When there are no more tears and no more humanity
Every year, on a certain day, a part of Lithuania puts forget-me-nots in their lapels, believing that they have not forgotten something, while others stuff them in their lapels, believing that forget-me-nots are not needed. It is a pity that there is no such day to remind everyone of what you have long forgotten. Forgotten the things that made you willingly give every other morsel to those who need it most.
What you are about to read will be brutal. I may appear to you as a callous person, like the "inhumans" who do what I am about to write about. If you decide to block me without reading the whole thing through, then you are the "knight of the wire" who comments and draws conclusions from the headline.
The most recent developments, which you are already beginning to forget because the news portals have already covered it with news from the Italian wife and other policy makers, are the Ochmatdyt children's hospital and the Poltava school. I have not been crying for a long time after such mazzkolian attacks. I have been saying for a long time after such events - this is good. These are not senseless victims. They are sacrifices that help us to remember that there is a war in Europe. After the deaths of several children, the world media and politicians are beginning to talk about new possibilities for Ukraine, such as the possibility of using long-range missiles in a swamp area. Only after that. Because the hundreds of Ukrainian defenders who die every day are just a blip on the excel chart. Statistics. And Lviv's "Fields of Mars" are filling up exponentially.
After watching the film "20 Days in Mariupol", I realised what I am writing about now. Not a single tear. Only endless anger at the occupiers. I am no longer crying, because I have already seen all this and I see it all the time. I have seen and forgotten. Because every day there are new attacks. New crimes against humanity. And the war is the same. It seems that what is depicted in the film was once upon a time very, very long ago. When I was different and I still cried.
After every one of these events, everyone says - we will never forget this. But we forget. 2022 April. Kiss. Kidnappings, torture, rape, including of children, looting and the execution of the men left in the city. More than 420 of the city's inhabitants are killed. The city is now almost rebuilt and even has a street of the hero Tadas Tumas. We can forget him, too, if such a street does not replace Russians, S. Neris or Tsvirka. Mass torture sites and graves in Izium, where bodies have been found with ropes around their necks, bound hands, broken limbs, gunshot wounds and men with amputated genitals. In Mariupol, the children's hospital and maternity hospital were bombed from the air when the world saw that in Ukraine, katzapa planes fly wherever they want and do whatever they want. This was compounded by the bombing of the Mariupol drama theatre, next to which was a sign with the words 'CHILDREN' in large letters. And gave air defence systems. Maybe I stopped crying after the shelling of the Kramatorsk railway station? Where I got lucky. There were thousands of people there, who were to be targeted, but "only" 61 people died, five of them children. Were your tears dried by a similar strike on the Amstor shopping centre in Kremenchuk? Because after the shelling of the Epicentre in Kharkiv, they were certainly gone.
On 9 July 2022, the first targeted attacks on residential homes in Hasiv Yar. At least four Iskander missiles. Then a Dnieper apartment block, from under the rubble of which cries for help could be heard. And then there were no sustained shelling attacks. That was the beginning. The Shakheds and the destruction of the Kakhovka dam, which caused the worst catastrophe of the 21st century, came later.
Olenivka. A penal colony where Ukrainian soldiers were held. A Kattzapa strike on its territory. The plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war. We have forgotten Oleksandr Matsievsky, who was shot for saying 'Glory to Ukraine'.
Severodonetsk, Popasna, Rubizhne, Shchastya, Kremina, Volnovakha, Vugledar, Maryinka, Lyman, Soledar and Bakhmut. Cities that no longer exist. Millions of people who have lost their homes and all the memories of their childhood, adolescence and other good and bad memories. Those places are gone, razed to the ground. War does not choose where to shoot. Up to 307,000 children have been sent to the marshes. Exactly how many were taken away, even God probably does not know. He stopped counting casualties long ago.
Now we hear about the shelling of Kharkiv almost every day. A couple of people were killed there, and a few more the next day. It is a pity. But we do not remember that in the first five months of the war, the Mazzolkols shelled Kharkov more than 5 000 times, killing more than a thousand civilians. Among the dead were 50 children. The youngest victim was a 5-month-old baby. Back then, aid to Ukraine had not yet stopped. Now, neither Ochmatdyt nor Poltava is any longer worried or heartbroken about giving half of their morning sandwich to Ukraine. Sam when he said at the beginning of the war that "Now we have to cut the eastern sandwich in half and give half of it to Ukraine", he probably didn't expect that the vast majority of people would turn away, lose their eyesight and hearing, and stop sharing the sandwich, or even start saying, "Oh, there is nothing going on there. Why help them?
Open your eyes and hear. If you still have humanity left in you. The war is not over. The front has not been shortened by one centimetre. Soldiers are dying just as they did at the beginning of the war. And the fact that fewer are hitting homes and hospitals is thanks to those children who died in the beginning, after which the politicians gave us the Javelin, the Himars, the Patriot, the Bradley, the Leopard, the Abrams, the ATACMS, the F-16s, to protect us from all that. And Ochmatdyt with Poltava might allow them to strike in the swamp area.
And all the foundations in Lithuania give the soldiers what they ask for, and the foundations can legally buy and transport it. From canned goods and socks to jeeps, drones and anti-drones. For this, we need your donations. Remember that once upon a time you believed in Ukraine's victory.
Open your eyes and hear.
All the way to Peremoja.
