By Gilbert Doctorow, Blog, 12/5/22

In this installment I offer both an observation that may be characterized as totally relevant to the ongoing war and an observation that is timeless and relates to what Russian society and behavior is all about. What these have in common is that they are firsthand observations, based on what I see and hear from real people in St Petersburg during this visit.

The first item comes from a 20-minute chat with a fellow who has been one of my best sources of information on the war thanks to his personal relations with siloviki, meaning in this case military intelligence officers, that go back to his college days and to his initial service as an administrator in the penitentiary system.

As many readers are aware, my pied à terre is a one bedroom apartment in the outlying Petersburg borough of Pushkin, which in pre-Revolutionary times was known as Tsarskoye Selo, literally, the tsar’s hamlet. Just 200 meters from our apartment complex is the Catherine the Great summer palace and park, which is a major attraction for both domestic and foreign tourists.

This area today is also home to an important military school which has students from Africa and other developing world regions enrolled alongside native Russians. There is a training base for helicopter pilots nearby. And there is a military hospital of national importance. It is from the latter that today’s news comes.

My acquaintance tells me that the hospital is now filled with wounded Russian soldiers from the Ukraine campaign, and in particular with maimed POWs who were released by the Ukrainian authorities in prisoner exchanges. The hospitalized include a good many traumatized soldiers who were savagely castrated or otherwise disabled by their Ukrainian captors.

If publicized, these cases would be far more inflammatory in broad Russian society than the horrendous video which circulated in social media a week ago showing the brutal execution of a dozen disarmed Russian POWs by jubilant Ukrainian soldiers. Clearly, the Kremlin is holding this back, lest detailed knowledge of the Ukrainian brutality unleash violent emotions in the Russian public.

In these circumstances, I call attention to the very difficult balancing act required of the Russian President. The man has nerves of steel. He is surely under great pressure from the patriotic hard-liners in the Kremlin who are au courant about the castrations and other evidence of Ukrainian depravity. One nod from Vladimir Vladimirovich and Kiev would be leveled to the ground in a matter of hours. It is tragic that Washington and Brussels confuse this restraint with incompetence, fear and other nonsense.

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My second item comes from my visit to the Mariinsky-2 opera house last night to see the star-studded cast performing Verdi’s Otello under the baton of maestro Valery Gergiev.

The evening was interesting in many ways, starting with the top of the house seats we occupied because we placed our orders only the day before, when most everything had already been sold out and went for eye-popping prices. Indeed, apart from our top balcony seats, all seats at the opera yesterday evening went for between 8,000 and 9,000 rubles, meaning 120 to 135 euros.

By an ironic twist, our second row balcony seats at 3200 rubles, or 45 euros, corresponded one-to-one to the seats my wife and I used to buy for $3.50 each at New York’s Met during my grad student days at Columbia in the late 1970’s. Those seats, like the ones we had last night, were very high but also very close to the stage, if off to one side, which is never popular with the general public but is loved by professional music critics both for price and comfort. The Met seats came with a little table and light for the occupants to read their scores. The Mariinsky seats were simply more ample and more comfortable than what Americans would call Family Circle seats facing the stage directly.

However, what I wish to emphasize is who sat up at the top. They were more uniformly well dressed and even chic than the public in the parterre at ground level or in the loges and lower tiers, where we normally would be sitting for an opera performance. Why is this so? Because the Mariinsky gives out a goodly number of orchestra level seats free to university students, pensioners and the socially disadvantaged, and they, by definition, are not swell dressers. The people who laid out 45 euros for the top of the house all paid from their own pockets and came dressed in the high fashion apparel that is still the cultural norm, even if it disappeared in the USA thirty or more years ago, when folks attending High Culture events just ‘came as they are,’ as if they were at the cinema. This dressing down took hold in Europe more recently, but it is widely seen there today.

Why do I call attention to dress codes? Because there is a great deal more in clothes than snobbery. Dressing down, coming to the opera in torn jeans and sloppy sweaters, is an unmistakable statement that the rest of the world can go to hell, that one is concerned and absorbed only with Number One.

Not so in Russia. The old saying that Russian girls are born in high heels remains utterly true even in the midst of the present dull mood driven by the war in Ukraine. And during the break in the three hour twenty minute performance, our balcony cohort did not whip out home-made sandwiches and drink from concealed flasks. No, they stood in line to buy caviar sandwiches and éclairs together with flutes of Russian sparkling wine at very fancy prices, though matched by superb quality of the products themselves. This evening was an event, and Russians love to party.

Earlier in the war, I remarked that the Mariinsky was likely having financial difficulties now that it had lost its substantial audience of well-heeled foreigners from London, Paris and New York. What I see now as I enter the Mariinsky Theatre website to order tickets is that they are filling every seat in the house this holiday season for performances of The Nutcracker or opera performances like last night’s Otello at 140 euros a seat. And the audience is 100% Russian. A new equilibrium has been established and Russia’s High Culture has met the challenge of the foreign exodus.

It bears mention, that notwithstanding the high prices practiced at these most sought-after shows, the audience had a surprisingly good balance of old and young, including those who clearly are not students. Moreover, the old are not as decrepit as in the Met, nor were there medics in the wings for emergency aid, as we saw at the Arena di Verona this past summer. The balance of men and women was also fairly close, which is not to be taken for granted in the musical world at large.

By Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor, 12/5/22

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started last February, Mikhail Lobanov, a local political activist in the Moscow suburb of Ramenki, put a little sign on his balcony that said “No War.”

It sat there for months, apparently unnoticed, until one day police arrived at his door to arrest him.

Mr. Lobanov, a candidate for the Communist Party in last year’s municipal elections, is not the sort of person who is used to running afoul of Russian laws. But now he finds himself among the nearly 4,000 prosecutions under a pair of new laws that make it punishable to spread any “fake news” about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, or to make any statement that authorities deem to “defame” Russia’s army or officials.

A growing number of cases involve people speaking informally in workplaces, classrooms, social media, and even in church. The effect is to put people on their guard, even in private settings, creating an atmosphere of pervasive fear that has not been widely felt in Russia since Soviet times.

“These are clearly oppressive laws intended to suppress any criticism related to the war,” says Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Sova Center in Moscow, a human rights organization that specializes in the study of extremism. “The law on defamation is particularly odd, since defamation is normally a civil matter. Where there is criminal prosecution, it can only be aimed at suppressing criticism.”

“A bureaucratic machine is at work”

For most of the Putin era, average Russians had little to fear from any slip of the tongue or errant social media post, even as the state was selectively cracking down on avowed Kremlin opponents and pro-Western voices. Over the past nine months, it’s become a minefield for many more people, since the new laws are vague enough to trap almost any political speech, and law enforcement agencies seem bent on creating examples.

According to a study by the independent Public Verdict Foundation, about half of those arrested since the laws came into effect in March were charged with some kind of overt anti-war activity, such as attending a rally or displaying anti-war symbols.

But there have also been cases of people getting convicted for merely holding up a piece of blank paper in a public place, or a placard containing stars or asterisks rather than words. According to the group, Moscow-area peace activist Anna Krechetova was convicted and fined 50,000 rubles ($800) for carrying a sign that said “fascism will not pass.” Several people have been arrested for simply dressing in the yellow-and-blue colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Mr. Lobanov, after a sweep of his social media posts uncovered two more apparent infractions in his political commentary, spent 15 days in prison and paid 45,000 rubles in fines. Now, he is braced for more trouble.

“Once you get into politics in any form these days, I guess you have to expect this,” he says. “The police tell me it’s nothing personal, but they get lists from above and have to follow instructions. The courts just rubber stamp whatever they’ve been told. A bureaucratic machine is at work. … So far, I think I’ve gotten off rather easy.”

Alexei Onoshkin, an anti-war activist in the Volga city of Nizhni Novgorod, has seen a lot worse. He was arrested in August after authorities uncovered a social media post of his alleging that Russia had bombed a drama theater in the city of Mariupol where people were taking refuge. He was charged under the criminal part of the law on defamation and held in a SIZO (pretrial detention center) for several weeks until a court medical commission declared him insane and had him transferred indefinitely to a prison hospital.

In a voice message to the Monitor, Mr. Onoshkin also seemed to be bracing for worse to come. “Conditions in the hospital are better than in the SIZO, and the food is better, but my mood is heavy,” he said. “In my view it’s a blatant disgrace to put a person into prison, and then into a prison hospital, for political reasons.”

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment”

Experts say the current level of repression appears to be working, at least from the authorities’ point of view.

“I think it’s rather effective,” says Mr. Verkhovsky, the Sova Center director. “At first a big part of these prosecutions were for some street action, such as pickets or graffiti. But since summer it’s mostly about writing in social media. People who want to protest have been pushed from the streets to the internet. I don’t think the government’s purpose is to silence all criticism, but they do want to stop any public or organized expressions of it. In that, they seem to be succeeding.”

Most of the cases so far have resulted in fines of up to 100,000 rubles ($1,600). Repeat offenders, such as journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who made headlines with an on-air protest back in March, can get prison terms. Ms. Ovsyannikova, currently facing a potential 10-year sentence for public protest, appears to have fled the country.

It’s hard to know how many people have been imprisoned under the criminal provisions of the two laws, but it is probably several dozen. The now banned human rights organization Memorial, which was co-awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this year, maintains a list of several hundred nonviolent dissenters that it regards as political prisoners. Most of those are being prosecuted for “religious reasons,” such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Islamists, but 116 are listed as “non-religious” offenders presumably being prosecuted for political reasons.

One such person is Alexei Gorinov, an opposition deputy of the Moscow City Council, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for distributing “fake information,” after he posted on YouTube a speech he made criticizing the war.

“It’s absurd, disproportionate punishment, clearly intended to suppress any public discussion of the war,” says Sergei Davidis, a lawyer with Memorial. “The basic meaning behind it is that a person must know that the information he is spreading is false, while the truth is what state bodies declare it is. Thus the state demonstrates what people can hear and what they cannot. Thus, Alexei Gorinov, who publicly declared that there is a war, and children are dying in it, has been put into prison for seven years.”

As long as the war continues, the environment for public freedoms is likely to deteriorate, says Mr. Verkhovsky.

“The government doesn’t really need to tighten the laws, but they will probably grow tougher,” he says. “There is a kind of repressive inertia at work. And Russian lawmakers always feel like they should be doing more. So, this atmosphere will probably just keep getting worse.”

By Peter Van Buren, The American Conservative, 12/5/22

From the moment Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, there were only two possible outcomes. Ukraine could reach a diplomatic solution that resets its physical eastern border (i.e., Russia annexes much of eastern Ukraine to the Dnieper River, and establishes a land bridge to Crimea), and so firmly reestablishes its geopolitical role as buffer state between NATO and Russia. Or, after battlefield losses and diplomacy, Russia could retreat to its original February starting point, and Ukraine would firmly reestablish its geopolitical role as a buffer state between NATO and Russia.

As of Day 286 on this fifth of December, despite much noise about nuclear war and regime change, those are still the only realistic outcomes. Diplomacy is necessary and diplomacy is sufficient to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. Until all parties realize that, and agree to sit down, the increasingly bloody and efficient meatgrinder will continue. The current status of the war—this 20th-century, WWI-style conquering of territory by creeping land advances with 21st-century weaponry—cannot continue indefinitely. Both sides will run out of young men to kill.

Vladimir Putin’s goal in his invasion has never been something quick and has never included Kiev. It has always been to widen the speed bump that is Ukraine between Russia and NATO. This problem for Putin is ever more acute as NATO builds up strength in Poland. While powerless to negotiate for itself at the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was promised NATO would not expand eastward—a lie—and now Poland is sacrosanct NATO territory, as blessed as Paris, Berlin, and London, untouchable by foreign invasion.

The Russian countermove (and there is always a countermove, these guys play chess, remember) is to deepen the border with Ukraine and make it strategically impossible for NATO to cross in force. The war would be fought with NATO on Ukrainian territory. The idea that the Soviet Union was tricked in 1989-90 is at the heart of Russia’s confrontation with the west in Ukraine and no conclusion to that fight will take place without acknowledgment on the ground. That’s why any plan to drive Russia back to pre-February 2022 borders would be a fight to the end and an impossible victory for Ukraine no matter how much U.S. weaponry they are gifted.

So Russia wants the eastern portion of Ukraine (east of the Dnieper River) as buffer ground. It wants Crimea and maybe Odessa as staging grounds to drive northward into NATO’s invading flank if things ever come to that. The invasion of Ukraine is survival-level action in Putin’s mind (the West doesn’t have to like that or agree, but to understand it), and a settling of an old score from 1989, and it is impossible to imagine him, having taken the inevitable step of starting the invasion, backing off without achieving results. It is not a matter of “face,” as portrayed in the Western press, but one of literal life-or-death in the ongoing struggle with NATO. There is no trust, after 1989, in Putin’s calculus. Imagine North Korea asking to renegotiate the location of the DMZ at this point.

A quick word about the non-use of nuclear weapons. Putin’s plan depends on fighting Ukraine, and thus the U.S. by proxy, not direct conflict with the militarily superior United States and whole of NATO. Despite all the tough talk, Ukraine is not a member of NATO and is unlikely to be a member in the near future, and so the only way to assuredly bring America into the fight on the ground or in the air is a nuclear weapon. That opens the door for anything; until that mushroom cloud, Russia and the U.S. are a married couple having an argument, saying anything but limiting themselves to angry words and the occasional thrown dish. Set off that nuke and it is as though one partner escalated from late nights out with the boys to a full-on affair, and at that point all the rules are thrown away.

Anything can happen, and Putin’s plan cannot withstand “anything” in the form of U.S. direct intervention. Hence, no nukes. Putin will fight conventionally.

Sanctions don’t matter, they never have. From Day One, U.S.-imposed energy sanctions have played to Russia’s favor economically as oil prices rose. Things may come to a head in a month or two as winter sets in in Germany and that natural gas from Russia is missed but that is a domestic German problem the U.S. is likely to simply poo-poo away (once economic powerhouse and U.S. competitor Germany showed its first negative foreign trade imbalance since 1991, a nice bonus for America.)

Things got so loose that “someone” needed to blow up the Nordstrom 2 pipeline to make the point with Germany that it may have to do without Russian energy to maintain the fiction sanctions will bring an end to this war. Sanctions are a Potemkin mirage for the American public, not a restraint on Russia. There is no regime change coming in Moscow as there is no one with the power to pull it off who would want anything to change.

Putin’s call for diplomacy will occur only if the costs continue to mount on his side under his form of warfare. Here Putin faces a weakness, his chosen style of warfare. The First World War was still a play on 18th-century warfare, where two sides lined up across a field and shot at each other until one side called it quits. But it saw armies face off across those fields with 20th-century artillery, machine guns, and other tools of killing far more effective than an 18th-century musket. It was unsustainable, literally chewing up men and eventually simply wore out both sides. Fresh troops from the U.S. gave the advantage to the British and French side at the crucial end game of the First World War, but if the U.S. had stayed home in 1917 the war would have been, militarily, a ghastly tie.

Putin knows nothing short of a NATO strike can dislodge him from eastern Ukraine and thus he has no incentive to leave. Putin has from the first shots calibrated his invasion not to give the U.S. a reason to join in. That is why the tit-for-tat on weaponry used is so near comical; Russian fires missiles on Ukrainian cities, Ukraine demands anti-missile weapons from the U.S. America can salvage its self-proclaimed role as defender of the Ukraine simply with these arms fulfillment packages, along with a few special forces and CIA paramilitaries. Where are the Russian strategic bombers? Where is the global war on Ukrainian shipping? Where are the efforts to close Ukraine’s western border with Poland? Where is the gargantuan Red Army that NATO has expected to roar into western Europe for 70 years?

The conquest of Ukraine being treated as a small unit exercise tells us much. None of this is any great secret. The off ramp in Ukraine, a diplomatic outcome, is clear enough to Washington. The Biden administration seems content, shamefully, not to call forcefully for diplomatic efforts but instead to bleed out the Russians as if this was Afghanistan 1980 all over again, all the while looking tough and soaking up whatever positive bipartisan electoral feelings are due for pseudo “war time” President Joe Biden. As with Afghanistan in 1980, the U.S. seems ready to fight until the last local falls (supplying them just enough weaponry to avoid losing) before facing the inevitable negotiated ending, a shameful position then and a shameful one now.

A spheres-of-influence world has returned; acknowledge it with diplomacy and stop the killing.

By UWE PARPART AND DAVID P. GOLDMAN, Asia Times, 12/8/22

NATO sources as well as Russian military sources reject US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s claim Tuesday that the United States had nothing to do with Ukraine’s missile strike against Russian air force bases December 5 and 6.

“We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia,” Blinken told reporters during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Australian officials.

Multiple military sources in NATO countries as well as Russia contradict him, reporting that the reconditioned Russian Tu-141 drones that Ukraine launched at Russian air bases downlinked US satellite GPS data to hit their targets.

The 1970s-vintage Russian recon drones were converted into cruise missiles, fitted with new guidance systems and directed by American satellites, the sources said. Ukraine does not have the capability to guide missiles on its own, they added.

Russia’s Defense Ministry identified one of the weapons as the Tu-141 in a December 6 statement. According to Russian military sources, the Russians identified the Tu-141 from fragments recovered after the missiles struck Russia’s Dyagilevo and Engels air force bases.

If, contrary to Blinken’s denial, the United States provided guidance for the missile attack, then Washington must be well aware that this brings NATO forces to the brink of direct involvement in the Ukraine war and the Biden administration must be prepared to run that risk.

The damage that Ukraine inflicted on Russian planes at the two Russian bases is trivial compared with the strategic risk that the United States has introduced into the conflict.

As Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley warned on November 9, there is no military victory in sight for the Ukraine War.

Russia analyst James Davis writing in the December 7 edition of the Global Polarity Monitor, a strategic report published in cooperation with Asia Times, described a military stalemate:

Russia continues to pursue a defensive strategy in Ukraine to solidify defensive lines and to raise the costs of Ukrainian military operations…. Moscow also remains confident that the growing expenditures of the West to sustain Ukraine will motivate Western leaders including President Biden to explore the possibility of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Russia believes that holding the defensive lines will demonstrate that the cost of supporting Ukraine to achieve a complete reversal of the Russian position in Ukraine, including Crimea, is simply too high.

Milley’s mention of a “window” for peace talks during the winter pause in fighting provoked consternation among US officials who want victory at all costs. While Milley and US military leaders believe that the only way out of the war is negotiation with Russia, the US State Department and National Security Council are determined to achieve a military victory over Russia by any means necessary.

NATO is divided on how to resolve the Ukraine conflict. French President Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have revived the idea of offering security guarantees to Russia, including Ukrainian neutrality.

US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland visited Kyiv December 3 to reassure the Ukrainians that the US believes that “Putin is not sincere” in proposing negotiations “and not ready for this.”

Ukraine doesn’t have the forces to mount an effective counteroffensive against the Russians, so a military solution presupposes NATO troops on the ground.

The attack on the Russian bases might be intended to provoke a Russian response that would, in turn, justify the deployment of NATO ground troops in Ukraine.

American satellites used to guide missiles into Russian territory, might be considered legitimate military targets, Russian foreign ministry official Vladimir Yermakov said November 30. A Russian attack on US satellites could draw the US into a war with Russia.

A prominent Chinese military columnist, Chen Feng of guancha.cn (“Observer”), wrote December 7 that “It is an open secret that Western satellites are being used to support the Ukrainian army in operations, but it is also a matter of mortal danger.” Chen offered a stern warning to Moscow:

Unless Russia can accurately identify a small satellite that is supporting the Ukrainian war and release credible evidence, destroying a small satellite of the United States or a NATO country is equivalent to launching a war against the United States or a NATO country. As far as the existing technology is concerned, it is impossible that Russia would have the ability to accurately identify the suspected satellite. Taking the initiative to draw the United States or NATO into the Ukraine war may not be a consequence that Russia can afford.

Yermakov “should not have made such a statement,” Chen concluded.

Guancha.cn frequently raises issues of importance to China’s leadership, and Chen’s widely-followed column suggests that Beijing has serious worries about the possible widening of the Ukraine conflict into a world war.

A Russian source with access to the thinking of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle said that Russia would not retaliate against US satellites. “That would be a casus belli for the United States,” the source said.

NATO military analysts worry that Russia might launch an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a conventional rather than a nuclear payload at a major Ukrainian target, as a warning to the West about the consequences of escalating the conflict. IRBMs travel roughly ten times faster than cruise missiles like the TU-141 and are practically impossible to shoot down.

A Russian military analyst, though, told Asia Times that this tactic was discussed and rejected by the Russian military. Reconfiguration of missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads would be difficult and time-consuming, the analyst said.

First of four essays:

CAT BENEATH A BIRDLESS SKY By Ludmila Kheronsky, Orion Magazine, July 2022

NOW IT IS THERE. Harsh sound behind the window. Thth-th-th-sss-ss-bang! The cat jumps and hides under the bed, then under the sofa. My black cat is hiding in the shadows. My body is trembling.

I shy away from the thought that this will continue. I want to stay strong. And I want to sleep too. But how do I sleep after THAT? What if we are never to sleep anymore? I try to imagine our sleepless nights, heads up.

The explosion. Russia has finally decided we are too unimportant to let live or sleep. Or have happy, unscared pets.

Later I will learn cats hear the missile three or four minutes ahead of its actual appearance. If you want to know there is a missile approaching: look at your pet. The cats begin to run back and forth in dismay, bumping against the walls. I talked to a woman from Lebanon who said her cat behaved the same way before the rocket shelling—running about the room, restlessly beating up and down the walls and windows. That was back in 2008, she said. That is what I see in 2022.

First, I listen to my body, to my chattering teeth. This chatter, animal fear, so shameful. Should I hide under the sofa, too, and lie there flat as a pancake? A cat hides under the sofa, but where can a human creature hide when home is no longer safe? How soon do I disappear?

I go to the dining room.

I try to make coffee. My first war coffee, at four o’clock in the morning, right after the explosion.

These rockets, the heavy pieces of deadly metal, how much do they weigh? Later I will know they can weigh up to four thousand kilos.

Nothing I am aware of weighs that much.

Even the cupboard, that antique piece of furniture we had restored and repaired and brought back in with the help of three strong men, does not weigh that much. Besides, no sane person would shell cupboards…

I go outside. The sky brightens, the white-and-blue sky of the first war morning—so far and so close. Every tree in the garden witnesses us. I need reliable witnesses to tell the story of the early morning rocket explosions.

The war erodes your breathing. It becomes hard and cloddy, like damaged soil. I will find it hard to breathe later on. My breathing will become bumpy, I will pant and wait to breathe out. That’s how breathing resists pain and despair. Look at other people to see how they breathe and you can tell right away how troubled or untroubled they are. Some people develop unnoticeable breathing as if they are not there anymore. Wars are unfit for breath.

The war morning: everything has become grayish. Even the bright crocuses are not as bright anymore. The flowers look ashy.

I’ve always loved making a fire in the fireplace, the smell of burning wood and the dying ember in the end, the ashes. Will I love it as much as I did before?

I can’t say what I will appreciate most as life is broken in two parts—before the war and during the war. During the war I need your citizens walking along the streets. I need to talk to taxi drivers, to bank clerks and shop assistants. While talking to people, I regain the feeling of being alive, the pleasures of staying normal. Life strives to be sane and people get up and go to work. Someone bakes bread.

Get up, take a shower, do your work.

We don’t have a basement where we could hide in bombardment. Neither do we have a place that could protect us from the missiles. Of course, a missile may hit our home directly. The chances of survival are very low then—but what if it explodes nearby? Then a window glass shatters, pieces fly everywhere around us, at us.

So my first activity this morning is to build a barricade of our books on the windowsill. These are books written by me and by my husband—extra copies at home, they now serve to protect us if our street is shelled. This is the room where we hide from missiles.

How do I prepare my house for war? What else do I need? Blankets, sheets, shawls? Will my favorite cashmere shawl do? I need an elegant covering from this nightmare.

Quick glimpses around the rooms of my home: so many beautiful things around me seem useless now. Dolls, beads, pictures, figurines, books on the shelves. I need shelter. I wrap my cashmere shawl around my shoulders.

My mom lived through World War II. She understands.

“Don’t leave your home,” she says. “Do they shell around your house?”

Sasha Matveeva/Unsplash

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Okay, then,” she says, “don’t leave.”

After the war started, we had an “evacuee” in our place, a tall silent woman with two children. The children were skinny. They were very poor. People shared some plain food with them. Nobody knew her name. We called her “Evacuee.” People who have no home lose their names.

I still have a name. My name is Ludmila. I have my home, though there are missiles flying above it. I used to wake up and talk to birds in the sky. The birds are gone now. It’s too loud for them to stay on our rooftop. I fill a windowsill with books to protect my husband and our cat from the glass shower during the air raid. I booked it. I used words for protection and safety. I think it will help.

I need to find a flashlight. And a go-bag. It should be very small, but it should have all my life in it—everything I love and value and everything I might need—family photos, books, documents, food and water, medication, cell phone, chargers, money, and my necklace, and warm clothes, and our collections of art, and my pillow, and my cashmere shawl, and my lipstick, and my husband’s glasses, and my fear, and my grief, and my anger, and my hope.

***

Read the other 3 essays here.