The founder of Ukraїner, journalist and traveller Bohdan Logvynenko told journalist Anastasia Bagalika for online.ua about the work of the project team in the de-occupied territories, the trauma of the occupation, the post-traumatic syndrome of Ukrainians and the chance for growth.
I want to start by saying that I congratulate the fact that “De-occupation” from Ukraїner has been nominated for the Shevchenko Prize.
Thank you. Since the Shevchenko Prize has a different principle of nomination and a different principle of selection, it is obvious that this is already virtuous. We still have some awards, like “Man of the Year” or television awards, like “Teletriumph”, where it is obvious that not everything is so transparent and honest.
Why war trauma needs to be discussed now
Ukraїner travels a lot in the de-occupied territory. You film people, you see not only how people change in the rear and interact with the war differently. You see those who interact with her directly. What are these changes? How are Ukrainians and society changing now? And what can this lead to?
By the way, there is another small fact: yesterday, we celebrated the day that we finally caught up with the Armed Forces and visited all the de-occupied UTS [urban-type settlements - Ed.] and towns, and today, we realized that not all of them were again [on November 11, 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine de-occupied Kherson — Ed.].
If we talk about changes, then people probably value some very ordinary things much more. Even we feel it in unoccupied cities.
We began to appreciate more, for example, street lighting or the ability to shower in the morning, because not everyone has such an opportunity now.
Bohdan Logvynenko with Yuriy Stefanyak and Olga Oborina in Kherson, November 24, 2022 (photo: facebook.com/logvynenko)
It must be understood that people in the de-occupied cities did not face such problems. For some, it's just a month of occupation, and for someone - half a year.
And most of these people are now living with substantial psychological problems. You have to work with them, at least - to talk it all over with them.
We also partially do this - we set up a small therapeutic mission. Because we understand that in our history, many traumas were kept silent and could not be spoken. This is both the Holodomor and Chornobyl.
Therefore, we need to speak immediately about what happened to us now.
Bohdan Logvynenko is together with Igor, who is the hero of the Ukraїner video about the de-occupation of Bakalia [In Kharkiv region - Ed.], October 26, 2022 (photo: facebook.com/logvynenko)
Do Ukrainians have a chance for post-traumatic growth
I remembered a topic we discussed a lot in the media when the war started. We have this idea that war and the experiences associated with it lead only to PTSD, that is, to post-traumatic stress disorder. But psychologists at the beginning of this war began to say that there is another way; this is post-traumatic growth. And as a society, we can go this way too, if we work hard enough on ourselves. From what we can see now, are we more likely to have another irresistible trauma? Do we have a chance to jump out of this closed circle?
Yes, we definitely have a chance to jump out. But we must not forget that these things go on a parallel track.
That is, even one and the same person can have post-traumatic syndrome, elevation, and growth at the same time.
The events taking place, in particular the de-occupation, are things that we had hard to believe before the start of the full-scale invasion, that some territories would be occupied again and de-occupation would occur.
We wanted, for example, to make a series of stories about the future de-occupation of Crimea. And some people said: “These are some fairy tales. This simply cannot happen. How will we physically do it? This is a huge Russian army, there are millions of people, etc.” Now we see that it is possible.
You may also be interested: Virtue for me is a sense of justice - Bohdan Logvynenko.
