“’Russian soldiers stayed in our building,’ my friend, the poet Lesyk Panaisuk, wrote to me when the Ukrainian city of Bucha was liberated from Russian occupation on March 31. Some months before, as soon as the war ensued, Lesyk had left Bucha in a hurry, fleeing the Russian soldiers. Although the city is now liberated, it is still dangerous to walk around Bucha. Lesyk’s neighbors find mines in the halls of their building, inside their slippers and washing machines. Some neighbors return only to install doors and windows. ‘In our neighborhood, doors to almost every apartment were broken by Russian soldiers,’ Lesyk emails.’A Ukrainian word / is ambushed: through the broken window of / a letter д other countries watch how a letter і / loses its head,’ writes Lesyk in one of his poems. He continues: ‘how / the roof of a letter м / falls through.’ While I read Lesyk’s emails, miles from Ukraine, my own uncle is missing. As bombs explode in Odesa, I email friends, relatives. No one can find him. ...”
Civilians in Novoselivka. Russian troops moved through northern Ukraine during the first days of the war.
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