The Russians have not unleashed a war against Ukraine. Nor against Europe. They have declared war against reality. Misinformation and falsehood have become the only means to think, the air they breathe. It is absurd and brutal, but it is the truth. It is the Russian "reality," desperately waging war against reality. Against facts, against the truth.
What can confront it? A return to life. Touching the hard surface of reality – its material simplicity. You must see and feel all this for yourself. You need to dive into the river of simple, raw reality. To enter it, as if entering a mine. Reality is right here. Next to us, below and above us. It is often harsh, sometimes mundane, but undeniable.
The reality of war reminds us that some people can become beasts again. And that soon, we and our children may die. But there is a way out of this. And there are those who defend us. Who delay the arrival of death for as long as they can. Often at the cost of their own lives.
The Ukrainians perceive reality. The reality of the land, our villages, the blooming reality of our gardens. We never wanted to leave here. Our metaphysics have always been material, our philosophy is intertwined with literature, our abstractions have sprouted from the soil of folk art.
"Deeply sunk to the knee in the earth, the dark crowd fell and rose again...", wrote Vasyl Stefanik over a hundred years ago. "The earth groaned from the beat of their hearts." "Deeply sunk, to the knee in the earth." In the embrace of the earth that sighs "from the beat of their hearts." The Ukrainians have become one with reality, they are rooted within it. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to defeat them...
