Ярослав Яровенко Yaroslav Yarovenko

"It was summer. Summer, for sure. It was when they had already closed all the roadblocks. I mean, they put up these roadblocks and that's all, they almost completely stopped people from moving. We had a hard time leaving. It was not a question of where to go. It was a question of whether we would make it at all. It was already time for BM-21 Grad to start working, and there was shelling and explosions everywhere. They [the occupation administration] sent an SMS to your phone saying "there will be shelling in this and that district" (in Russian). Everyone flees to the city centre, and it is the city centre that is being shelled. I mean, not the district mentioned in the message, but the one everyone fled to. My music school friend's mother died that way, I think. It is very unpleasant to remember. I don't remember the month. I think it was... midsummer or something like that. It was so hot outside. We were all crammed into these little buses. We took our things. We hurried to get ready. Just the essentials. We could only take what fit in two suitcases. And we were off to the city centre. The departure point was one, on a central square. At 7 in the morning. There were three buses, and "there will be no more", they said. That's all. The next day — maybe something, but not today, maybe tomorrow, because no one knows what will happen, events unfolded very quickly... My mum and dad rushed me onto the bus. Mum panicked a lot. Dad was calm. The bus started. A roadblock. They took all the older men out and said, ‘Dig! Dig the trenches!’ They just gave them shovels and some bags of cement with sand. And the men started digging. Then the shelling started. All the men were rushed back to the bus. And that's all. Nobody cared anymore. Nobody looked, everybody hid. And then the bus driver said, ‘Let's go, quickly.’ And that's all. He stepped on the accelerator and the bus took off. That's how we left. There were three buses. One of them turned off somewhere, I don't remember exactly where. The second bus went to Mariupol, I think it went that way, towards the sea <...> but it didn't make it. And our bus... we went to Krasno... I can't remember if it was Krasnodar or Krasnoarmieysk. Something "Krasno." We were going there. A woman started to give birth on the bus: the heat and the stress were horrible. Somehow, by the skin of our teeth, we got there. And then, after getting off the bus in that Krasnoarmieysk, this question: "What are we going to do? Where to go?" Thank God we made it, but what to do next — we did not know. We had some money, some savings that we had been putting off for repairs. We could go somewhere else. But we had to think. <...> The summer started and it was a year of so much moving, waiting. It was the whole year [2014]". — "How did you know the war had started?" — "I mean, when we were standing on the balcony with my father, they started to move... building materials and so on... And then there was just a huge column of tanks passing by, and that was it... The paving stones cracked, like that. The second time was when there was an alarm. Well. The alarm was not announced, there were messages like "there will be shelling, be careful." How is that possible, there was no alarm in the city. It was a nightmare. Everyone went underground and waited. All the bomb shelters were closed. There was a gym, you could not get past it. And there were these guys with guns, these DNR soldiers [from the "DNR", the occupying regime in the Donetsk region], and they were shooting all the lamps, these new ones for traffic. They just shoot from their Kalashnikovs — ta-ta-ta-ta, burst fire. It was like that. What was that? That's when I realised it wasn't a game. Even with all the shelling, it was clear that this was a war. Then... <...> We stopped short. We stayed for four or five days after that incident with the underground. And that's it. We realised that it was impossible, nothing was working... ATB... Oh no, Amstor [a supermarket] was closed forever because it was completely looted. We had to flee somewhere."

To be honest, in the east... Even I remember there were these little towns where you could find greenhouses, chickens etc... You had to move... So here you have a town, and then you move just a few kilometres into the forest, and there is a town, there are grannies, and they sang in Ukrainian, and they spoke Ukrainian. It was like two different worlds. Maybe it was all stored in my memory from the time I understood it subconsciously. Later, my mother was still working with culture and the violin. All the time, and it was all in the east. And this digging into music, understanding, and communicating with different people of contemporary culture, especially of the east. All of this had been developing unconsciously. When I moved to Lviv, on the contrary, I had to get to know it. It happened in the Joryj Kłoc band. It was only in 2019 that I started to get acquainted with Ukrainian art. I mean pop music and so on. For me... Stepan Hiha — I've never heard of him. HYCH Orchestra, DakhaBrakha — it was all just a bunch of sounds to me. But I listened to them all, it was like a job for me. I just sat and understood and listened to them. And I was like, ‘Oh, I have heard this before. And these are such motifs. Oh. That's interesting. How do I know that?’ And then I started to read about my region, what had happened there, how it had happened, and how it had come to pass that people didn't know Ukrainian at all, they didn't just lack an ethnic code, they just didn't know the language or belong to the country. How did that happen? It was all the Soviet rule. It was obvious that there was a massive Russian influence in our region. It is all so sad.”

"Back then it was a local problem [war between Russia and Ukraine], now it is literally a problem of the whole of Ukraine. Then the support was like... Well, like, so that they don't die, that's enough. Minimal. As I said: here you have fruits and buckwheat, that's all, goodbye, no pasarán. My parents went to the employment office and they were told, ‘There is no work. If there is, we will give you something.’ But again, you have to remember that these are highly professional people, both with higher education. These are highly educated and culturally intelligent people with 20 years of work experience, and you say to them, ‘A loader and a cleaner. Is that OK for you? What do you think? And the salary will be four thousand, is that OK for you, monthly?’ I see this as bad support from the state. They should help a little so that they can get a job where it's needed. You should say there are some vacancies in their field of work. Some tutoring or something like that. It would be easy. My parents would love to do that kind of work. They loved it. There was no such thing as them hating their job. Now... I don't know what the situation is now. Maybe it's all the same — not enough jobs, salary problems... I don't know. But I think the state is trying to do more now. If they do not, the whole of Ukraine will see it. All regions will feel it if Ukraine does nothing. There is no choice. We must unite and work for the good of our country, otherwise what is the point of having a state if we do not stand up for each other? The state is its people, its moral values and mutual help. That's what it's all about.”

"It [volunteering] started to fade away, because first of all the owners of the building [Lviv Factory of Radio-Electronic Medical Equipment] approached me and said, ‘We are sorry, but you have been here for five months.’ We had been doing all this for five months. And they said, ‘You have to pay rent or think of something else. There is heating and electricity and all that costs money.’ And it was a lot of money because it was the winter months. We needed electric heaters so that people could just... not die. When we worked there, we did not turn everything on, because we were trying to save money. They said that was all, you should stop: "It's very nice and all that, you are great guys. Ukraine. But let's finish it.’ I also started getting calls from the conservatory: ‘If you don't turn up now, you'll be expelled.’ And all these thoughts in my head... What is wrong with you guys? There are battles, people are dying, and you... I had to switch to this. It was also time for me to defend my bachelor's thesis, which I had not even started yet. And a lot of time had gone by. That was when I started. I mean, five months of volunteering. And then the first month was just for me to realise that I wasn't there anymore, I didn't have to sleep for 24 hours, and all my contacts could, well, some of them could be deleted, I didn't have to reassure people anymore. Because I had a huge phone book. And then what? Then my main goal was to graduate from the conservatory. And then there were my performances, which we helped with — Joryj Kłoc charity concerts, which we started to give. We organised quite a few. The concerts helped us to collect enough money to buy a buggy for 700 thousand and something. Later we collected money for a pickup truck for Bakhmut. After that, together with NAZVA, we gave a lot of charity concerts in our own space, which developed very actively and was really powerful for Lviv as well as for that time. We put together big concerts, big venues, and people came, and certainly not every event had the idea of coming together for something. I do not remember exactly, but there was a lot going on. Later... I do the same thing now — together with NAZVA we go on charity trips, give charity concerts, organise gatherings for everything you can think of. Donations... It's just when you sit at home and you have some money and you don't have enough yourself, but you have to help the army. That's how it is". — "Did you give concerts in the frontline areas?" — "Yes. Together with NAZVA we went with Kolia Sierga [and his "Cultural Troops" project]... We lived in the city... how is it... beginning with ‘P’. Pokrovsk. And from there we went to the locations. I do not know these places because we were not told where we were going, and we were also asked to turn on "airplanes" [the airplane mode on smartphones that switches off all wireless signals, making it impossible for the enemy to trace the location] while we were there because there were very important things there. It is very important for me. Because just by looking into the eyes of these tired people who have already seen something that, God help you, you will never see in your life, or maybe you will... Who knows how life will turn out? They need this reset. Just like that. They do not need... how shall I put it? To be loaded with serious things. You need something to relax. Just listen to the music. It doesn't have to be something serious and sad for them to go deeper into themselves. Their souls need a rest. They need to understand that they are expected and that they are loved. Our soldiers are our defenders, they are the elite of the elite of Ukraine. This should not be forgotten.”