Reflections on “Invincibility” from Jami Devans now in Vinnytsia
In Ukraine you see, this word a lot: "invincibility". Here it is again - carved into a missile shell casing, that had been offered as a gift, and placed humbly by the sink at the Rehabilitation Hospital.
I have had to parse out what this word means... how it is different from 'losing', or 'defeat' for example. In America, I had only thought of this word's meaning one way - that you had 'won' every time.
Yet, in Ukraine, it is hard to think of what 'winning' means. The losses from this war are so apparent. The obvious victims of war - managing the streets, and the buses, with crutches and wheelchairs... people with shrapnel scars and burns that you try not to look at... the mostly women patching the fabric of society together at the shops, raising the children, staffing the offices - as the men are at war.
You don't see the missing dead, but you see the empty table at every restaurant reserved for the "fallen". You see the repeated funeral processions along the main boulevard. You are told that the cemeteries need new land to expand into. You hear from every family that there are empty chairs at the dinner tables.
In Ukraine, "invincibility" doesn't mean that you are not vulnerable. It doesn't mean that you don't have losses everywhere. It doesn't mean that Russia may not continue to try to occupy the whole country ... "Invincibility" here means that you will die before accepting defeat. It means that Ukraine will never be Russia - no matter what it costs the people.
It is also inevitable, in truth, that Ukraine... despite how often they are praised as "resilient", as "courageous", "so amazing" ... that they are literally running out of young men to fight; that civilians are left with no heat or power through the cold winters; that children are challenged to study while attending schools underground... And that everybody holds the untold reverberations of this trauma, and will, throughout the generations to come.
And yet, Ukrainians still embrace this word "invincibility", незламності. Russia may come for more territory, and leave genocide and ecocide in their wake, but Ukraine will never stop being Ukraine.
Ukrainians will never accept defeat, and for that they will always be invincible.
It is up to us, in the countries that still have democracies, that will decide how much destruction we will tolerate. How many countries will we let fall like dominoes under Putin? ... when will it be that we finally also step in?
As for Ukraine, they have already stepped in with everything, literally everything. Because they know that accepting defeat is worse than their own death. They may perish, but they can say "Україна ніколе не вмре", "Ukraine will never die".
A flag on the wall in the rehabilitation center (we are invincible).
What has already died in us, in America, that we have already succumbed to, that keeps us from showing up for Ukraine? What can we be reminded of? What that we can recover again, and step in for our Ally? I want to be a good American to my friend Ukraine, and I want my pride back as an American. I want to believe in something so much that I also will be invincible.