I'm Going to Ukraine

Not to front, not for the clicks, I'll be there to bear witness.

I’m going to Ukraine.

Just writing those words makes my hands shake.

I can’t help but think of the last time Wednesday fell asleep in my arms. We sat next to her crib and I struggled to remember the words to Danny Boy past “It’s I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow.” Probably better that way since the song takes a morbid turn in the end.

My mind drifts to our last outing as a family. Marie-Pier drove us to Wal-Mart so we could get an oil change and buy dog food. I held our five-month-old against my ribs as we strolled past an assortment of smiling pets on cardboard boxes.

“Do we need an air fryer?” I thought to myself.

My fixer’s name isn’t Anna but that’s what we’ll call her. If the Russians found out she was working with a Canadian journalist, I’m not sure they’d be super thrilled. So we’ll use pseudonyms.

Anna is in Lviv, some 540 kilometres east of the front in Kyiv. After being repelled from the capital for the past week, Russian forces are ramping up airstrikes in Kyiv. Anna may not be close to the capital but she sees its refugees trudging into Lviv by the thousands every day.

Like me, Anna has a baby girl. She sent a photo of 9-month-old Catherine on WhatsApp — the child is bald with chubby cheeks and curious eyes just like Wednesday. When Anna and I spoke on a video call yesterday, I could hear little Catherine cooing in the background.

She had to cut the call short because residents of the Lviv can’t have their lights on past the 10 p.m. curfew. Gas stations are running out of fuel and there’s a good chance residents will start losing power soon since Putin’s army is targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure.

Fixers like Anna are becoming increasingly rare.

Some have joined the 1 million or so Ukrainians who fled their country for the relative safety of Poland, Hungary or Slovakia. Others are changing allegiances from one news agency to the next because there’s something of a bidding war for their services. Once the Ukrainian government declared martial law last month, international bank transfers stopped working. The preferred method of payment in the war zone is hard currency. American dollars, to be exact. So you can forgive a fixer for saying yes to cash in hand instead of some vague promise of a future payday.

When I awkwardly inquire if Anna’s loyalties are waining, she is unequivocal.

“I am devoted to you. I will not leave you behind.”

For all the talk about Ukraine’s corrupt government, its people’s resolve seems unshakeable. With the wall to wall coverage of Putin’s invasion, it’s easy to forget that Ukrainians have been fighting Russian-backed militias on their eastern border going on eight years.

Before that there was the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the 2004 Orange Revolution and the struggle to break off from the Soviet Union in 1991. In all three of landmark events, the people of Ukraine prevailed over much larger opponents, often laying down their lives in the process.

Of course, you can counter with NATO expansion and American interference in Russia’s backyard. Too often, the west has used Ukraine as a shield for its imperialist aims with little regard who gets caught in the crossfire. But those arguments are meaningless to people like Anna.

“We just want to be free,” she says. “If you come here, that’s what you need to tell the world. That we’re still here and that we will prevail.”

There’s a line in Ukraine’s constitution that I can’t get out of my head. Article 5: “Ukraine shall be a republic. The people shall be the bearer of sovereignty and the sole source of power.”

Anna is living those words. The people hiding out in Kyiv’s metro system are living those words. The ones carrying all their worldly belongings across the border so they can keep their children from dying are also living those words.

My greatest fear is that we become numb to their suffering just as we did with the people of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. On the eve of his invasion, President Putin told his country that Ukraine is merely a creation of Russia. Since then, pro-Putin intellectuals have been speaking of bulldozing their Slavic neighbours, severely repressing them and wiping their culture off the map.

This is war but it is also an attempt to destroy a people and break their will to be free.

I am leaving for Poland tonight. I’ll have to spend the night in Krakow before crossing the border so as not to be out past curfew, when volunteers in the territorial defence have the green light to shoot anything that moves. I don’t think the car rental company provides ballistic insurance but I’ll check to be sure.

Though I’ve had some senior colleagues tell me this is a bad idea, there’s one person whose opinion matters to me: my partner Marie-Pier. She supports this knowing I’m not headed for the front to cover the fighting. I can’t explain why but I feel I have to bear witness, I have to listen and document as much as I can because the thought of a world where a country can just wipe another off the map is no longer so easy for me to accept.

I know this isn’t a struggle of good versus evil. People are dying. By all accounts outside the Kremlin, Russian teenagers serving out their mandatory military service have been duped into fighting their neighbours. Thousands won’t make it back. They didn’t chose this either.

And of course, reports that Black and Brown refugees have been turned aside by Ukrainian officials at the border in favour of whites are incredibly troubling.

I’m also aware that the media’s coverage of this conflict has highlighted how differently we report on war when it involves people who look like us: white, European Christians who happen to align with our political interests.

That’s unacceptable but it doesn’t make the cause of documenting this any less crucial.

So as I sit in my living room, wondering where on my body I should tape 1/3 of my life savings, I’m asking you to help spread the word and maybe get a few of your friends to subscribe if you can. Push comes to shove, I can finance this thing myself but I’d have a little more peace of mind if there was some breathing room. I’m also setting up a GoFundMe and should have it ready for donations in a few days. For now the fundraising website has to make sure I’m not doing anything illegal so if you want to kick in some money, you can e-transfer to heytitocurtis@gmail.com or subscribe to the paid newsletter.

If there’s any money left when I’m done paying for transportation, fixers and lodging, it’ll go to the Red Cross.

There was a time, in my career, where all I wanted was to be admired by people I don’t like and published in the glossy pages of The Saturday Globe. Sometimes, to my great shame, I catch myself still dreaming those things.

But this isn’t that. This is about the words in that constitution, about people having to decide what price they’ll pay not to live under a government that murders its own people and outlaws dissent.

I’ll try to post on this site, daily and may provide on-the-ground reporting for Radio-Canada to make some extra cash.

When I get back in a few weeks, I’ll buy a ring and marry the love of my life. I’ll cradle our child and sing whatever lyrics I can remember to the morbid ballads of my ancestors. With any luck, we’ll grow old and fat living with sovereignty in our hearts.

For now, I wish that most beautiful existence to Anna, Catherine and the 39 million people fighting merely to exist.

God bless and keep you.

Your friend,

Chris