Canadians will hear about significant Russian attacks on Ukraine through various media sources, but they may not realize that Ukrainians are living a daily life fraught with danger from drones, missiles and landmines, and that Ukrainians in various parts of the country suffer from a lack of safe drinking water and frequent power blackouts.
Russian invaded Crimea, Ukraine, in 2014 then launched a full-scale invasion of the independent, country on Feb. 24, 2022.
Last week, a Russian missile hit the Okhmatdyt children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv, as well as other regions of the country. Forty-four people, including five children, were killed, according to reports, and almost 200 people were injured, prompting Ukraine to call on the International Criminal Court to prosecute Russia.
Alexandra Smyrnova, who wants Canadians to know how grateful she and her family are for the “endless help,” they’ve received since their arrival in Canada, left Mykolaiv (a city and a province or oblast close to the Kherson region) with her children after Russia’s full-scale onslaught of Ukraine.
The family settled in Gimli in September 2022 and Smyrnova now works in a clinic.
She left behind a life she was very happy with, she said last week. She trained as a teacher of English and German before going back to university to study economics and launching a second career.
She and her husband, who is a professor, made a joint decision to part for the sake of their children. He was obliged to stay behind to serve in the Ukrainian military – his second time since 2014 when he served in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the eastern part of the country and was injured. Smyrnova also had to leave her sister, other relatives and her friends, who for various reasons decided to remain in Ukraine.
“I feel more comfortable if my whole family would be with me where I am. [My husband and I] spoke and we decided we wanted to leave Ukraine when the full-scale invasion began because of the kids. And because my region where I’m from, Mykolaiv, is very close [to Crimea] and very dangerous … we are thinking firstly about our kids, their studies, their mental health. I don’t want them to go through all this hell,” said Smyrnova. “Many of my friends in Ukraine are experiencing terrible days with all these strikes and bombs. I hope this is temporary and one day my family will be reunited, either here or there.”
Although there is some normalcy for Ukrainians, daily life in the beleaguered country is, for the most part, one of constant interruption from the threat of air strikes and from a lack of basic amenities – electricity for light, heat, cooking, refrigeration, air conditioning and the Internet, and safe drinking water, she said. She was able to visit Ukraine in May to see her husband and they travelled to some parts of the country.
Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea, is currently occupied and one half of the Kherson region (both in the southern part of the country) is controlled by Russia. But it’s the threat from the skies that can touch every part of Ukraine.
“From what I saw in May, Russians can send their missiles anywhere in Ukraine. Literally, all areas are under danger,” said Smyrnova, who experienced two missile strikes, one after another, in March 2022 that were “really, really scary.”
While she doesn’t want to get political, she’s hoping that the countries currently helping Ukraine repel the Russians can send as many weapons and as much ammunition as they possibly can so that “at least we can, we call it, close the sky.”
“The territory of Ukraine is [large] and probably that’s challenging, but we are in such a need of this air defence protective system,” she said, referring to NATO’s promise last week to provide Ukraine with five new strategic air defence systems over the next year.
In addition to the missiles, drones and landmines that are killing Ukrainians, destroying their homes and vital infrastructure, Ukrainians are experiencing frequent blackouts that are making daily life a struggle.
Smyrnova’s friend who lives in Kyiv, the capital city in north-central Ukraine, told her that after the Russian strike on the children’s hospital and other areas of the country, there was no power from 3-10 p.m. and then again from 10:30 pm until 7 a.m., she said. With many countries in Europe broiling under high heat, the devastation in Ukraine was made much more acute.
“You can understand it’s very hot in Ukraine. The temperature was around plus 40.5 Celsius yesterday. So [with no power, there were] no fridges, no freezers, no air conditioning,” said Smyrnova. “My friend was talking about her three-year-old daughter who goes to daycare, and after the cancer hospital was [struck], there were a couple of evacuations with about 25 kids sitting, literally, with little light, no AC, underneath the ground in their shelters with their teachers, and her daughter was scared and crying. That’s how they spend their time when danger comes. That’s how life is. And I’m talking about Kyiv, which is supposed to be the safest place.”
Under threat of missiles and bombs, simple pleasures Smyrnova said her family used to enjoy in Mykolaiv – mushroom picking in the forest, hiking with their beloved dog, swimming in the Black Sea at Odesa – would now be fraught with danger as there’s so much unexploded ordnance such as landmines everywhere, including in the rich agricultural land in southern Ukraine.
Ukraine has so far recorded 300 civilian deaths from Russian landmines left across wide areas of the country, and it’s collecting evidence for the International Criminal Court, according to Reuters news.
Ukraine has also suffered damage to the environment, which has in turn made water unsafe. Russia’s destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant and Dam in the Kherson region in June 2023 not only saw the evacuation of thousands of people from subsequent flooding along the Dnipro River, but it also contaminated the water with industrial chemicals.
“A challenge in my home city is drinking water because after Russians struck the Kakhovka Dam, it was a huge ecological catastrophe and Mykolaiv had all the drinking water brought from the other regions,” said Smyrnova. “I still have [elderly relatives] who are 80-plus and they moved from Mykolaiv to Kyiv because of the drinking water.”
Smyrnova said her biggest concern is that the attack on Ukraine will continue and that any peace agreement wouldn’t hold back Russia for very long.
“My biggest worry is that this conflict will somehow not finish – and by being finished I mean that Ukraine will win and Russia will fail – and that the conflict will be preserved. Or we’ll see not a 100 per cent victory, but a sort of agreement where they say, ‘We stop where we are now.’ However, we did this in the past before [current president Volodymyr] Zelenskiy. We had [president Petro] Poroshenko [broker] an agreement for peace between Ukraine and Russia, which was signed in Belarus. And none of the points were [adhered to] by Russia. Truly, I do not believe that any agreement will be followed 100 per cent,” said Smyrnova. “I don’t want this conflict and I don’t want my kids or grandkids to inherit this stupid, unnecessary war.”
Smyrnova said she wants to thank Canadians for their generosity and for the opportunities and endless help she and other Ukrainian newcomers received. That includes people in Gimli who welcomed them to the community and provided them with housing.
“Everybody has been so helpful and the help comes from everywhere,” she said. “I just read today that Canada approved over $280 million US ($389 million Canadian] to train pilots on F-16 jets. That’s amazing. I’m very grateful.”
Canadians don’t need to feel embarrassed if they’re not keeping up with reports of what’s happening in Ukraine, she said. Although she is touch with her husband and with friends and family in various parts of the country, she herself tries not to read everything and dwell on the horror of it all.
“I’m trying to feel mentally healthy for my kids and for me not to go insane and crazy,” she said. “That’s normal for a human being to not be too much involved in this horrible stuff going on.”
Gimli resident Romanna Klymkiw said there are attacks on Ukraine every day and she thinks it’s important to draw more attention to the ongoing invasion as there’s a danger that Canadians will become indifferent to the continuing plight of Ukrainians.
We need to keep Ukraine on our radar, she said, with “more Ukrainian voices and more Ukrainian news stories” that share the reality of the “war crimes” Russia is committing in Ukraine.
“We live in a world where it’s easy to scroll past all the unpleasant things we see on social media and we can become overloaded by information. We can become desensitized to the horrors of war because it isn’t our reality, but somebody else’s reality. This is the reality of the friends and family of our co-workers, friends and neighbours who decided to make Gimli their home,” said Klymkiw, who runs her own music school and was heavily involved in settling Ukrainian newcomers in Gimli during the first phase of the settlement process. “The reality is that missile strikes are happening in Ukraine constantly and we don’t see it in the news. This attack on a children’s cancer hospital in Kyiv is just one of countless crimes that have been committed by Russia over the past two and a half years, and they’re often invisible to us as Canadians. This is the reality people are living every day.”
Klymkiw grew close to many of the Ukrainians who settled in Gimli, she said, and counts them as her close friends.
“I hear about what their families are experiencing in Ukraine, such as the power blackouts six to eight hours a day in many cities,” she said. “They’re constantly afraid of missile attacks. I know people whose friends spent the night in bomb shelters with their children two nights ago.”
She said she’d like to see Canadians continue to put “pressure” on the federal government to provide Ukraine with air defence systems and more arms and ammunition.
“We also need to put pressure on our government to expel the Russian Federation from the UN Security Council of which they are currently sitting as the president,” said Klymkiw.
As for NATO’s dragging its heels on having Ukraine join the alliance, Klymkiw said, “I think we need to push for that to be fast-tracked.”
There are opposing views on Ukraine becoming a member of the 32-member NATO alliance, whose mission is to deter attacks on and defend its members and which continues to provide weapons to Ukraine to fight Russia.
At its summit last week in Washington, NATO stated in a press release that’s “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” but did not say when that could happen.
An open letter from academics printed in the Guardian newspaper last week said NATO shouldn’t allow Ukraine to join because it would oblige all NATO countries, which include Canada, to go to war with Russia.
But NATO’s stance on promising but not delivering membership to Ukraine was challenged last week by a Guardian columnist who asked quite succinctly, “what use is an alliance that is afraid of a fight” and that refuses to “directly confront Russian brutality.”
Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman MP James Bezan, who has extended family and friends in Ukraine, said NATO’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg was quite clear during a press conference that Ukraine’s membership hinges on their winning this war.
“Article 5 says an attack on one [NATO country] is an attack on all. Ukraine as a NATO member would [trigger] Article 5 and all NATO members would be in a war with Russia,” said Bezan. “I think there’s a lot of apprehension about doing that because it would mean putting their own men and women into the fight and many members aren’t prepared to do that yet.”
In the meantime, there’s more Canada can do to shore up Ukraine’s fighting capabilities, including the provision of a NASAM [national advanced surface-to-air missile system] that prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government “promised Ukraine over 18 months ago” but has yet to deliver, said Bezan.
NASAM can protect against drone, missile and aircraft attacks, and Canada is to purchase it from the U.S.
In addition to the air defence system, Bezan said Canada has surplus munitions that could be sent to Ukraine.
“We have a lot of surplus equipment here that should be sent to Ukraine. We have CRV7 [Canadian Rocket Vehicle 7] rockets that are sitting in storage. There are 83,000 of them and only 2,000 have so far been shipped to Ukraine,” said Bezan.
The rockets were taken out of service in the 2000s and are slated for demolition.
Since February 2022, Canada has committed more than $1 billion in military assistance to Ukraine and has donated vehicles, artillery, drone cameras, winter clothing and has provided training, according to the federal government.
With seemingly no end in sight to the conflict in Ukraine, Bezan said he thinks Canadians are feeling heartbroken.
“We want to see Ukraine win. We want to see Canada and our allies do more and do it faster. As someone who has friends over there and extended family, we definitely want to see this resolved. All we can do is keeping standing firm with Ukraine,” he said. “As Conservatives, we stand firm with Ukraine and believe we can do more to undermine Russia. We can take money out of [president Vladimir Putin’s] war machine by displacing oil and gas in European and world markets. The world has come to us asking for more natural gas and oil so that they don’t have to rely on Russian production.”
He called the Russian attack on the children’s hospital last week another example of Russia’s “barbaric and aggressive attack” on the country, and that Putin and his cronies have to be “held to account” for attacking civilians.
