Anna Romandash is an award-winning journalist who works for CNN, Radio Free Europe, Open Government Partnership, Freedom House and Deutsche Welle, among others. She normally works as a reporter and digital policy expert focusing on sustainable media development, human rights and access to information.Now she covers the war. She participated in the M100YEJ in 2015.
Twitter: @annaromandash
I am anxious what the anniversary brings. On February 24, 2023, it will be one year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war, however, started a very long time ago. There was a war in Donbas and annexation of Crimea since 2014. There was hybrid warfare and propaganda campaigns. There were history manipulations and normalization of Russian imperialism, offensive language toward Ukraine and Ukrainians, and attempts to break the state from within.
I realize that as I write this, there is an innocent person who is dying. Soldiers, civilians – all people of Ukraine are at a constant risk. This is a never-stopping anxiety, a realization that someone out there is trying to kill you, and there is little I can do to shake off that feeling. Many Ukrainians – myself included – feel what I call a self-sabotage: we don’t want to be too happy, too normal even when something good happens because it feels like we’re betraying those who are suffering and grieving. We all grieve for the people we know and don’t know. Every loss is personal.
This war is truly senseless. I used to try to understand what was inside an average Russian’s mind. Why so hateful? Why so aggressive? Why celebrate the murders of your neighbors? But I am not questioning them anymore. What I’ve seen by analyzing Russian social media, narratives, and popular sentiments, is that Russians truly hate us. When Ukraine wins the war, this hateful neighbor to our North-East is not going anywhere. Ukraine will need to defend itself constantly. We will never be safe as long as Russia is the way it is – and I have good reasons to believe that it is not going to reform itself any time soon. As most Ukrainians, I see so-called Russian liberals for what they are – anti-Putin imperialists. They may dislike Putin, but they use the same slurs and the same narratives toward Ukraine, Ukrainians, and Ukrainian history.
So I view this anniversary carefully; and I know the year will not be easy. We have survived the initial shock, the panic attacks, and the fear of the unknown, but the war is not going anywhere just yet. What I’ve been doing this year is trying to advocate for Ukraine and educate the world on what Ukraine is. I see some consequences of my work – as well as the work of many other Ukrainians. People abroad see that the Russian aggression is a threat to the world, and the reason our European neighbours don’t have Russian tanks rolling on their streets is because of some brave men and women risking their lives, getting wounded, and dying even for the freedom of Ukraine and the rest of the world.
My hope is that support for Ukraine will not seize; my hope is that it will increase. My hope is that empathy does not have an expiration date, and that even the war-deniers see how ignorance and passivity are the worst approaches toward dealing with Russia.
I am grateful that I am a journalist so I can make sense of this reality through my reporting; and I hope to help others make their own senses and conclusions on the Russian invasion through informing them well. I keep collecting people’s testimonies and stories from the war, and I hope to amplify Ukrainian voices and experiences through my work as long as it is takes.
