yaryna Chornohuz, 27, is a Ukrainian poetess, volunteer and soldier.  Instead of pursuing a career in philology, Yaryna opted for a marine’s beret. She is on Forbes magazine’s list of “100 Most Influential Women of Ukraine.” In a recent social media post, Yaryna shared her reaction to the barbarities discovered in Izyum.

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The world will likely never understand us. Mass ethnic cleansings and mass graves are things out of the movies for most modern people. You can make movies about history, but not about real-life stories happening today.

If anyone still insists on talking about “good russians,” or about providing them with the opportunity to “not lose the war,” or about “not provoking them to launch a nuclear strike,” then tell them about how crimes go unpunished.

Tell them about the horrific naivete of those who trample the person they’ve just murdered into the ground, like a cigarette butt that they’ve smoked in a no-smoking zone, believing that their crime will remain hidden forever; about their lust to take another’s life simply because they can, and that it will all simply “pass by.”

All of their dostoyevskies, bulgakovs, and russian classics, are about the drive to commit banal violence and get away with it, as is being photographed in Izyum right now.

No, it will not “pass by.”

After seeing these pictures, I do not care whether or not they use nuclear weapons on us. We have already survived unspeakable atrocities. Everyone who has been murdered, their bodies buried all over the occupied territories, are our contemporaries, and they have already endured something far worse than a nuclear strike.

When I go on a trip abroad and asked about negotiations with russia, I will answer them with a question of my own: Would you sit down at the negotiating table with the nazis of the new millennium, with those who trample the people they’ve murdered into the ground like cigarette butts?

Would you sit down at the same table with those committing genocide against your people?