← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Ukraine: Four years of war
00:28:30
Soldiers and civilians share their stories of grief, resistance and desire for peace
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
BBC Radio 4 Announcer
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. This message comes from Schwab At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
- [00:34]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
If you've got a move coming up, you really need to look into United Van Lines, the Do It All Moving specialists. With United Van Lines, you don't worry about a thing. You have a dedicated moving coordinator, qualified drivers and full value protection for your possessions. Compare that to a couple of dudes manhandling your family heirlooms or cramming your things in a container on your driveway. Rather than hope for the best, you deserve a hassle. Free move. Visit unitedvanlines.com big move, big moves, Small moves All moves Easy choice
- [01:05]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
hello. Today we're on the ground in Iran, measuring the mood of the country since protests rocked the republic last month. We take to the road in America's deep south, crossing state lines from Georgia to Alabama on the trail of the civil rights movement. And in Varanasi, India, we hear a meditation from the banks of the River Ganges on suffering and impermanence. But first, February marks four years since the start of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Around 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in that time, according to the President, Volodymyr Zelensky and a large number are considered officially missing. Moscow has been reluctant to detail its own casualties, but the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia's side. Despite this, Vladimir Putin has been reluctant to agree to any ceasefire terms, seemingly holding out for Ukraine to capitulate over territory now occupied by Russia. Sarah Rainsford has witnessed the war since the beginning.
- [02:20]
Sarah Rainsford
It's four years since I was woken in eastern Ukraine by the sound of explosions and the realisation that Vladimir Putin had launched the war I once thought impossible. Now the unthinkable happens in Ukraine all the time. I just got back from Kyiv where I met a woman reburying her husband. Natalia had had Vitaly's body exhumed and moved halfway across the country from eastern Ukraine because she was afraid their hometown could soon fall to Russian forces. The couple were from Slovyansk in the Donbas region. It's where they met as teenagers and Fell in love. It's also very close to where I was back in 2022 when all this began. The night before those first missiles hit, I'd been out watching a crowd sing the Ukrainian anthem on a town square, wrapped in blue and yellow flags, nervous but defiant. Since then, most of the Donbas and more has been occupied by Russia and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians injured and killed. The homes of people we met fleeing as refugees, have been destroyed and Russia has declared itself owner of the ruins. But Slavyansk still stands. It's a key point on what Ukraine calls its fortress belt. That's a curve of towns heavily defended and vital to stopping the Russian advance. Life there is getting scarier, though, which takes me back to Natalia and Vitaly. The couple were artists making jewellery before the full scale war. When Russia invaded, Vitaly volunteered to fight immediately. Not because he wanted to, Natalia says, but because, as she puts it, he loved Ukraine and he loved freedom. Vitaly was killed eight months later. There were just a few close friends and family at his second funeral, but Vitaly got a military send off with rifle shots in the air and his coffin lowered into the ground by soldiers. The men were not from Vitale's own unit. Most of them have also been killed. Now, moving her husband wasn't an easy decision for Natalia, but she told me the frontline was shifting and leaving him under occupation would have been harder. Slavyansk is being hit with Russian glide bombs every few days. Then there's the drones that target buses and cars and slam into houses. One hit a house near my parents and the owner died screaming. Natalia remembers it was hideous. So she decided to get Vitaly out. Now there's a grave here that I can visit with our daughter and we can talk to him. She smiled a little through her tears at that thought. Natalia was three months pregnant when Vitaly died, and he never met his daughter. After she left the cemetery, I wandered past rows of polished marble headstones. The soldiers graves were easy to spot, flags flying over them and engraved with the images of men in uniform with their guns. It struck me how many had died young. That's one reason Donald Trump doesn't get why Volodymyr Zelenskyy won't just do a deal with Russia, as he puts it, and end all this. Mr. Trump believes Ukraine is losing, so it's key if he's pressing for concessions, not Russia. And now he's pushing for a peace agreement before summer. That would mean handing Moscow more land to people here. A president who Openly threatens to annex Greenland from Denmark, isn't bothered by issues of sovereignty, territory or international law. But to Ukraine, all that really matters. This winter has been the hardest yet. Soldiers I've met in recent weeks have described the intense stress caused by Russian drones constantly hunting overhead. They often bemoan their enemies better resources, both men and weapons, especially since the US slashed its support to Kyiv. In fact, Russia's gains on the ground have been slow lately, every mile costing a huge number of soldiers lives. Russians are paid to fight, though not conscripted, and there seems to be no shortage. Ukraine is still resisting, and not only on the front line. There have been strikes on tankers at sea, too, carrying Russian oil to international markets and funding its war effort. But on this trip, I realised that the soldiers don't talk of victory like they used to. It's more about holding on now, not pushing Russia back. As one man in a drone unit up in Kharkiv put it, victory is the fact we're still here defending our rights to be Ukrainian. The past few months have been tough for civilians, too. Russian missiles have been pounding Ukraine's power plants against all the laws of war. They've left tens of thousands of homes without electricity or heating. In a winter so cold, I saw icicles the length of cricket bats. But Ukrainians have become masters of coping because they've had to. The streets of Kyiv are dotted with generators that provide a power line to hospitals and schools, shops and businesses. At Bessarabsky Market, even the fresh oyster stall is still open. One morning, when it was -17 degrees and I felt like my eyeballs would freeze over, we visited a neighbourhood where the homes had had no heating for weeks. Volunteers were ladling out bowls of stew to people living with frost inside their windows and sleeping in their hats and coats. It's much worse for our men in the trenches. One elderly lady shrugged, her breath creating ice clouds. Another reassured me it was fine it'd be spring soon, so Ukraine doesn't feel like a place that's lost hope or a society ready to surrender. Its people want peace more than anyone, but not at any price. Another day in Kyiv. I drove across town to a swimming pool. Inside, pensioners in rubber hats were doing lengths back and forth as soldiers in scuba gear swam beneath them. The men were learning to dive as part of a rehabilitation programme for Dmytro. Focusing so hard on just breathing left no room for the dark thoughts that usually torment him. Four years ago, he was an engineer. Now he's a young veteran who has panic attacks and Flashbacks to a battle when he had to retreat, leaving two soldiers he'd just seen killed. He struggles with feelings of guilt that he couldn't save the men or even bring their bodies back. Djemitro told me his story in great detail, and it was hard even to hear, but every man at that pool was dealing with something similar. Sasha, a ballet dancer before war made him a soldier, told me it was his third time in rehab. My nervous system was overloaded, he said, and he thinks Ukraine is reaching a similar point. We're tired, he told me. We need a deal. We really need to breathe. All the soldiers that day, all Ukrainians I've asked, want a ceasefire. They long to go home to their families and something like their old lives. It's just that they don't think handing the rest of the Donbas to Russia would even work. There's a saying that Russians use Appetite grows with eating, and Ukrainians are sure Vladimir Putin isn't sated. No one has any faith in the peace talks, Daniil told me on the poolside. There was a ceasefire in 2014 when they had Crimea, he pointed out. But did they stop? No, they just keep coming. So when Russia came for Ukraine again four years ago, Daniil volunteered to fight. In December, the young soldier stood on a butterfly mine that blew off his foot. His lower leg had to be amputated. When he's scuba diving, the water relieves his phantom pain, a stabbing sensation he gets in the leg that he no longer has. If he could, Daniil told me he'd go back to the front in a flash, but his girlfriend told him she'd break his back for even thinking of it. He radiates positive energy and laugh. When I told him that soldiers always wanted to join his patrol, he said because he was so cheerful, that made them less scared. But Daniil was downbeat about one the chance of reaching real peace. We all hope for a deal, the soldier wanted to be clear. But we know the Russians can put down their weapons and then pick them up again at any point. And so Ukraine fights on. But when it's praised for its resilience from afar, I think of all the broken lives I've seen over the past four years close up, and of how many more will shatter in the future. Because to me, right now, Vladimir Putin's brutal war feels endless.
- [11:27]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
Sarah Rainsford Next to Iran, where the government recently put on a show of strength to mark the anniversary of the revolution that saw the return from exile of Ayatollah Khomeini and the dawn of The Islamic Republic. But 47 years on, Iran has once again experienced widespread unrest as millions of people took to the streets in nationwide anti government protests. Human rights groups estimate around six and a half thousand people were killed in the subsequent crackdown. As the protests died down, authorities began to lift the country's near total Internet blackout and also allow a small number of international media to return. The BBC's Lise Doucet has been reporting from Tehran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran.
- [12:30]
Lise Doucet
In Tehran's Vanak Square, a soaring statue catches the eye. Arash the archer, poised to shoot his arrow high into the sky. Legend has it that Arash, hero of ancient Persia, was the bravest archer in its army. He sacrificed his life to save his country. Now the archer is a marker in the midst of Iran's new wars. His statue was erected less than a year ago, on the 10th of June. Then three days later, Israel suddenly attacked Iran. It triggered what's now known as the 12 Day War, a battle which ended with America's bombers striking Iran's nuclear sites. The authorities then painted Arash on a vast mural, launching ballistic missiles from his bow. On a warm winter's day, we went to Vanak. At first sight, it seemed like an everyday square. Traffic zipped around its edges. A flower vendor stood beside his buckets of yellow daffodils. A coffee machine gurgled loudly nearby. But only weeks ago, Vanak burned Arash the archer. A dark silhouette rising above blazing orange fires, a silent sentinel at the heart of another conflagration, this one between Iran's rulers and their people. In this square and many other squares and streets across Iran, protesters marched and shouted slogans, some burning with rage over life's many hardships, others chanting for an end to the Islamic Republic. On January 8, Iran's security forces closed in. The Internet and telephone lines were cut, plunging the country into its longest ever digital darkness. The stories of what happened are still surfacing, the number of casualties still being counted and contested. But the tragic toll is clearly in the many thousands. Among them is a story from vanak of a 22 year old art student. His parents named him Arash, perhaps hoping he would grow to greatness like the archer. He died on this square. His friend was quoted in a newspaper report saying they were just walking by when Arash was hit by a shotgun shell. There's now little trace here of what happened to Arash and many others. A white police post set Alight was swiftly repaired, its blue trim repainted. But history sits in Van Eyck Square. It won't ever be removed, even if there's an effort to varnish it. Bright new government billboards rise on the edges of this square and many others in many cities of Iranians smiling and waving flags of a policeman cradling a child. The government points to the charred buildings and vehicles still dotting the capital as evidence this was all the work of what it said were rioters. For some protesters, they're symbols of a system they want to change. In our days in Tehran, a little more than a week, we were struck by how many people wanted what happened to be kept alive. In charming markets edged by traditional Persian tiles, people vented their anger over sky high prices of everything from saffron to sports shirts. A spice seller blamed the international sanctions strangling Iran's economy. A doctor lamented the years of government mismanagement and corruption. It was this painful squeeze which sparked the wave of unrest which spiralled into something much bigger. In its wake, emotions are still raw. We could feel it. Some people did not want to speak. Others, when they felt their identity would be safe, bared their soul, crying for the many young Iranians killed in the crackdown. Some even made it clear they now wanted to return to the monarchy toppled in the Revolution of 1979. One woman made a point of coming up to us to ensure her voice was heard. No one wants their country to be attacked, she said. But American military action is all that's left to save us. I've spent time here since June 1989, when Iran buried its first ruling cleric, Ayatollah Khomeini. Since then, so much history has passed through its squares, including Vanak. The protests in 2009 over a disputed presidential election when millions of Iranians took to the streets. In 2015, celebrations flooded these spaces when Iran signed an accord to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and an opening to the world. President Trump pulled out of that deal in his first term, denouncing it as terrible, vowing to do a much better one. Since then, there's been another wave of protest. Every few years, a country now holds its breath. Will there be another deal or another deadly war? Is this about a nuclear programme or a new order? At Vanak Square, a junction at the midpoint of Tehran's main highways, in the midst of the most consequential time since 1979, Arash the Archer has been set in stone. But no one can say for certain what will happen next in Vanak Square and in so many others.
- [18:03]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
Lise to cert
- [18:07]
George Fox University Advertiser
At George Fox University, we've been helping working adults and busy parents earn degrees for over 40 years. Our decades of of experience in flexible education make our online degrees a perfect fit for those returning to school while working or raising kids. With our accelerated online degree program, you can take classes online and on your own schedule. Plus, we offer credit for your valuable work and life experience so you can save time and money on your degree. Get started today by visiting georgefox.edu online.
- [18:40]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
If you've got a move coming up, you really need to look into United Van Lines, the Do It All Moving specialists We're with United Van Lines, you don't worry about a thing. You have a dedicated moving coordinator, qualified drivers, and full value protection for your possessions. Compare that to a couple of dudes manhandling your family heirlooms or cramming your things in a container on your driveway. Rather than hope for the best, you deserve a hassle.
- [19:02]
George Fox University Advertiser
Free move.
- [19:02]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
Visit unitedvanlines.com Big moves, small moves All Moves Easy Choice.
- [19:13]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
February is traditionally Black History Month in the United States, and this year marks a hundred years since the country's first Black history commemorations. In 1926, the historian Carter G. Woodson founded the first national observance of Black history. Although it was just for a week, he chose February to coincide with the birthdays of President Abraham Lincoln and African American social reformer, writer, orator and statesman Frederick Douglass. The idea grew in popularity, and 50 years later, in 1976, it was extended to a month long celebration to coincide with the USA's bicentennial. Lindsay Johns recently embarked on a road trip across the Deep south to explore the region's place in the civil rights movement.
- [20:06]
Lindsay Johns
Surrounded by myriad impeccably suited educated African Americans of every shade, many with doctorates, I'm elated. Perhaps I finally found my tribe. I'm visiting Morehouse College in Atlanta, alma mater to Martin Luther King Jr. Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson, to name a few. I'm keen to fully understand the historical context which underpins both this city, an epicenter of black educational excellence, affluence and economic growth, and this venerable university with its ardent commitment to producing servant leaders, advocating community uplift and instilling racial pride. Morehouse is a hallowed academic institution akin to a black Oxford. Myself and a couple of other attendees decide upon a two hour road trip to Montgomery in neighboring Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum. It commemorates the approximately six and a half thousand African Americans ignominiously lynched by white supremacists between 1865 and and 1950. With my mind full of images of the Deep south gleaned from watching Sidney Poitiers in In the heat of the night of chain gangs, cotton fields and tobacco chewing rednecks, we head to the capital of the Old Confederacy. Montgomery was once a rigidly segregated hotbed of civil rights activism, bus boycotts and entrenched racial bigotry. Now, with a black Morehouse graduate as mayor, it's a city where the Old and New south coexist, albeit precariously. For my traveling companions, a sprightly, almost octogenarian African American friend and his 22 year old grandson, also both Morehouse men, there's a palpable sense of joy on arrival at what they see as having indubitably changed for the better. When I first came here in the 1950s, it was very different, my friend says laconically, his chronic understatement and allusion to the dehumanising treatment his family endured in these very streets some 70 years ago. The museum, which opened in 2018, is the brainchild of Harvard educated lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson. Its displays showcase some stark statistics saying an estimated 12.7 million people were stolen from Africa over roughly 250 years and an estimated 2 million people perished during the perilous Middle Passage. They're artfully combined with more individual human stories to fully convey the dislocation, brutality and abject suffering black people experienced during slavery and its aftermath. Holograms of slaves plaintively telling of their family's separation are heart wrenchingly sad, especially to me as a father to two young boys. As the African American anti slavery campaigner Harriet Tubman articulated, slavery is the next thing to hell. Nothing prepares you for the unspeakable horrors of the lynching section. As Billie Holiday's elegiac song Strange Fruit, both the jazz classic and a protest anthem denouncing the barbarous practice plays over the speaker. The German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt famously spoke of the banality of evil in reference to the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. As I stare at a large display of 400 glass jars meticulously labelled with the names of lynching victims and in which has been collected soil from their execution sites, I see no banality, only evil. I feel nauseated when I think of how those innocent souls must have suffered at the hands of the savages who strung them up and recoil at how their final moments were often distastefully captured by insentient chances who flagrantly sold photographs of their nefarious deeds as souvenirs. Every human being should visit this museum. It bears eloquent witness to one of humanity's worst nadirs. And it also tells of the defiance, resilience and pride of a people so egregiously sinned against. It's a miracle they're still standing, let alone, like many in Atlanta, positively thriving. Will black America ever forgive, let alone forget, the strange fruit which these southern trees once bore? The words of the poet Maya Angelou adorn the exterior of the museum. A thought provoking exhortation which fittingly concludes our visit. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
- [24:36]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
Lindsay Johns and finally, our Budapest correspondent, Nick Thorpe found himself in northern India recently when he got the news that Samark Tally, long regarded the voice of the BBC in India and one of the most admired foreign correspondents of his generation, had passed away. On hearing the news, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, described Sir Mark as a cowering voice of journalism. Here, Nick pays his own tribute to Mark and his interest in human fate and faith.
- [25:12]
Nick Thorpe
How can we, as strangers, ever enter and gain a measure of acceptance in another culture? It's a question that's nagged me since I first left home and began traveling the world. And nowhere more so than here in India. Varanasi is the city where Hindus take the shortcut to immortality. They do so with a combination of fire and water, immersing themselves in the visibly filthy but religiously pure and luminescent waters of the River Ganges and patiently waiting to die here so that their mortal remains can be turned to ash and bone on funeral pyres, then scattered on the river. The fire at this auspicious place does not destroy, but releases the soul, breaking loose from the chains which bind us all to the wheel of suffering, towards moksha, enlightenment. Lord Shiva whispers the right word in the ear and the soul passes. I copy the locals, shielding with my hands my eyes and face from the fire as I walk close by. The mango wood is dry and well stacked. It ignites immediately, sprinkled with ghee and sandalwood to make it burn faster, brighter, more brilliantly. It's mercifully not easy to discern the body parts in the flames, so closely do they resemble the twisted wood. A memory from England springs to mind. Godspeed. Cried my friend Steve, an Anglican priest, as he propelled our old friend Gerard into the inferno of a British crematorium. Godspeed. It's not a word we use very often in a world of gigabytes and terabytes. It started in Middle English as Goodspeed, a blessing on travelers setting out on a hazardous journey, then evolved into a more religious interpretation invoking God's protection on that same risky undertaking. Not so far from the Hindu vision, implying success and a safe arrival someplace else. From Varanasi, we visited Sarnath, only five miles away, to seek refuge among the Buddhists from the pressing crowds by the river. This is the place where the Buddha taught his disciples the Fivefold Path in his first sermon in the Deer park. That life involves suffering. Suffering is caused by craving and attachment. Suffering can end. So liberation Nirvana is possible. And there is a path to that end. Liberation again, not annihilation. At the gates of the park, we met a Buddhist family from Darjeeling, Tibetans, in early 1959. The 22 year old, who's now the 90 year old head of the family, told us how he escaped after China's brutal response to popular protests, along with 80,000 or so others, the Dalai Lama among them, across the Himalayas into India. Several thousand died on that arduous journey into exile. The family is here on a pilgrimage. We bump into them again later, eating Momo's little Tibetan dumplings in a restaurant the other side of the park. As they leave, perched high as a stupor on a cycle rickshaw, I take a picture of the whole family, nine people who owe their existence to a young man's bravery. Full of laughter, he walks with a stick but is still in stout good health, his son tells me proudly. From Varanasi, we catch the midnight train to Lucknow. The second class sleeping car is crowded but clean and comfortable, and the train is perfectly punctual. Lucknow is a very different city to Varanasi, with only a tributary of the Ganges, the Gomti, but no less interesting. Children fly homemade kites all day along the river. And from every scrap of open land or flat rooftop, the trees are dotted with a red and purple mosaic of lost kites over the doorway of a mosque. Lucknow is a quarter Shia Muslim. Two fishes are embossed on the plaster, symbols of good fortune and fertility and the crest of Lucknow. A young woman interrupts feeding leaves to three goats on her doorstep to wave to us. May I take your photograph? Of course. Men welcome us into their workshop to watch them weave golden threads into a broad tapestry. Where does all this leave us? Strangers in strange lands. It was the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges who first alerted me to the existence of what he called a strange doubt among Englishmen as to whether they really exist. I wonder if that helps or hinders our own journeys to enlightenment.
- [30:02]
BBC Presenter / Narrator
Nick Thorpe and that's all for today. We'll be back again next Saturday morning to join us.
- [30:09]
BBC Radio 4 Announcer
Ever wondered why America acts the way it does on the world stage? From Understand from BBC Radio 4 comes a new series exploring US foreign policy. In Five Doctrines, we're telling the story of five big ideas that changed everything from the Monroe Doctrine to Donald Trump. How did these doctrines shape the world we live in now? And what do they tell us about what's happening in America today? Listen on BBC Sounds.
- [30:45]
WSECU Advertiser
WSECU isn't just one of Washington's best credit unions. We're a Forbes Best in State five years running.
- [30:52]
Lise Doucet
Why?
- [30:52]
WSECU Advertiser
Because we put you first. Lower fees, early paydays, financial guidance and service second to none. As a member owned cooperative, we love Washington as much as you do. From the Olympic mountains to the rolling Palouse. Join us and discover how much we care about your financial well being. Because what we really do best is invest in you. Visit wsecu.org today to learn more. Washington let's credit union as America's most
- [31:17]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
trusted movers, Mayflower has seen it all. From big dreams and new beginnings.
- [31:22]
Sarah Rainsford
All right, here we are. Oh, it's perfect.
- [31:25]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
To first steps and fixer uppers from starter homes. So guess what? We're having another.
- [31:32]
Lindsay Johns
Another.
- [31:32]
BBC Radio 4 Announcer
We definitely need more space.
- [31:34]
United Van Lines / Mayflower Advertiser
To more practical homes. Yes, Mayflower has been there for it all and will always have your back. Every moment, every move, every step of the way. Schedule your move now by going to mayflower.com.