In the Presence of a Miracle
by Lyubko Deresh
Translated from the Ukrainian by Dmytro Kyyan
I first met Volodymyr Rafeenko, a Ukrainian writer from Donetsk, long before the fateful events of February 24. Having both received a literary scholarship in Great Britain a few years ago, we spent a month in each other's company. Those were happy days filled with the fresh winds of the British Isles: we visited Shakespeare's family home in Stratford-upon-Avon, spoke about literature and philosophy while walking along the river canals of Birmingham, and strolled among the hills of Shropshire that once inspired Tolkien to create a story about hobbits. Volodymyr was insightful, perceptive, and endowed with a boundless delicacy that contradicted the image of a strict-looking and stocky amateur wrestler he had seemed to inspire in me during our first meeting. During my time with Volodymyr—whose teachers had been friends with Mikhail Bakhtin—he revealed another facet of literature to me: one that is complex and unafraid of the passage of time.
After returning from Great Britain, Volodymyr and I continued our friendship. Volodymyr held literary seminars in a cozy studio in the center of Kyiv, and I became a regular attendee. Perusing the dramas of Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Stoppard, analyzing Thomas Vinterberg's and Carlos Saura's films became a window into another world for me. It was as if I'd received a key to understanding complex mechanisms—sometimes modern and sometimes covered with ancient dust—which could shed light on the mystery of human existence.
The circumstances under which Volodymyr ended up in Kyiv cast an uneasy, disturbing shadow over our discussions. In 2014, he was forced to flee from his home in Donetsk when the "Russian world" brought war there. Having not found an opportunity to settle in the capital, Volodymyr relocated sixty kilometers from Kyiv—in the modest conditions of Poroskoten village near the small town of Klavdiievo-Tarasove.
When I visited Volodymyr, I was always amazed by the stoicism with which he had accepted his life as an internally displaced person and how he had found solace in writing, analyzing literary texts, and working with students. Slowly, year after year, we became closer. In my calm and thoughtful conversations with Volodymyr, seemingly distant from the events in Donbas, I suddenly began to find answers to complex questions about humanity, collective conscience, and civic dignity. Whenever our cultural debates would end, we would switch to philosophical or religious discourse and rejoice in the miracle of being able to understand each other.
The evening before the full-scale Russian invasion began, I was preparing for another class with Volodymyr — we had planned to analyze Chloe Zhao's Oscar-winning film NOMADLAND. With a heavy heart, I stayed up late watching the film, unable to shake off an unpleasant feeling of inexorability that hung in the air. In recent months, I had tried to convince Volodymyr that there would be no war. Although, the day before, when I saw the photographs of the Russians painting "V" and "Z" marks on their military equipment set along the borders, I realized that inevitability was closer than ever.
Volodymyr also understood it. Before the seminar on NOMADLAND, he wrote to me: "Despite everything, I want us to do our work and to do it well." However, it seemed that fate had destined him to face the war head-on for a second time. My mom's call at 5:35am on February 24 woke me from a restless sleep. Before picking up the phone, I already knew what I was about to hear. "Sonny, the war has begun," my mom said through tears. "They are bombing Kyiv."
That day, Volodymyr and I called each other to coordinate our plans. He hoped to get bus tickets to Warsaw, take his family out of the country—namely, his wife and mother-in-law—and then spend the evening discussing the film. "I want our lecture to go well today," Volodymyr told me once again. After all, every Ukrainian that day felt the need to do something that would prove that we were not afraid; we would keep our dignity no matter what. However, the students no longer felt like having lectures that evening. Several hundred kilometers of traffic jams formed on the roads out of Kyiv. Gas stations ran out of fuel, people emptied the supermarket food shelves, and ATMs ran out of cash. Those who remained in Kyiv sought shelter to spend the night.
Volodymyr did not have time to take his family to Poland. By some miracle, he managed to send his mother-in-law abroad. Still, he and his wife ended up in a trap: enemy troops had entered the territory between Klavdiievo-Tarasove and Kyiv. Food supplies stopped being brought into the city, fuel ran out, and public transport stopped. The sounds of heavy artillery battles were constantly heard from the surrounding areas. The Internet disappeared in the village, and after some time, Volodymyr himself stopped communicating.
When he was finally able to call again a few days later, I thought I was talking to an entirely different person. The reality of the threat hanging over Volodymyr that sounded in his voice filled me with coldness. He told me that it was impossible to get out of the village due to the fighting. The connection could be picked up only in the forest; it was constantly interrupted, and through the noise, I could hear that he was asking me to write to his daughter, who was abroad, and let her know that he and his wife were alive. The question of taking Volodymyr out of the village wasn't even discussed. In the northwest direction from where Kyiv, Irpin, and Bucha are located–and, a bit farther, Klavdiievo-Tarasove–all hell had broken loose.
The need to pass the news to Volodymyr's daughter became the reason for our daily calls. We did so in several attempts, always doing it quickly until the connection was interrupted; we would tell the news to each other. "Be honest with me, Lyubomyr!" Volodymyr shouted in between the break-ups of the signal. "Has Kyiv surrendered? Has Kyiv been taken?" I reassured him—also shouting into the phone—that Kyiv was standing bravely and that the occupiers hadn't managed to achieve any serious gains anywhere except Kherson. I was telling him the news from his daughter, and Volodymyr, with less and less hope in his voice, only kept saying, "Just don't forget me here, okay?"
My friend would not being forgotten. Realizing that the chances of helping him were getting smaller and smaller every day, his students and I discussed possible ways to launch a rescue mission. An official evacuation from Klavdiievo-Tarasove was never announced by the authorities. Moreover, news reports began to appear about how the occupiers were firing upon evacuation buses with civilians inside.
Someone advised Volodymyr to evacuate the way people from other villages in the Kyiv region had, that is, with a white sheet or a towel in hand, moving on foot along the highway in the direction of Kyiv and hoping that someone might pick them up. However, considering that battles were taking place around Klavdiievo-Tarasove, that idea was simply suicidal.
Some friends suggested I contact Israeli volunteers, explaining that they were brave and ready to go to the most dangerous places. However, I was told from Tel Aviv that the situation in the Kyiv region looked too threatening even for them.
I reported on all our rescue attempts to Volodymyr, who said that the house was being shaken violently by rocket fire. Nevertheless, he was trying to peruse Shakespeare's Othello and had already made considerable progress.
Searching the Internet for at least some clue about the possible evacuation from Klavdiievo-Tarasove, I gained access to a private group chat created by a woman named Valeria, who was based in Berlin. She had been able to get her elderly parents out of Klavdiievo-Tarasove, and now she was helping organize evacuation convoys for other people in need. Valeria had teamed up with a few daredevil drivers who knew the local area well: the young guys introduced themselves as Axel and Mark Frost. The town was running out of food supplies, some people needed insulin and other medications, and many had very young children. Axel and Mark Frost would load their vehicle with humanitarian aid in Kyiv and bring it to Klavdiievo-Tarasove. From there, they would guide convoys of cars that still had fuel. I clung to Valeria as the last hope to somehow save Volodymyr and promised to find more drivers for their team.
But where could you find such desperados to join them? One of Volodymyr's students, a theater actress, suggested her two friends and fellow theater enthusiasts, Ivan and Denys, who already had experience taking people out of dangerous places. I told Volodymyr, his daughter, and his colleagues from PEN about this tiny spark of hope. We began to craft a plan on how to help Volodymyr. However, the critical point of the plan depended on the drivers successfully making it there.
With great difficulty, given the poor communication, we agreed on where and when Volodymyr would wait for them. Despite the noise on the line, you could feel some eerie joy filling us both. His wife boiled potatoes for the drivers who were to spend the night at their house in the village. In the morning, they all planned to leave for Kyiv.
However, the drivers were forced to turn back that day after approaching the last Ukrainian roadblock on the way to Klavdiievo-Tarasove. As they were informed by the local Territorial Defense Forces, the fighting in that area was too intense to let them through.
When Volodymyr called me that day, I told him the news with a heavy heart. After thanking me in a suppressed voice, he quickly hung up to process his emotions on his own. We were back on the phone a few minutes later, speaking to each other. Hope was not lost, no — it was just a matter of waiting another week before the guys could make the drive again. Another week in a place where the wells ran out of water, without electricity or communication, and where shells exploded overhead every day.
On that memorable Saturday, when our drivers went to Klavdiievo-Tarasove for the second time, the weather was pleasant and sunny and the frosty March sky was piercing blue. The connection dropped once the team entered the hot zone, but we expected to hear from them again on the way back. Volodymyr had been waiting for them on the road since dawn: in the cold, with his stuff ready, looking out to see if the convoy of cars would finally arrive.
We got the news from the guys in the afternoon: the rescue operation had gone successfully, and the writer and his wife were headed to Kyiv. After some time, Volodymyr called back and confirmed that they had safely made it into Ukrainian territory. I felt a weight lifted from my chest. The impossible had happened.
In the following weeks, Volodymyr moved to western Ukraine, settled in a new place, and gradually returned to a more or less regular routine. We called each other almost daily, rejoicing at the opportunity to communicate again, even at a distance. Eventually, he said that he was ready to conduct the class that hadn't taken place on February 24, the analysis of Chloe Zhao's NOMADLAND. And so one April evening, Volodymyr's students and I gathered again online. Volodymyr talked about the compositional nuances of this poignant, skillfully-made film, the hidden leitmotif of which was a Christmas song that marked the birth of a miracle. The students, and I among them, were hiding our tears while listening to Volodymyr speak.
It seemed that all of us witnessed the birth of a miracle that evening: we saw the light overcoming darkness and life overcoming death. Valeria, Axel, Mark Frost, Ivan, Denys, and many others who helped get Volodymyr out were good messengers and co-creators of this miracle. That evening, we all became participants in perhaps the greatest miracle of all. Despite everything that was going on, we found that each of us had managed to remain human in those first terrible weeks of the war.