‘One of the things that I found so striking coming to Ukraine was the resilience of the people’: Christina Lamb In Dialogue With Maria Tomak
In order to comprehend the events of recent days, PEN Ukraine has launched a series of conversations entitled #DialoguesOnWar. On February 2, Ukrainian journalist, researcher and head of the Crimea Platform, Maria Tomak, held a conversation with the British journalist and author Christina Lamb. This is a transcription of key moments from their conversation.
The Crimea Platform is a new international consultation and coordination format set up to develop the initiative put forward by President of Ukraine and aimed at improving the effectiveness of the international response to the ongoing occupation of Crimea, responding to growing security threats, increasing international pressure on the Kremlin, preventing further rights violations and protecting victims of the occupation regime, as well as achieving the main goal – deoccupation of Crimea and its return to Ukraine.
This conversation is supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
By PEN Ukraine with Maria Tomak and Christina Lamb
Photo: Rotislav Arto/Unsplash
Christina Lamb: Where are you now, Maria? How is the situation there?
Maria Tomak: I am currently in Kyiv. This is where our institution, the Crimea Platform, is based. It should be located in Crimea, however, it is not possible due to the Russian occupation. I hope that we can come back there as soon as possible, as this is the main goal and focus of our work.
The full-scale invasion caught us in Lviv but we returned to Kyiv after a month and a half. The situation in the capital is not as bad. The power supply is more stable now. However, the situation differs in every city in Ukraine. The closer you are to Russia and the territories it has occupied, the worse it gets.
Crimea is the focus of our day-to-day work. This territory has played a very dramatic role in the current situation. Occupied by Russia in 2014, it has since been turned into an isolated military base and has served as a springboard for the large-scale attack. As we speak, just a few days prior to the tragic anniversary of the full-scale invasion, there are talks about another probable Russian attack on mainland Ukraine that can happen in February. The escalation is already taking place in the eastern parts of the country. Russia is accumulating more weapons, vehicles, and military personnel there.
Somehow, we have gotten used to this. Every single person in Ukraine is affected by the war, either directly or indirectly. We learnt how to live during the war, but we are working hard for it to be over.
Christina Lamb: Reporting on life during the war is one of the things I find the most interesting. Millions of people are trying to carry on with their lives: they are still going to work, bringing up their children, and looking after the elderly. Often the women are the ones doing that.
One of the things that I found so striking coming to Ukraine was the resilience of the people. Hearing air raid alarms going off is quite unnerving and yet most people just carry on with their day because they have gotten used to it.
For you personally, what has been the hardest moment in this war?
Maria Tomak: For a long time, I used to work as a human rights defender, journalist, and researcher. One of the most difficult things for me is finding myself not only an observer, but also a victim of the war. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion, we could go to the frontline in the east of Ukraine and then come back to our relatively safe places. Now we do not have this safety anymore. We are not observers, we are parts of this traumatised community.
Having met you online, I got the impression that you are an extremely positive person. How did you manage to remain positive after everything you have seen as a reporter?
Christina Lamb: It is a little different for me. It is not my country that is at war. I can always fly away.
Often I go to really bad places. I see people doing terrible things. But I also see this incredible heroism of ordinary people. I remember being in the old city of Aleppo, reduced to dust by the Russians. The locals were still trying to live there with no power and no water. It was freezing cold. The women were pulling down the bits of the window and door frames to burn for heat, making pancakes for their children from just a bit of flour and any green vegetation they could find. Seeing this really incredible human spirit in the most difficult situations actually makes you more positive. From what I have seen, people can survive horrible situations. We are probably all stronger than we think we are.
Maria Tomak: We have been witnessing the heroism of ordinary people since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. I think it is very important to bring Crimea into this conversation. Lots of people there are using different means to protest against the full-scale invasion and the violence Russia has been committing in Ukraine. Women end up being persecuted for wearing a blue and yellow manicure. People are prosecuted for launching WhatsApp groups about the war. We see hundreds of similar cases all over the peninsula. That is what makes me optimistic about the future of Crimea.
Christina Lamb: This is really interesting because we do not get much information about what is happening in Crimea. Do you talk to a lot of people there?
Maria Tomak: I am proud to say that, out of all state institutions, ours remains closest to Crimea. Part of our team comes from the human rights and NGO movement, and that has been our essence throughout the years. We are in touch with the field and it remains very important for us now because it allows us to understand what are the main concerns there, what are the people thinking there, and how we can help. It has become especially challenging now when the full-scale invasion has started.
The time has come for Ukrainians to take responsibility for our state. Throughout our history of being colonised by Moscow in one iteration or another, the aversion to the state has been growing among Ukrainians because it has always been extremely repressive and oppressive to us. And Ukrainians used to fight the state. But now it is the time to take matters into our own hands because there is no alternative.
Christina Lamb: Ukraine has become the name. Everybody knows Ukraine. So many people in the UK have Ukrainian flags and wear Ukrainian colours. This brand will be very powerful in the future because it symbolises standing up to aggression. We all feel that you are fighting this war for us. If you were to lose, where would the Russians go next?
I am sure you are aware of the discussion about possible peace negotiations in the future. Some talk about leaving Crimea to Russia as part of the deal. Even General Milley, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the other day that the return of Crimea in 2023 was unlikely. How do you feel about that?
Maria Tomak: This is a complicated conversation to have. Before the full-scale invasion and at the very beginning of it, you could barely find any publication on Crimea in the international media. After the liberation of Kherson, those who were sceptical about the capabilities of Ukraine started to understand that at some point Ukraine might try to liberate Crimea.
Still, many publications claim that Ukraine should stay away from the peninsula. It has to do with the genuine belief of many people that Crimea, I quote, ‘has always been Russian’, and the perception of Crimea through the Russia-imposed lens. Even the West absorbed it somehow.
In reality, it has always been home to Crimean Tatars, the indigenous people of Crimea. Prior to the first annexation by Russia, they comprised 90% of the local population. This perception of Crimea is almost non-existent. Instead, there is this imperial and colonial understanding of this land, a perception created by Russia, and it has to be decolonised. It is a challenge for us. In my daily work, I see that this perception is translated into policies and decision-making. The debates around Crimea and providing Ukraine with weapons that can help liberate it are shaped by those narratives. That is why the Crimea Platform is important. Crimea is, to the large extent, underestimated. It must be rediscovered and decolonised.
Christina Lamb: I think in the West everyone feels quite clearly that Crimea was occupied and annexed illegally by Russia. There are a lot of discussions now about why nothing was done at the time. Things might have been very different.
We all reacted with great shock at what Russia has done in Ukraine. I look back and think about Russia’s crimes in other places, Syria, for example, that I covered as a journalist. Yet, we have never put all those things together. Looking back, we see a very clear trajectory of what Putin was trying to do, and there were various points where the West could have intervened but didn’t. I guess, he just assumed that nothing would be done this time too. Putin must have been absolutely shocked to see the resolve of NATO to do something. I know it’s not as much as people in Ukraine would like, but it is getting there. There has been tremendous unity.
Maria Tomak: Ukraine is currently trying to open itself also to the Global South. You worked there a lot, you must know the narratives and the way people think. How can we talk about the war against Ukraine with people in the Global South?
Christina Lamb: I have just come back from South Africa and Zimbabwe, where the Russian foreign minister has been on tour recently. Unfortunately, a lot of countries at the very least are ambivalent about what is happening, but they do not support the West. Many of them are anti-Western and anti-colonial. To you, Russia is a colonial power. To them, it is standing up against the West.
I spent a lot of time in Pakistan. Imran Khan, then the prime minister of Pakistan, was the first person to go to Russia after the invasion. Afghanistan is also an interesting case. You would think they’d support you and be anti-Russian, given the fact that they were under Soviet occupation. And yet, Afghanistan is very close to Russia now. I think the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ rule applies here. They see Russia and Iran as standing up against the West.
I am sorry to see countries like South Africa, which knows a lot about oppression, and India not standing up against Russia. A huge part of the world is trying to not be involved, and some countries actually support Russia.
Maria Tomak: And what about British society? I think that the Western countries were quite surprised by the fact that Russia still has those imperial ambitions. Before February 24th, anyone saying that Russia was still an empire would be considered marginal. However, now it is normal to talk about it. How does it resonate with British society?
Christina Lamb: I am sure you know that there is a big movement of reassessing colonialism. This movement, however, is assuming that colonialism is something strictly Western, and does not look at the Ottoman Empire or the Russian Empire, and what Putin is doing right now. He is very clearly trying to recreate imperial Russia. A lot of this is fed by this resentment that he has, thinking that Russia is not being treated as the great power as it should be.
Maria Tomak: I think it is also important to highlight the role of women in this war. This topic has been the focus of your books and research. Probably you also looked into it while reporting from Ukraine. I must say that before the full-scale invasion sexual violence did happen, but not to such an extent.
Christina Lamb: There were cases in the east of Ukraine, but it wasn’t discussed as much.
I have written a lot about rape in war. In 2014, I was reporting on what happened to the Yazidis taken by the IS fighters in Iraq into Syria, who were kept as sex slaves. I met one girl who had been traded twelve times between the men. She told me she felt like a goat. Those stories were absolutely horrific. Many of those girls escaped, although some are still missing. And they told their stories, but nothing happened. One of the things I find hardest as a journalist is getting a message from somebody who had recounted their awful story saying, “I told my story. What difference did it make?”
Before, I used to think that my job was just to tell the world that those things were happening, and then others would do something about it. Then I started looking into why nothing was being done.
Around the same time, I was going to Nigeria a lot, where in 2014 more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted by Boko Haram. Talking to people there, I found that that was just the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands of girls have been kidnapped. And again, after getting out, they were telling their stories. But nothing was happening. In 2017, I was in Bangladesh where the Rohingya people were fleeing Myanmar. People were sharing their horrible experiences and nothing was happening.
I started to become very angry about it. Initially, I just wanted to know why no one was doing anything. Rape is a war crime. How come the ICC in twenty years of its existence has only brought to justice one person? Because of that, I started researching and collecting stories from women in many conflict zones. Of course, I looked into history. In particular, the sexual violence that Russian soldiers were committing against women in Berlin during the liberation at the end of WWII. People did not talk about it afterwards, because rape is the one crime where the victim is often made to feel like they have done something wrong. Women felt ashamed and a lot of them committed suicide.
When some of the Ukrainian women activists with whom I stayed in touch started telling me that sexual violence was happening in Ukraine as well, I initially could not believe it. I thought, surely, in 2022 the Russians are not doing the same thing again. But, sadly, as they were driven out of Irpin and Bucha, we could go in and talk to the people and hear the stories. We still do not really know this in Ukraine’s case, but was it a deliberate policy of the Russians? Was it used as a weapon of war or was it the indiscipline of the people they sent to fight? We still do not know and we may never find out.
Maria Tomak: I think it is very important to underline that these types of crimes are very complicated. Time should pass before people are ready to talk about it.
Nevertheless, I also believe that no one talked about sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers because Russia was perceived as a power which overcame Hitler. Talking about the crimes of Stalin and the Soviet regime was unacceptable. And it is really unfair. Only now various governments are acknowledging that the Holodomor in Ukraine was a genocide. That is extremely important for Ukraine now. It all comes together, the current crimes of Russia and the former crimes of the Soviet empire.
Edited by Cammie McAtee
Photo: Ivan Rohovchenko/Unsplash