'The US went from greatest ally to a bully': Ukrainian poet Yuliya on the 3 year long crisis

As Ukraine marks the third anniversary of the war, how do you assess the current state of the conflict? Has anything fundamentally changed in terms of Ukraine's resistance and international support?

Let me start with a reminder that the modern stage of the war began in 2014, but Russian oppression of Ukraine and our resistance are centuries old. Also, calling this a conflict removes the aggressor from the equation – it's Russia's war. Three years ago, Russia expanded their brutal, illegal, and unprovoked war against Ukraine to full scale. Still, they have not been successful in their occupation of Ukrainian land, only 11% since 2022. Three years is a horrible anniversary, but it signifies our people’s strength and determination to defend our country, freedom, and dignity. It signifies the scale of heroism, strength, and professionalism of the Ukrainian armed forces, who have been holding off the much bigger enemy – just compare Ukraine and Russia on the map – with minimum weapons.

For a long time, Russia, an imperialist aggressor, has been appeased by the international community, which turned a blind eye to Russia's earlier wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria. The truth is hard to digest: Russia can only be stopped by force; any weakness encourages its further atrocities. Also, Russia is not as strong as it wants to appear. The delays and scarcity in the military aid from our allies prevented the Ukrainian army from liberating the land occupied by Russia.

The new U.S. President, Donald Trump, has claimed he could make a quick deal to end the war. No matter how noble the goal may sound, his methods have been the opposite of noble. The intent to hold peace talks without Ukraine was alarming enough. As a businessman, President Trump clearly cares most about profit, but all his demands are aimed at Ukraine – my wounded, unjustly attacked homeland that has already lost so much. Repeating Russian propaganda narratives and siding with Russia in the U.N., the current U.S. leadership has been pressuring Ukraine to accept the terms, which can only be called peace on Putin's terms or simply surrender.

Pushing Ukraine to cede the land is immoral. On Russia-occupied territories, Ukrainian people are being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, raped and killed. Captured by numerous videos and testimonies, the savage cruelty of Russian soldiers torturing and executing Ukrainians is appalling and inhumane. Ceding Ukraine's occupied territories to Russia means leaving our people in imminent danger and disrespecting the memory of Ukrainian soldiers who laid their lives defending their country.

A temporary ceasefire would only give the Russian army time to regroup and gather more weapons to strike again. Ukraine wants peace, but it must be a just and lasting peace. There is a simple way to end the war: the Russian army must withdraw from Ukrainian land. Russia must return all captured civilians, all prisoners of war, and all 20,000 kidnapped children, taken to Russia for adoption and indoctrination. Demands must be directed to Putin and accompanied by increased military support for Ukraine and harsh sanctions on Russia. War criminals must be held accountable; the unpunished evil returns.

Instead, the negotiations about the fate of millions of Ukrainians have been reduced to a mere business dimension. The February 28 meeting at the White House demonstrated that the current U.S. leadership completely disregards the human dimension of this war, which they claim to understand from social media stories. President Zelenskyy represents all of us, the people of Ukraine. Humiliating and gaslighting the victim does not indicate a leader's strength. Denying or distorting the truth does not change it. In truth, Russia doesn't want peace, but the current U.S. administration wants to get back to doing business with Russia — business as usual. It was shocking to see the U.S., our greatest ally, turn into a bully. This behavior not only undermines their commitment to protecting Ukraine's sovereignty but also contradicts the core principles the U.S. stands for. But we still have faith in the American people.

And we believe in Europe. Ukraine is a part of Europe, and Europe has awakened to boost our joint defense and stand united in the face of the Russian criminal regime. We believe in democracy, freedom, and dignity, the core values we share with many people and nations worldwide. Will the global community stay idle? Will countries continue doing business with the aggressor, knowing that they are financing the genocide of Ukrainians and helping destroy the rules-based international order? Kremlin's success would embolden authoritarian regimes around the world, inspiring them to exercise tyranny on both their neighbours and their own people.

From your perspective, how has Ukrainian society endured and adapted to three years of war? What are the biggest social and cultural shifts you've observed?

Russia has caused us so much suffering, death, and destruction. Obviously, we are exhausted, but it doesn't mean we will give up. This is an existential battle for Ukraine, a war of survival. Ukrainians have taken up arms, having no other choice than to resist. If we stop fighting, Ukraine will stop existing. Our people are determined and resilient, and, in a way, have gotten used to the new terrible reality.

We are working hard, our children continue to study in bomb shelters during air raid alerts. We look for sources of strength, whether big or small, to help us endure, whatever works: sports or gardening, adopting new pets, coffee with friends, or organizing small birthday parties for our kids. We put flowers in empty casings from artillery shells. Veterans with prosthetic limbs participate in dance and fashion shows. We find strength in humor, often black humor, which only people living under looming daily threats can understand. One must accumulate strength because the next day may bring another draining hardship and loss.

Almost everyone has lost someone in this war: a loved one, a friend, a family member, or more. Just yesterday, the tragic news came: my dear colleague, poet Svitlana Povalyaeva lost her second son, Vasyl Ratushnyi. He was an air drone operator and died on the battlefield in the enemy's attack. Vasyl was only 28. He volunteered to join the army in 2015 to fight against Russian aggression. His brother Roman, Svitlana's younger son, previously a civic activist and a journalist, was killed in battle at the age of 24 in June 2022. The mother lost both her sons to the war. This pain is unimaginable. Both were young, handsome, talented, and courageous – and they knew exactly what they were fighting for. This is the ultimate sacrifice for Ukraine's freedom. We can only honor their memory by our perseverance.

Volunteering and donating to the needs of our army have become a daily practice for Ukrainians. All of the cultural events in Ukraine now have a charitable cause, mostly helping raise money for our armed forces. It is thanks to our soldiers that we can further create and celebrate Ukrainian culture, while Putin's goal is to obliterate it. New cultural initiatives and projects are being launched, widely attended, and appreciated by the public.

At a time of Russia's genocidal war, people take pride in embracing their identity as Ukrainians. This includes discovering or rediscovering Ukrainian art and literature and buying books, among them classics and contemporary titles. Also, people read more books because of the electricity cut-offs caused by Russia's continuous attacks on our power stations — reading books helps save power on their devices.

The key shift is realizing that the war may not end soon and adopting a power-saving way of living that is fit for a marathon rather than a sprint. Paradoxically, the more pain and loss we experience, the less willing we are to make concessions to the enemy.

Recently, the U.S. and Ukraine signed a rare earth minerals deal. How significant is this agreement for Ukraine's economy and geopolitical standing? Do you see it as a sign of continued U.S. engagement, or is it primarily a strategic business move?

With this deal, our government hoped that U.S. investment would serve as a deterrent against future Russian aggression. In its turn, the U.S. government intended to recoup war aid expenses through access to Ukraine's mineral resources. However, the signed deal included no security guarantees; it was only a frame agreement. Much of the details would have to be elaborated in further negotiations. Only explicit security guarantees would make this deal truly favorable for Ukraine.

Ironically, Russia proposed a similar deal to the U.S. administration during the talks in Saudi Arabia in February. They also offered access to rare earth mineral deposits in Ukraine, namely in Russian-occupied territories in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The status of this discussion is unclear, but given the current stance of the U.S. administration, its very existence is abhorrent.

Your poetry often explores themes of war, loss, and resilience. How has the ongoing war in Ukraine influenced your recent work?

Very deeply. I felt the large-scale war approaching since 2014 when the Russia-controlled regime fell in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people chose their own way, together with Europe — but without Ukraine, Russia could not become an empire again. It never abandoned the ambition of restoring the Soviet Union, which was by nature a colonial empire of Russia, a true prison of nations. In 2014, I wrote poems like "Emergency Bag" and "Men Are Carrying War Inside Them" that now sound like premonitions about the future. I was devastated by the Russian occupation of Crimea and the parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, reacting to it in my collections Men, Women, and Children (2015) and The God of Freedom (2021).

However, in 2022, the bombing of Ukrainian cities and the further advancement of the Russian army into my homeland came as a shock. One can never truly be prepared for such things. I was lost for words but could not keep silent — I needed to mentally grasp what was going on, support my fellow Ukrainians, and, also, to address the outer world watching Ukraine's struggle from a safe distance. There was another blow: the global community didn't care enough to take action and stop the aggressor from invading an independent country at full force. Back in 1994, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons under security guarantees from the USA, the UK, and, most ironically, Russia. In this Budapest Memorandum, they pledged to protect Ukraine from external threats, but we all know how it played out.

My poetry language fell apart as did our everyday reality. However, I needed a way to verbalize these emotions — fear, pain, fury, and despair. Writing poetry after February 24, 2022, was like learning to speak again. My task as a poet was to reassemble the scattered language and forge a new one, telling about the genocide against my people.

My first writing that appeared in March of 2022 didn't look like the poetry I used to write, it seemed very plain and awkward. However, documenting the external (events) and the internal (emotions) was important to me, so I continued. After a while, I got some metaphorical force back, but my poetry language is forever scarred. How do you write about an air strike on your city, the death of your friend on the battlefield, or the murder of your dear colleague by a Russian missile?

Speaking about the bombings, murders, rapes, lootings, and destruction, requires a completely different language than speaking about love. You need a language that resembles a weapon: precise, sharp, straightforward, and frugal. A language to tell the truth and fight Russia's endless fake narratives and propaganda in this hybrid war.

One of my most popular poems is a variation of traditional wedding vows people have been using at actual weddings (The Vow). In 2022, I wrote a piece about a soldier's death. Later, it was quoted on Twitter by Melaniya Podolyak, the fiance of the fallen fighter pilot Andriy Pilshchykov, call sign Juice. This fact struck me as a realization: in wartime, poetry, once the language of wedding vows, becomes the language of obituaries.

You have mentioned that poetry can be a form of resistance. How do you see your role as a poet in today's Ukraine?

If you are a Ukrainian poet, you are a part of the endangered culture, enabling its continuity. Especially when you write in Ukrainian, the language demeaned, banned, and silenced for centuries, by the Russian and Soviet empires. So many of our brightest minds were physically exterminated — Stalin's regime annihilated over 30,000 Ukrainian intellectuals only in the 1930s: writers, artists, composers, theater makers, and more. They are called the Executed Renaissance. When I learned about them at school, I thought of all this as the distant past.

After Ukraine's 33 years of restored independence, our language and culture are under threat again. Our cultural heritage is being stolen and destroyed. Museums, schools, universities, and architectural sites are being bombed. Ukrainian books are being burned on Russia-occupied land. Poets of my generation are being killed: on the battlefield like Maksym Kryvtsov, in the Russian occupation after torture like Volodymyr Vakulenko, and in the civilian setting, at a restaurant, by a Russian missile like Victoria Amelina. As registered, over 200 people of culture were killed in this war, but the real count is much higher.

While Russia is trying to wipe out our national identity and culture, creating Ukrainian culture, writing in Ukrainian itself is an act of resistance — against the impact of forced Russification and the present Russian aggression.

Poetry carries our emotions to the audience and serves as a means to discover and understand Ukraine. We, poets, come to our readers as humans to humans, speaking about things precious to all of us across the globe. Can anyone be truly safe if international law and order come crumbling down? How would other dictators react if Putin succeeds? What would happen to the future of our children?

We must share our experiences, but we don't wish anyone to go through this. And that's why we are sharing. Ukrainian wartime poetry is not only a cry for help but a warning about the big evil growing stronger when ignored, underestimated, or appeased. When good people remain passive observers.

Your collection The God of Freedom has received significant recognition. What was the central inspiration behind this work?

In The God of Freedom, I explore the divine force of freedom that lives in every human being. It transforms you when your freedom is challenged or taken away. Freedom and dignity are the core values of Ukrainians, those that the generations of our people have been fighting for. And now is exactly the time when our freedom in Ukraine is under grave threat, as well as our lives — and also the global democracy. But we must find the strength to resist.

This book of poetry has an unwritten dedication to my father, who suffered for his love for freedom in the 1970s. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state where you could be punished for any pursuit of freedom, like my father was for his exploration of languages and other cultures.

My father came from a simple working family but had a talent for languages. He was fluent in English, good at Polish and German, and learning more languages. When he entered university, he started working part-time as a translator. Furthermore, my father loved rock music, like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and many other bands. In Soviet times, this could make you a target for the KGB. If such talent wasn't serving the regime, they had to destroy it. So my father was persecuted and tortured and, of course, couldn't finish his degree. To make a living, he had to go and work at the factory where he was injured and became disabled.

In 2019, I read a novel by Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things. Velutha's tragic story reminded me of my father when he was young and full of aspirations. And he was punished for defying the imposed rules of the Soviet occupational regime. Similarly, Velutha is punished for defying societal norms. So my collection's title was inspired by Roy's novel.

The book was written between 2016 and 2021, so it was heavily affected by Russia's war against Ukraine. It also reflects on various aspects of freedom: in a relationship, in bringing up a child, in hospital confinement during illness, and more.

It means a lot to me that The God of Freedom was shortlisted for the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Prize and nominated for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine's most prestigious literary award. In 2024,Arrowsmith Press in Boston, U.S., released this book in English translation by Olena Jennings with my assistance. It was included in the 10 Best Ukraine-related books by the Kyiv Independent. The God of Freedom is available on Amazon India.

At MBIFL, I was honored to present the book in conversation with Krzysztof Czyżewski, the brilliant Polish writer and essayist and the publisher of my poetry in Polish translation by Aneta Kamińska.

How do you personally cope with the emotional burden of writing about war and loss?

Writing about the war that hit your homeland is extremely difficult, as if speaking with a mouth full of stones and nails. I have a poem about this, which gave a title to my most recent collection, Stones and Nails, published in Ukraine in 2024. Each reading of this poetry makes me relive the trauma. However, it is much more painful to keep these emotions inside.

When my close friend, Hanna Osadko, lost her husband, Oleksandr, on the battlefield in the summer of 2022, she felt shattered. I suggested she collect his writing into a manuscript. His first and only book of short stories, Live Not Die, was published post-mortem and gained significant recognition by critics and readers. Sadly, this is a usual practice in Ukraine, publishing books the author will never see, often unfinished books. Honoring the memory of our lost loved ones and preserving their creative legacy does not ease the pain but adds meaning. This way, we prolong their presence among us and ensure their work makes its way to people, taking its well-deserved place as a part of Ukrainian culture.

In 2023, I left my secure job of many years in the IT industry to focus on literary work and cultural activism. When any day may be your last, you redefine your priorities and focus on the most important. There is no safe place in Ukraine now, as Russian missiles and air drones can reach anywhere. Shockingly, we have learned to live with this realization.

Ukraine is forced to fight this war to survive. However, during the war, life does not stop; we still fall in love, laugh, and seek joy and strength. This is also reflected in Ukrainian wartime poetry.

Your work has been translated into multiple languages. Do you feel that something is always lost or gained when poetry crosses linguistic borders?

Context plays a huge role in translation. A Ukrainian can read between the lines, but a foreign reader needs additional explanations — about the history of Russia's colonization of Ukraine or specific wartime events triggering certain poems. I have poems reflecting on the discovery of a mass burial at Izyum after the Kharkiv region's liberation from Russians, the horrendous war crime site, as well as on their destruction of the Kakhovka dam, the ecocide. In translation, these poems require explainer notes.

During translation, a poem is recreated in another language through the lens of the reader's familiar reality. Of course, we need to explain Ukrainian traditions, names, and geographical locations shaping the context — and the reason often is that Ukraine has been invisible to the world for so long.

Translating the 24-year-old Artur Dron's frontline poetry collection, We Were Here, into English, I noticed that the correctly reflected context, even its small nuances, can impact the entire perception of the poem. The music of the Ukrainian language usually gets lost in translation, but I always strive to preserve some of the rhythm and the author's writing style. Sometimes, a new wordplay, music, or new senses are born in the language of translation: “one of his faces an oasis and the other a sandstorm” (my poem The Vow). The beautiful rhyme “faces-oasis” is not present in Ukrainian but appears in English.

The core human values speak the universal language — love, friendship, home, family, hope — and these immediately shorten the distance to the reader and simplify the translator's job. These are things we are striving to protect in this brutal, illegal, and unprovoked war by Russia. But the extreme contrast of life and death walking now side by side in Ukraine is probably impossible to convey.

Overall, my poems have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2022, writers Ravi Shanker and KC Muraleedharan translated several of my poems into Malayalam, showing their great solidarity with the Ukrainian people in the face of Russian aggression. A recording of Ravi Shanker reading one of these translations concluded our performance, Tales of Hope and Courage, produced by Audiostories and led by my colleague Volodymyr Olshanskyi and presented at MBIFL. It was important for us to include it, and the audience was both surprised and moved to hear Malayalam in the Ukrainian poetry performance.

Ukrainian literature has gained global attention in recent years. How do you see its evolution, particularly in the context of the war?

The magnitude and versatility of Ukrainian literature, both classics and contemporary titles, are being discovered by readers internationally, thanks to the efforts of translators — and also to the courage of Ukraine's Armed Forces. I am happy to see more and more Ukrainian books published in English translation, opening doors into other languages.

The Ukrainian literary scene is still very active in wartime. Poetry and non-fiction are the most popular genres in Ukrainian literature right now. Poetry is a rapid emotional response to the shocks wartime is full of, a strong way of expression in the dark times. My publisher, Old Lion Publishing, one of the leaders in Ukraine, has doubled the number of new poetry titles in 2024. This includes my most recent collection, Stones and Nails. People are buying books and attending poetry readings en masse. Especially now, we are cherishing our culture, which the aggressor wants so badly to obliterate.

When reality is more striking than imagination, non-fiction is on the rise. To bring Russia to justice, its war crimes must be documented, and literature is instrumental in this purpose. Writers strive to document events, experiences, emotions, and reflections related to the war. Writing long prose between missile and air drone attacks, power outages, and horrific news is a huge challenge. However, we can see new novels being released as well. I expect more of them in the coming years as we are trying to comprehend the unthinkable horrors of this war and our people's bravery and resilience in the face of aggression.

I hope for more books written by our combatants, describing their experience on the frontline fighting the great battle against pure evil. Their unprecedented courage and sacrifice in defending their homeland have allowed Ukraine to withstand the enemy's attacks and us to continue breathing. They stand as a shield protecting Europe and the free world. Russia’s war must end with Ukraine’s victory, only this will secure lasting peace.

You have participated in MBIFL. How has this experience been for you, and what are your thoughts on the role of literary festivals in fostering cross-cultural dialogue?

I often travel and perform internationally, but MBIFL is one of the best literary festivals I've ever participated in; it is well-organized and full of amazing personalities and performances. I appreciated the opportunity to encounter India's magnificent culture, which I'd only experienced from books and movies. It was my first visit to India, and the audience's energy, responsiveness, and empathy moved me. People in Kerala are very open, sincere, and curious. Their sparkling curiosity is a wonderful trait I greatly appreciate.

Together with my colleague, Volodymyr Olshanskyi from Audiostories Production, we presented an audiovisual project featuring my poetry and the works of Ukrainian poets serving in the armed forces, Tales of Hope and Courage. These included the talented Artur Dron', Liza Zharikova, Ihor Mitrov, Eva Tur, and Fedir Rudyi. The poems were translated with the help of a team at Exeter University in the UK, led by Professor Hugh Roberts.

The project features music by Artem Bemba and the recorded sounds of cities and nature—the places in Ukraine that suffered or have ceased to exist because of Russian aggression— and video by Natalia Yastręmbska, including real-life footage. I am grateful for the poets’ trust in me, voicing their powerful writing at the festival. The audience reacted very deeply to the poetry and expressed many words of support after the event.

Another project Audiostories presented was a movie about Ukrainian writer and artist Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit. She loved Indian culture and wrote a six-volume novel about an imaginary trip to India. The audience reacted very deeply to this movie, which will soon be available on YouTube.

The festival curator, Sabin Iqbal, and the MBIFL team showed us great hospitality and a warm welcome in Trivandrum. Such a display of solidarity is invaluable to all of us in Ukraine. I'm truly grateful to the festival for providing a powerful platform for Ukrainian voices and literary work, especially now, during the dire times of the Russian war. Ukraine and India have more in common than one might think—our fight for independence against colonial rule, reclaiming our languages and culture, and healing of post-colonial trauma.

Through art, stories, and personal interactions, we can build bridges and deepen our understanding of one another. For centuries, Ukraine's rich culture has been hidden, appropriated, and destroyed. Engaging with Ukrainian culture is one of the most meaningful ways to support Ukraine and stand on the side of truth.