Three years ago, on February 24th, in the morning we woke up to a different reality. A reality where war became not just a topic in the news but a daily experience for everyone. During these three years, Ukraine has changed. We have all changed.
I remember how, in the first weeks of chaos, our editors in the regions literally started to evacuate their families and colleagues. We were finding helmets, bulletproof vests, generators, even paper for journalists to somehow continue publishing news. We were learning to survive in the conditions of a full-scale war. No one was ready, but no one gave up.
Today, Ukraine faces new challenges. We are no longer just defending ourselves – we are fighting for the future. At the same time, exhaustion, economic pressure, and the attempts of some in the world to “turn the page” make this struggle even harder.
What has changed?
Over these three years, we have become stronger, but also more realistic. More tired, but also tireless. With broken hearts, but with steel veins through which our blood flows.
We have learned to hear the air raid siren without stopping to walk.
Our teachers have learned to hold lessons in bomb shelters.
Our doctors are operating in basements, under the explosions.
Our journalists have learned not to show how their hearts break into a million pieces during every interview with the mother of a fallen soldier or a woman who lost her child under the bombed building.
We do not wait for someone else to solve everything for us. We understand that even among those who speak of freedom, there are those who want to negotiate with the aggressor.
What remains unchanged?
Our choice to be independent. To be deserving. To be those who will not allow a repeat of 2014 or 1939.
On December 25, 1937, my great-grandfather, Pavlo Brovko, was arrested for anti-soviet activities. An ordinary worker at the railway station in a small village in the Zaporizhzhia region. It was a big family – eight children, one of whom was my grandfather, Oleksiy. For generations, our family had lived in this village since it was founded in the 18th century. Today, this village is occupied by russia.
A week after the arrest, on January 2, 1938, soviet executioners shot my great-grandfather Pavlo. His wife, my great-grandmother Stepanida Brovko, almost twenty years later, in December 1957, wrote a letter to the Kremlin, to Moscow. She was still searching for her husband. She did not know he had long been lying in an unmarked grave. She did not know that no one would answer her with the truth. She simply did not lose hope.
Today, other wives of other arrested, captured, or missing Ukrainians write the same letters searching for their husbands. With tired eyes, they look for their names or faces in photos in russian Telegram channels, staring at lists of bodies returned during the prisoner of war exchanges. My good friend has been looking for his brother for the second month now. He went on a reconnaissance mission and never returned.
Nothing has changed. Nothing will change as long as russia exists in its current form.
Today, my country, to me, is like my great-grandmother Stepanida. She has lost so much because of russia, but she is fighting. She still doesn’t know when she will get an answer, when justice will come, but she does not stop.
We cannot live otherwise. We cannot accept this. This is not just about victory – it is about the fact that it cannot be any other way.
I have no doubt – we will endure. Will I see our victory myself? I don’t know. Three years ago, we showed that we can not only survive but change the course of history. And today, we are writing this history together with you. Every voice and every act of support is part of our victory.
On the photo: My great-grandmother Stepanida’s letter to kremlin; my grandfather Oleksiy Brovko with my grandmother Kateryna. When NKVD came to arrest his father, he was 10 years old. The same age as my daughter Orysia. She will turn 10 in two days.
Oksana Brovko, 24 February 2025
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