#1

I wouldn’t really want

to participate in anything like this,

but I don’t really have any choice

because this is my home.

I have nowhere to go.

and I’m not going

to give it up.

…

I don’t get to decide

if Putin is going to invade or

to launch a nuclear weapon or

whatever. What I get

to decide is how

I’m going to respond to it.

My choice is to do something

productive and to help the people

who are defending my city.

     – Hlib Bondarenko, 21 years old, Kyiv, Ukraine. Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Mark Boyer and Michael Downey, “’There Will Be a Battle’: A Family Prepares for War in Kyiv,” New York Times, March 1 & 2, 2022.       https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/01/world/ukraine-russia-war

#2

I am the mother of my son.

And that is it. And I don’t know

if I will see him again or not. I can

cry or feel sorry for myself, or be

in shock—and all of it.

     But we’re past that phase.

There are more important things

in front of us now. Right now

they are coming to kill us all.

Everyone, 100 percent. Not one person

in Kyiv is feeling safe now.

     – Natalia Bondarenko, Hlib’s mother (source as above)

#3

It’s very simple. We

protect our choice of freedom,

what we selected many years ago.

We proved this several times in 2004,

2014 and now. Fight for your country.

And I pass this message to Hlib. And

I believe the same message Hlib

will pass to his children.

       – Oleg Bondarenko, Hlib’s father (source as above)

#4

Russia, the war, the

whole situation –

It’s just barbarity.

That’s how I see it.

They surely will lose

because they don’t have

any other arguments

besides cruise missiles and

heavy weapons.

       – Boris Redin, volunteer, near Freedom Square in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Associated Press, March 1, 2022