Transformations: Monsters and Other People

On a journey through a war-torn country, one can find that Ukrainians are simultaneously flexible and stubborn. A bitter lesson of war: Often, the way forward is a return to a certain point in the past.

A flock of swans lifting off creates a noise unlike any other. First, their strong wings slap hard against the surface of the water, a percussion effect. Then the strings come in: the low whoosh of the powerful wings as they saw through the air.

These are rare sounds, not something you’d hear every day. You are not prepared to hear them somewhere above your head, from upstream. They are sudden and inexplicable, and that makes them frightening. People crouch instinctively; someone cries out, runs. Only when they glimpse the bevy of white birds above the tree crowns does their fear melt.

„Ukrainians are unknown, unshaped in the world’s imagination. Do they really exist? And what are they like? “

Sofia Andrukhovych

It’s okay, it’s not the drones. It’s the swans.

The changes of the last two years are ubiquitous and penetrating but often less than obvious. They are not limited to the landscape, the craters made by missiles, the ruins of the buildings, the checkpoints, or the monuments walled off with sandbags. Land that had for decades been covered by the water reservoir of the Kakhovka hydro-power plant slowly regains its original nature. But how do you comprehend the process of the millions of molluscs’ slow dying as new vegetation happily sprouts through their shells?