Airport as the follow-up to Maidan

The Day played host to Los Angeles Times reporter and photographer Sergei Loiko, who just had presented his book, Airport, in Kyiv. For Loiko the war in Donbas has been the 25th one where he was to witness horrors, heroism, and tragedy. Airport Donetsk, where the author shot an extensive series of photos, has become a symbol of the triumphant spirit of Ukrainian troops. At the same time, its destruction epitomized the insanity that comes with war. For Ukrainians, Russia’s aggression became an unexpected trial of our will to defend Ukraine’s statehood.

What was the point of defending the site, which was doomed to fall, sooner or later, given the objective situation? Was it worth giving up lives for, and running unprecedented risk and hardships? Among the pictures of human fate, Loiko is asking this question again and again, to himself and to his every reader. Through this prism, the fundamental issue of resistance to aggressor opens: how integral and consistent Ukrainians are as a nation. “Nowadays, Ukrainian government is lagging behind the pace of Ukrainian society,” states the author, “whereas in Russia, conversely, government dominates the people. The airport became a follow-up to Maidan, with its unprecedented desire to stand up for one’s rights, territory, and dignity.”

Loiko is convinced that one man is responsible for unleashing the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin. However, the war had its forerunners: total propaganda, imperialist thinking, and the treatment of Ukraine as Russia’s province by most Russians. Even some Russian liberals, advocating democratic ideals, sometimes fail the maturity test when it comes to the occupation of Crimea. All this reveals deep-lying issues, which for both nations it will be extremely complicated to solve in historical perspective. But it must be done. “Putin will be gone, but we will have to find a common language,” says Loiko, “that is precisely why we must keep a sober evaluation of the situation and avoid the temptation to cultivate mutual hatred.”

We offer our readers fragments of the interview, which will appear in The Day’s next issues:

“There was not a single idiot among the cyborgs. They all were fine fellows. Now many ask which parts of my book are fiction and which are fact. Ninety percent of what I have depicted is reality, ten percent is fiction. It is up to the reader to identify it.”

“At a certain moment you come to think, why on earth are you defending this airport? Objectively, it was impossible to keep it. The airport has become a symbol of civilization which man builds with one hand and destroys with the other.”

“Russians were prepared for the war by the mass media. They had been forcing up the hysteria. Nevertheless, it was impossible to imagine a war between the Ukrainian and Russian nations. How can one hug with one hand, and stab in the back with the other? No one expected that. Most of the people in Russia still do not realize the depth of the crime perpetrated by Putin. It is not even the matter of the losses suffered by both sides, although they are grievous. It was a disgusting, cynical attempt at dividing nations on the basis of ethnicity. The aggressor says: this is Russian-speaking population, and we will defend it. Defend from whom? Then they came up with ‘fascists’ and ‘Ukrops.’ Why did 86 percent Russians fall for this lie? Because in their mind, Ukraine has never been, never become an independent country. For them, it is a southern province with a certain set of hackneyed stereotypes: salo, a funny accent, Gogol fest with elements of Taras Bulba style harshness, and the fact that Ukrainians live on Russian gas. All of this, because Russian television will not tell them otherwise.”

“If instead of Malaysian Boeing, a Russian passenger flight had been downed above Ukrainian territory last July, the next day all the armed hordes, concentrated along the border, would have marched into Ukraine. What the Kremlin is doing is inexplicable even from its own perspective.”

“The only prospect resulting from such behavior is turning Russia into a North Korea, in comparison with Europe and the US. Who can enthuse over it except Putin alone? Putin’s decision to start war on Ukraine is ruinous for all, including his entourage. War on Ukraine is his whim, which he even cannot properly account for. Yet it is dawning on Russia that now that oil prices have sunk till $40, it can no longer back Donbas.

“For many intelligent, witty, liberal-minded people from my circle, the annexation of Crimea became a breaking point. They were unable to meet this challenge with dignity and acknowledge that the annexation of the peninsula is a pointless mistake. These people followed the Kremlin’s lead and effectively became its hostages. Two hundred kilometers away from Moscow, in Tver oblast, you will find nothing but deserted villages, neglected, overgrown fields, but this is a nice part of the country, where I lived as a child. It used to be ‘Russian Finland’ in terms of nature and climate. The only difference being that Finland is a country with one of the world’s highest living standards, while Tver oblast is dead land. And you will find huge desolate areas in Siberia. A question suggests itself: what do we need Crimea for, if we have so much waste land as it is? Putin acted like Shura Balaganov, who had a huge amount of money on him, and yet picked another man’s pocket in an unthinking moment.”

“Those who criticize my book from the political perspective, almost unanimously accuse me of lionizing the ‘executioners’ who had been killing ‘our children.’ When you ask them to name at least one child, they shut up. People have no evidence, but they have a staunch conviction of their own rightfulness, due to their own ignorance. Nevertheless, it is necessary to talk to people and explain things to them. We should not dismiss them with derogatory cliches. The easiest thing would be to say that all the dissenters must be purged and deported to the occupied parts of Donbas. This is what Putin would do. Ukraine, being a European state, must persuade its citizens. Persuasion is possible not only with words, but also by setting an example of peace, work, and being successful.”

“Airport is my manifesto. It is the story of people’s relations, of love, of man. It was not written as a topical read, and it does not claim to describe Ukraine’s history. This is a story of people who act in one or another way under the given circumstances. It is not the details of the siege of Airport Donetsk that matter. It will be stimulating for readers to empathize with the heroes who defied danger and made unprecedented sacrifice. Would you do the same under the circumstances?”