My War: The Day It All Began

Exactly one year ago, on February 23, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. No, I was not mistaken with the date: according to our American time, it happened on the evening of the 23rd. I remember that day very well.

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As an expert on American think tanks, I have had no doubts that there will be an invasion for at least a couple of months. We worked in an enhanced mode, calculated options, tracked the movement of troops. I remember what I wrote poems about the war a couple of weeks before it began as a fait accompli. And after the recognition of the “LDNR”, we were preparing for an attack in the truest sense of the word from day to day.

That morning, I called old friends and associates from America and Ukraine, took comments from them for ForumDaily about what to expect from Russia. Experts had no doubt that the blow would definitely follow, only its direction, scale and the measures that needed to be taken to prevent it varied - as it turned out, too late. When we finished, it was already late evening in Ukraine, the night was approaching, and we, on the contrary, had a bright sunny day.

Over the past 8 years, there were almost no people left in my circle who could even theoretically support the war. But it is paradoxical that on that day I was talking to just such a person. Of course, at the time of our conversation, he did not support any war. He was an elderly navy veteran whom I had interviewed many years ago when I was still living in Russia. I quite by chance crossed paths with him virtually many years later, already living in the United States, and was amazed at how sound and critical his views were towards the authorities. I was surprised and pleased with my discovery, and after that we continued to communicate occasionally.

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On that day, he celebrated February 23, and when night had already fallen in Russia, he called me a little drunk and gave me a very beautiful, but naive speech that all state borders are unnecessary conventions, that we are all people, one humanity, and we have nothing to share, we should all be together. Bright, kind and unrealizable thoughts about unity and peace. In general, he was always a very kind person, and yet, as it turns out later, even he believed the propaganda that “this, of course, is a tragedy, but there was no other way out».

But at that moment we did not know what would happen next. He delayed me, and I sat down to decipher the comments in the late afternoon, when one of my American friends, a former military man, who also expected an invasion from day to day, wrote to me: “It seems to have begun". Interestingly, at that moment for some reason I did not believe him, although I had no doubt that there would be an invasion in principle. But at this particular moment, I could not believe that right now, after all the words about peace, after hearing the voices of my Ukrainian friends in the morning, it could begin. I began to check the news, ran into a speech by Putin, then Zelensky, in Russian. My Ukrainian friends were still sleeping, I tried to call them and tell them that the war had begun, but I couldn’t get through.

I tried to pull myself together and began to finish the article. Surprisingly, our experts predicted everything so accurately that the material was not outdated, and almost nothing needed to be changed in it, except, perhaps, the title and introduction. Everything, that was predicted them, fit perfectly into the outline of the invasion that had begun. It felt like we did the unthinkable and got the comments in the first five minutes. Interestingly, I did not cry at that moment. It was some strange catharsis. Bombs were already exploding, tanks were moving, and I was writing an article, and it seemed to me that this was right. After all, we were ready, we had resigned ourselves to the inevitable all this time, and if all the readiness of the previous months meant anything, I no longer had the right to dissolve snot. I had to do what I had to. After all, we set ourselves up in advance that when it happens, it will be necessary not to cry in a corner, but to fight, protect, work uncontrollably. And now this day has come.

I held on until Luda, the editor of the site for which I was writing an article, appeared on the network. Lyuda is Ukrainian, but at that moment she was abroad. In Ukraine, she left a child, and she just arrived at the airport to fly home with him. Needless to say, the planes no longer flew to Ukraine. I was afraid to imagine how my mother felt at that moment.

I talked with Lyuda, then wrote to one of my good friends in Ukraine that if something happens to him, I want him to know: it was an honor for me to be friends with him. He answered me the same way and added at the end his invariable “everything will be fine.” After that, I already burst into tears - for real, bitterly, from pain and powerlessness. I realized that we weren’t really ready, no one was - simply because it’s impossible to prepare for this.

Then there was a hell of sleepless nights, constant work, volunteering and work again, analytics, forecasts, horror, hopelessness, fear, tears, pain and more tears, attempts to reach out to the Russians - for the first time in years; awareness of the futility of these attempts; pickets, rallies, calls, lobbying for assistance to Ukraine using all imaginable and unimaginable levers.

I remember that in the first days of the war I had a falling out with a couple of people who did not want to understand that I did not need to send news from the media or telegram channels. Not because I was hiding from them - no, I read them all, including tons of Russian propaganda. It’s just that in personal messages I received a lot of live stories, news from the fronts, defense orders and other important information that urgently needed to be passed on to the right people who could influence decision-making. In the stream of “extra” messages, I could miss important ones, so I tracked the news myself, and asked people I knew only for their own information.

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Shortly before the invasion, I met a girl from Mariupol named Maria online. She was a spectator of one of my interviews, where I argued the inevitability of the invasion. Maria was frightened then, but not so much as to leave the city in advance. She miraculously managed to get out of the city in the first week. She called and told me about the blockade of Mariupol and that it was very important to pass this information on. Then we still did not understand what kind of hell was going on in Mariupol. I remember how I answered her that I would definitely pass it on, as well as information on other cities, for example Kharkov, which is also being bombed. She answered: "You don’t understand, you can somehow get out of there, but there is a real blockade in Mariupol. There are thousands of people dying". Today we all know what happened in Mariupol, but she was one of the first to report it.

Then there was a lot, a lot of things: terrible, unbearable, incomprehensible either by mind or by heart. There were Bucha, Irpen, Kramatorsk, Vinnitsa, Dnieper, Bakhmut. Fortunately, Luda was able to take her child out, but many, alas, could not. A year ago, this day began with a peaceful American morning, while in Ukraine it was the last peaceful evening. One woman who met this night in Kharkov, told I was told that the night before the invasion was especially beautiful, and she and her children specially walked a long way back home to enjoy this night - a quiet, peaceful, happy February night.

That very night, when the drunken veteran was telling me about world peace, my Ukrainian friends were sleeping peacefully, and I was transcribing their comments. The night the war started. The scum who participated in its unleashing this year came up with there are so many crazy excuses why they kill people that only one conclusion can be drawn from all this: they just like to kill, they somehow feel uncomfortable without it. So, we need to live, in spite of everything, rejoice, fight, cope, love, look, like a year ago, into the starry February sky, because only life can be stronger than death.

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