“Glory to Ukraine!” “Victory Shall Be Ours”

By Boris Yeghiazaryan

To introduce myself, I will start by saying that I am the uncle of Christina Ghevondyan, who is currently doing a PhD at Chonnam National University in Gwangju in your beautiful country, South Korea. I am an artist, an Armenian by birth, living in Kyiv and a citizen of Ukraine. I am one who fought for Armenia in the 1990s and defended its borders with my volunteer squad. I was an active participant in two revolutions in Ukraine: the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity. In 2014, I was injured in Maidan in a battle with criminal authorities. In that revolution, Ukraine won, declared itself a democratic state, and elected as president Petro Poroshenko, who created from scratch a strong Ukrainian army in just five years.

We are grateful to the whole world that our army was armed with good defensive weapons. As a Ukrainian, I and the entire Ukrainian people are grateful to the beautiful country of South Korea and all your kind people for the fact that your state, which is one of the richest and most powerful states in the world, has openly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and participated in imposing sanctions against Russian banks. By this, your beautiful country has united and strengthened the entire civilized world in support of Ukraine.

The reality of military action is this: Russia expected to conquer Ukraine by blitzkrieg in two days – its plans failed. Moreover, at the time of this writing, it is the 12th day of the war (March 7), and Russian troops have advanced only to those cities that are close to the Russian and Belarusian borders and to Crimea. But they have failed to capture these cities to the point where they have surrendered. In all cities, Ukrainian troops, volunteers, and the local population have driven the Russian troops away. Now the cities are surrounded by their tanks. But a huge number of Russian tanks, planes, helicopters, armored vehicles, and much military equipment have been destroyed.

Today, more than 11,000 Russian soldiers are dead and more than 15,000 are wounded, and in addition, over 500 are now prisoners who themselves surrendered or were captured by our soldiers. Captives are being treated in hospitals; they are all given the opportunity to call their relatives to say where they are and what has happened to them. The Ukrainian side has conveyed many times that we are ready and want to create both a green corridor and an opportunity for the Russians to retrieve the corpses of their soldiers so that their mothers can bury their children. And for the captives, we are ready to hand them over if their parents or relatives come to pick up these children, because basically they are 20–21-year-old boys. However, the Russian side refuses to pick them up.

For us as Ukrainians, it hurts a lot to know that more than 2,000 have died among our civilian population, including 30 children, and a lot of seriously injured children who doctors are trying to save in hospitals. An obvious crime of this war is that Russian planes and artillery bombard even kindergartens and hospitals (patients in a psychiatric hospital are held captive by Russian troops who refuse to give us these unfortunate patients). Orphanages and even maternity hospitals have been bombed. Our son had a boy on the first day of the war, and for many days they could not go home because all the parents and newborn children were in the hospital basement due to the constant bombardment of Kyiv. And this situation continues to this day. People spend all their nights in basements, bomb shelters, or subways because sirens are wailing day and night to warn of air raids.

Border cities such as Kharkov, Chernihiv, and Sumy were bombed from the sky by the Russian and Belarusian sides. We cannot answer them by bombing the territory of Russia and Belarus because ours is a defensive war. Cities in the south have also been bombed, including the city of Nikolaev, whose defense is led by Vitaly Kim, chairman of the Nikolaev Regional Council and a Ukrainian of Korean origin. All these days, he heroically holds the line of the city with our soldiers. He also captured Russian armored vehicles. He is considered a Ukrainian hero and has been awarded the title “Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky” (military award given for special merit in the protection of the state sovereignty of Ukraine)by the president. Some cities have been awarded the designation “Hero City.” Kim’s city is also considered to be a “Hero City.”

All these cities and many more have been completely destroyed. It is terrible to see pictures of their destruction. This had happened previously only during World War II. But despite all this destruction, neither our army nor the civilian population will ever surrender. This can be seen from the way the huge queues of the civilian population, men and women, are eager to volunteer for our territorial defense. My personal anguish is that I left the hospital only a couple of weeks ago after a major lung operation. My arm is still in pain and not working well, so I am unable to go to assist in our country’s defense.

We are grateful to the entire civilized world, to all the countries that are supporting us, and especially for the fact that we have been given many good defensive weapons. The whole world is surprised at how our volunteers of the Territorial Defense Forces, who had not previously participated in a war for even a day, learn very well to master anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons (yesterday the whole world was surprised by the manager of Ukrposhta [Ukraine’s postal service], who came to volunteer and on the second day shot down a Russian plane that had bombed Chernihiv). There are many similar stories of Ukrainian heroism.

There are also many stories of Russian crimes against humanity. One of many monstrous cases is that of an 18-year-old girl who was driving along the road with passengers. Seeing a Russian tank column in front of her, she turned around to take another street, but the tank turned caught up with the car, and shot at it from close range. Not only was there nothing left of the car, but nothing was left of the bodies in the car to bury. It is very painful and unpleasant for me to hear this, but unfortunately, there are a lot of Russian atrocities like this throughout Ukraine.

It is true that in some cities, when a lot of people go out to prevent tanks from entering, Russian tanks still break through but do not shoot at people. I think it is not out of humanity that they are not shooting but due to the realization that if they were to shoot people, the whole city would come out and throw Molotov cocktails at the tanks (these are bottles of gasoline that are ignited before being thrown). With several such hits, the tank is on fire, and the soldiers inside do not have time to jump out. It is all scary, but it stops the tanks.

The war is terrible; we also have many victims. But in addition to our regular troops and volunteers, Ukrainians throughout the nation are already beginning to prepare for guerrilla warfare. There are no winners in any war. There are only victims on both sides. But when the enemy comes to your land and kills your children, their mothers, and grandmothers, and wants to destroy your way of life and your future, this derives from evil. And a person who fights for his country and is ready to give his life for his family, for the future of his children, for his country – this person is a hero, and his deed is pleasing to God. This is how we now live and feel in a state of monumental and brutal war.

But I want to convey to you, our dear beloved Koreans, that Russian troops will not defeat our country; victory shall be ours. And it will be a victory for the entire civilized world. This will be a victory for your beautiful country as well. We think that you know well what a war or union with a “brotherly” people is. We have a national slogan in Ukraine, we say “Glory to Ukraine!” And the reply is “Glory to the heroes!” We often add, “Thank God for the fact that sooner or later, no matter what the ordeal, God’s love and God-given peace will win.” Once again, we thank all the countries and people who support us so strongly in this war. This strengthens our spirit and our faith in victory.

Translated by Christina Ghevondyan.

Gwangju Stands with Ukraine!

With the help of Gwangju citizens, the Gwangju International Center (GIC) is donating 6 million won to the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Korea to help the Ukrainian people who are suffering untold casualties due to the recent Russian invasion. The amount was raised from the Ukraine emergency funding campaign with a supplement from the GIC’s International Solidarity Fund.

The Author
Boris Yeghiazaryan is an Armenian-Ukrainian painter living and working in Kyiv, Ukraine. Although he was born and raised in Armenia, for many years he has been living in Ukraine. Boris is not only an artist but he is also always socially and politically active in both Ukraine and Armenia. In 2020, he was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. At the end of 2020, war broke out again in Armenia. Due to circumstances of health, Boris was not able to participate in that struggle. However, while struggling with his disease, he painted day and night, selling his works for the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers, for their families, and for the families of those who died. Unfortunately, because of recent surgery, he is not able to participate in the defense of Ukraine as well. However, he is very active on Instagram @borisyeghiazaryan and is regularly doing interviews related to the war and the current situation in Ukraine, trying his best to raise awareness of the truth.