Iron & Soil: Journey Through the Battle for Ukraine
Part 10

1,117 words

All parts here.

After witnessing the depths of hell, Kyiv rises like a heavenly fortress on the banks of the Dnipro, majestic and unwavering. Grand colonnades stand proudly, new white high-rises shine with clean lines and balanced elegance, their tasteful cornices catching the light. Golden domes gleam in the sun, recalling the splendor of the former Grand Principality. The colossal statue of a woman with a sword, once bearing the Soviet emblem, now holds Ukraine’s national symbol – the trident, the Tryzub – imbued with new meaning.

Everywhere, cranes reach toward the sky. Construction is in full swing, supported by foreign investment, as if the city does not hear the air raid sirens every night, as if a Russian missile had not just yesterday destroyed a suburban apartment building, killing an elderly woman in her sleep.

How much grief these streets have known! How many tears have been shed in this white city on the cliffs of the Dnipro – not over centuries, but in just the past few years!

In the heart of Kyiv, on Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti), stands the memorial wall of the Heavenly Hundred. More than ten years ago now, they stood here against a corrupt dictatorship, giving their lives in the first battle for a free Ukraine in the 21st century.

How painful that national uprising must have been for Russian propaganda, given how desperately it is still attacked with every possible lie. Claims of Right Sector snipers, of an illegal coup – lies upon lies, a frantic attempt to erase history. But the truth stands firm – it is etched into the memorial wall’s stone, written in the blood of the fallen.

Olena Semenyaka was in the midst of it all back then. Beneath the square, in the metro station, was an aid center. There, first aid was given to those wounded in the street battles. Food and supplies were brought to the thousands who remained. What had to be done was done. The same Olena, whom we have met over the past eight years at various conferences. We have discussed geopolitics and philosophy, nationalism, and ethnofuturism. We have dreamed of our nations’ futures, of an Intermarium alliance between the Baltic and Black Seas. Olena is a philosopher, an international envoy for Ukrainian nationalism, and a foreign relations representative for the National Corps party. Now, she works for the Azov Brigade and the 3rd Assault Brigade, alongside the volunteer service Azov Angels.

We last met here in Kyiv in August 2022. The war was already in full force. Now we meet again. Much has changed in the meantime. Much pain has been endured. Friends have fallen.

We bring a crate of medical supplies from Estonia for the Azov Angels. They sent us an urgent request for tactical medical gear. They need training tourniquets – eight per fifteen-man unit. Occlusive dressings, hemostatic bandages, hydrogel dressings. Nasopharyngeal tubes, traction splints, bandages of various sizes. Stretchers. Eye protection for the wounded. Estonian Defence Forces officer Julius Kull helped us acquire this equipment, connecting us with military supply companies.

Every item on the list matters. Each one gives someone another chance. Each one helps someone learn how to save a comrade, how to stop the blood from flowing before the medics arrive. It helps save lives. That is the only thing that matters.

We sit with Olena in a small café, the kind with wooden tables and old posters on the walls, where the coffee is strong and voices are quiet. Outside, the city moves as it always does, as if the war is happening somewhere else, for someone else. But we don’t let ourselves be fully deceived by it.

We find an hour to sit here and reflect on the journey that has brought us to this day. It has been the journey of the peoples of Eastern Europe, led by Ukraine.

And we find time to continue a conversation we started years ago – about philosophy, literature, and history – as if everything in between were just background noise. We talk about books, history, old ideas that have not lost their meaning.

Olena listens, asks, responds, yet it feels as though she already knows all the answers. Not everything about the world, but exactly what needs to be known. The war has tested everything – convictions, friendships, human nature. Some things have remained unshaken. Others have not.

Soon, it is time to leave. The road home is long. But for now, we simply sit and talk, knowing that something important has been said, even if not in words.

The way back is always harder. The weight of war stays with you. The front disappears in the rearview mirror, but it never really leaves. It lingers in the quiet moments between songs, in the steady rhythm of tires on the road, in restless thoughts that refuse to settle.

We will be home by Christmas. Christmas will come to the front as well.

But this is not the First World War, where men put down their weapons at the sound of carols and stepped out of their trenches for a brief moment of peace. Not here. Not in the East.

And yet, hope endures. Hope that somewhere, in the frozen darkness, a Ukrainian soldier will, for a moment, lay down his weapon, take off his helmet, and open a small package sent by the children of Odessa.

No one knows how much longer they must endure.

Back in Estonia, someone asked: “Does Ukraine have hope?” I answered: “They fight. Hope is their weapon.”

In the West, people speak of decline. They speak of lost values, of a world growing softer. Where is honor? Where is sacrifice? Where is courage? They do not know where to look. But we do. We have seen it.

It is in the men who stand guard through the night, listening to the whine of drones in the sky. It is in the women who pull the dead and the living from the rubble. In the medics who work by candlelight. In the soldiers who fight with nothing and ask for nothing.

It is in Ukraine.

For thousands of years, men fought for Europe on battlefields like these. Charles Martel stood at Tours. The knights of Europe guarded the gates of Vienna. Ancient Estonian king Lembitu fought to his last breath.

The names change, but the stories remain. A thousand years from now, when all of today has faded into the depths of time, people will still tell the tales of how here, on the shores of the Black Sea, in the Scythian steppes, on the high banks of the Dnipro, heroes stood. Ukrainian and European heroes.

And a thousand years from now, sunflowers will still bloom here, singing their songs.