Ukraine before the invasion: “It was a country in full swing”

“I started to live double life “It’s kind of weird to have one foot in Spain and the other in Ukraine, it’s a different Ukraine from now on, when you enter, you start looking at the sky because your life may depend on it.”

Everything found is described in the ‘Ukraine Station’ (KO Books, 2022), a description of the country before Russia began an invasion in 2022 that conditioned the geopolitical situation and the lives of millions of people around the world. counting of course tens of thousands of deaths However it ends, a conflict that will ensure Ukraine will never be the same has already paid the price. It will never be the person Lasheras has closed between the pages of his last book.

This is not a journalism history or a war diary, but “a documentary” That the Ukrainians and Lasheras himself has developed and painted a portrait of the country that he once aimed to become if he could, and if he succeeded in repelling the final Russian offensive. He talks about Zelensky, whom he sees as a “good guy” who “never wanted war”, the European Union, and the resurgence of “hero worship” in a country that will “try to sever all ties” with its past. Soviet.

Question: Ukraine caught you long before the invasion.

Reaction: I am not a war historian, I usually arrive in conflicts too early or too late. I arrived late for the 2014 war, early for the 2022 war I left a week and a half ago. In any case, my book is not a chronicle of a conflict, but an exercise in really speaking and listening to Ukrainians through a series of excursions spanning several years. It is not a nostalgic book but there is a certain melancholy because some of the people who appear in it are fighting at the front or are no longer there.

Q: How many memories can this war erase?

A: Most of my friends are on Russian blacklists. They know they will be executed if they get their hands on it, but there are areas that are completely devastated. Kyiv holds up better because of the air defense it has, but others like Mariupol, an outstanding entertainment city, have been destroyed. Before the war there was talk of the ecological project or how to limit the power of the oligarchs, but now nothing. Places we could call home in Ukraine, such as a cafe where we used to meet in Kharkiv and were bombed for allegedly hiding militants, were razed to the ground.

Q: What exactly appealed to you?

A: What I found when I went in 2015 is a truly fascinating country that is in full swing. You had everything in Ukraine: democratization movements, the Soviet world, war diaries, radical ideas… Many worlds are intertwined. And most of all, which I think is reflected very well in this book, it’s a drug-like political bubbling moment. Kyiv was Berlin after the fall of the wall. The nightlife of the first techno parties, the hopeful day life and the cultural boom… People kept dying, but the war was frozen. Russia had not done well.

Q: How was Ukraine at street level before this year’s invasion?

A: It is a pluralistic country full of surprises, and throughout its history it seeks a path that aims to be the best on the road for Ukraine. There was a longing for Europe, a longing for everything it represented, and a tangible desire to turn a page to its past. All this, despite the ever-present internal tensions, no doubt, but a country that believed in it had a period of modernization ahead of it.

Q: Do you think it was connected to the European project at the time?

A: Yes, but that doesn’t explain everything. Ukrainians have always felt European, but also because they see the EU as the antithesis of Russia. They see what’s going on in Belarus with the stolen elections and the Kremlin’s influence, and they don’t want it for themselves. But we can’t fool ourselves: there were also setbacks in their relationship with Brussels, for example, with regard to extended visas, which at one point made them think of a way out.

Q: So why did it go bankrupt?

A: This was broken by Putin on February 24 of this year because he knew where this process would end. It is the imperialist logic of Russia. They understand that more and more Ukrainians are losing their Soviet nostalgia, that young people are increasingly looking to Europe, and that this is also the case in the east and south, this myth must be broken. Ukraine is not waking up on February 24, analysts are waking up, but the country has been in this process for a while.

Q: But all that enthusiasm freezes when conflict breaks out, right?

A: That’s what I feared at the end of February, but many characters in the book are still struggling. He is aware that Ukraine is still alive and is a candidate for the European Union and that he cannot fail it. Right now, the cult of heroism and national unity prevails.

Q: Zelensky fits this sect very well. Has your image changed a lot?

A: I was working at Moncloa when he won. He had a somewhat populist profile, came from where he came from, and Putin makes the mistake of underestimating him. It’s bad advice and we know it, Putin decides to invade, thinking that the Ukrainian president will leave Kiev at the first opportunity. But Zelensky remains, and we must make it very clear because Russian propaganda says he never wanted war. He even called Macron, begging him to mediate. He transforms under the compulsion of circumstances and ceases to be a questioned leader and takes responsibility for his people, which Ukrainians value very much. Personally, he seems like a good guy.

Q: What will war change in the consciousness of citizens?

A: I have been thinking about this idea many times with my friends there and we are not clear about it. It’s a traumatized country marked by an epic of resistance, but the truth is they’re losing their best at the front. The fact that one of the first images of the occupation is the cars of the rich fleeing the border tells a lot, let’s see what remains when all this is over. This is a country tragedy.

Q: In which direction will this war take you?

A: Sympathy for the EU isn’t linear, according to recent credible polls, but it’s clear that it’s the opposite of what Russia wants. Note that they didn’t feel particularly hostile towards them in 2014, but this time it’s different. They will try to break all cultural, religious, linguistic ties… They will not want anything, but this is a break depending on how the war will end. And there is still.