LIFE IN KYIV JOHN MARONE

Despatch from the front line

VLADIMIR Putin promised to root out Nazism from Ukraine soil – but the Russian army’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians have instead sown the seeds of a hatred likely to yield bitter harvests for decades.

It’s getting more personal by the day: “Ukrainian babushka feeds Orcs poison pies,” ran one headline on a Ukrainian news service.

Orcs – humanoid monsters in Lord Of The Rings – is used by many Ukrainians to refer to Russian troops. The article claimed eight invaders were sent to their graves by a cunning local old woman.

Ukrainians call Putin’s men “Rascists,” a mix of Russian and fascist. As goes the name calling, so goes the war.

Russian invaders are accused of rape, torture, kidnap and looting – crimes that are more individual than the shelling to which Ukrainians are accustomed.

The UN said around 800 civilians have been killed since the conflict began last month; the real total is likely higher. One in four Ukrainians have abandoned their homes.

No wonder more than half of Ukrainians call Putin’s war genocidal – just two per cent of a poll believed Russia was defending Russian speakers.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine has declared that killing invading Russian soldiers is not a sin.

Sword

Its leader Metropolitan Epiphanius warned on TV: “Anyone coming to us with a sword will die by the sword.”

For Ukrainians, the blame for their nightmare goes much further than Russia’s leaders.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of the parliament, hit out at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s claim that Putin alone is responsible: “Do you really believe that...the people of Russia have nothing to do with it? Don’t fool yourself.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainians living in Moscow are under police surveillance: they are stopped and asked if they have “nationalist literature” or, tellingly, if they would like to become Russian citizens.

It wasn’t always this way. In the 1990s, Ukrainians were in lockstep with Russian anger as Nato bombed Serb forces.

No one was changing Russian street names. School children, including my own, learnt lessons in Russian – and Russian media dominated the landscape. But then Moscow seized Crimea in 2014 and war in eastern Ukraine killed 13,000.

A friend and I agreed that the response Ukrainians are most likely to give if asked about Russia’s invasion is: “We never thought they would attack us.”

Now that President Putin has, the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.