Diary of an Invasion by Andrey Kurkov

Author:Andrey Kurkov [Kurkov, Andrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing Group

28.03.2022

Time to Sow Wheat

In Ukraine, the sowing campaign has begun. In villages where no explosions or gunfire can be heard, farmers go out to work the soil. Farmers near to battlefields can only watch nervously, their fields littered with burnt-out military hardware and unexploded shells. Yet they also want to get going with the spring routine. At great risk to themselves, some have even made a start. My friend Stas, who sells Dutch seeds to Ukrainian farmers, has returned to Kyiv having taken his wife and children to western Ukraine. He called to say he was working with farmers in the Kyiv region.

In Russia, the sowing season will also begin soon. It will, of course, be easier for Russian farmers to prepare their soil and to plant their crops. They will work in safe fields. For Ukrainian farmers, such work is now associated with a risk to life. Russian troops have long used up newly produced shells and missiles. Now they are firing shells and mines from old stocks, up to forty per cent. of which fail to explode. These dud missiles plough through the soft Ukrainian soil and lie buried a metre or much more beneath the surface, depending on the type of soil. The shells stay where they fell until someone accidentally disturbs them.

Some Ukrainian farmers have long been aware of these dangers. Since the start of the war in the Donbas in 2014, farmers there have had to bury colleagues who have been blown up in their own fields during the sowing season or harvest time.

Ukrainian farmers are gaining an interesting reputation. Recently, in the farmyards of one village in Zaporizhzhia region, the police found and confiscated eleven Russian tanks and a good many other enemy weapons. The police promised that after the war the farmers would be punished for driving off with the tanks while not informing the Ukrainian military about their finds. There is an ancient peasant proverb in Ukraine, “In a village farmyard, you can find a use for everything!” This is the attitude that probably inspired them to act as they did. The Russian soldiers had abandoned their tanks and weapons and fled into the forest when their column came under heavy shelling. They never went back for their tanks and most likely they have either now surrendered or made their way back to their own lines. I wonder what kind of reception they will have received?

Once the war is over, I can imagine that many farmers will try to keep the remaining tanks, cannons and other Russian weaponry – that is, if they have not already taken them apart and sold the metal for scrap.

Stories like these raise your spirits. It becomes possible to imagine an imminent victory. You begin to fantasise: what day will be celebrated as Victory Day in Ukraine? Ukraine has already abandoned the Soviet Victory Day of May 9, although a few Ukrainians, especially those of the older generation, continue to celebrate it. Others have switched to the European Day of Remembrance, May 8.

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