Beyond the bullets: we go to Ukraine

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It's been two and a half years since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine. We've been reporting on the war since its first hours. By now, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, millions more displaced. And today, for the first time, a special episode hosted from Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. I'll be guided by some of my colleagues who are more familiar with this war with this country. We'll hear about the latest from the front lines, but we wanted also to give you another perspective, a fresh one even, about how civilians are responding. Because there's another battle being fought by every citizen to reclaim Ukrainian culture and identity that's endured centuries of oppression. And I'll be lucky enough to get a crash course in Ukrainian cuisine from one of the country's top chefs. This is my first time in Ukraine and it's a lot. On the surface, life in Kyiv is seemingly kind of normal. Just below the surface, the collective trauma, the conversations, the rhythms of life, it's not normal. Russia continues to target energy infrastructure. So electricity comes and goes all the time. The sound of generators, small and Big and really big is part of the white noise of life. And most nights there are air raid sirens, Explosions as the city's air defenses destroy most threats. Everyone here knows the sinister sound of drones that pass over, linger, pass on. And now I do too, having listened in the dead of night from the relative safety of my hotel bathroom. This is the soundtrack of a country learning new ways to carry on despite the constant threat. And to get a sense of where things stand with the war that's shaping Kievan's world, we'd arranged to meet with Oliver Carroll, a Ukraine correspondent who until this trip had only spoken to virtually. Hi, Ollie. It really is good to see you. See you.

It's wonderful to see you in the flesh. Welcome to Kyiv.

Thanks very much. Where are we and why?

So I brought you to Maidani Zelezhnosti Independence Square. I mean, it's a part of the city that every Ukrainian knows. In the past, it was a place of fun, a place for concerts, a place for fairs. But more and more it's become a place which is associated with revolution, revolution of 2004, 2014, and a memory. And this behind you in Stuttutska street is a place where hundreds of protesters were shot in 2014. And over to your left, you'll see this sea of flags over here. And that is where soldiers come and basically pay respects to their fallen. This is one of the very few places in Kyiv right now where you really get a sense of the front line meeting the city.

And we come to you quite often to get sort of piecemeal updates on how things have gone. Give me a more sort of high level view. Where are we with this war you've.

Been experiencing the last few days? The reality of drones and missiles hitting the city. For example, we saw a missile hit Poltava, killing high level military. It seems for the last 18 months or so, this war has been perhaps mistakenly viewed as a kind of static quagmire from 2022, when there was the first heroic repulsion of Russian forces in Kyiv and Kharkiv. There was a sense here that really, with the right run of events, with nifty maneuver warfare, Ukraine has a chance of getting its 1991 borders back. But now things have become a little bit more dynamic again and the population is exhausted. They've been to hell and back. I sometimes have this sickening feeling that actually things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

And you've been recently to the front lines in the north and the east. First of all, what's the feeling on the ground there?

Yeah, so at the moment, we're having a sort of competition between two very different operations. So it's difficult to say the feeling on the ground, because the feeling on the ground is very different in these two theaters. The one in the northeast, where Ukraine is trying to take a piece of Russia and the main Russian effort in the east. But you go to the east and it is a kind of zombieland. You see towns and cities which are 30, 40, 50%, 70% ruined. And you speak to the soldiers there and they tell you about the terrain, this sort of lunar, pockmarked terrain. One of them talked about this pretty horrific image of vinaigrette, a beetroot salad, which he said was this mix in the trenches with branches, rubbish, metal, excrement and human remains. I mean, this is kind of pretty visceral stuff, grim. And he was saying life there is so, so short that sometimes soldiers don't even say hello to each other. He says, your fate is decided in the first few hours, five, ten minutes. Sometimes that's all you've got. The eastern town's pretty much deserted apart from military personnel and some stragglers here and there. And yet at the same time, even there, you find life. I was in Kupiansk quite recently, which is to the southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city. And it's one of the main battles at the moment. Kupiansk, as part of it, is on the high ground. The bottom part is where a pretty strategic rail terminal is. And you come into town and the main strait is pretty much completely destroyed by Russian ballistic missiles. But in the middle, there's this sort of little kiosk, a wooden board, which says, sma coffee, Tasty coffee. And you think, oh, well, that must have been where the coffee shop was. But the window opens, this little bit of wood opens, and they're offering all kinds of coffee, Arabica filter coffee with tonic water. Even there, people are trying to live to the maximum.

And so where you're talking about there, Kupiansk, that is where the greatest concern is right now. For Ukraine.

No, Kupiansk is what they would say is the secondary effort. The main effort is around Pokrovsk, which is for many reasons a strategic hub. It's a transport crossroads, it's a rail crossroads. It's basically where an awful lot of the equipment and logistics for the eastern effort is going through. But above that, there's also an important economic reason for the Russians to be attacking Bokros, because this is essentially an area where there's a lot of coal mines, which are pretty essential for the country's metallurgy industry. And more and more we've been seeing that part of the Russian effort in Ukraine has been not just about invading a country, it's been about undermining their entire economic race on d'. Etre. Their metallurgy economy has been an important part of that. Unfortunately, Russia, as I say, is making very rapid gains. The fall of the town seems a matter of time. Ukrainian defences are crumbling at the moment with no obvious reinforcements in place. There's a whole variety of reasons why that is essentially very green. Units have been put in place there, but also there's problems at the General Staff level and people tell me that the fortifications are very badly planned there. One officer told me that they simply aren't managing the process and there isn't even a plan. The real danger now is that Russia is getting behind fortifications and is able to attack Ukrainian formations from behind, and that creates the possibility of encirclements. And Russia is suffering from major losses in the process. But in the Donbass, the process very clearly appears to be in Russia's favor.

And you mentioned also the northeast and the incursion into to Kursk by Ukraine's forces, which seem to breathe a little oxygen into their efforts. How does that look now?

Yeah, this was a very daring, asymmetric operation where Ukraine was basically looking to show that it was worthy to be supported, that had the ability to take the fight to Russia to raise morale. Ukraine went in with some of its best units and many people were worried and they were telling me at the time that Ukraine's teeth would be blunted and valuable Western kit would, which they used, would be lost. We're now at the stage where that operation seems to be near culmination, and on some levels it is a victory for Ukraine. In the first week, it seized almost as much territory as Russia had managed since the beginning of the year. According to the commander in chief, that's over 1,000 square kilometers. Losses have been pretty light. Ukraine has also, in the process, got hundreds of political prisoners. Half of them, I'm told, are FSB security officers. It's embarrassed Putin. Perhaps best not to exaggerate that too much. But most crucially, as I said, it's shown that to Ukrainians and to Western backers that Ukraine can fight. I suppose the question right now is what the cost of that predominantly political victory has come at. And it's still too early to say because, you know, winter's about to come. Soldiers are about to lose the COVID of greenery, and already we're hearing a lot of grumbles from people who are trying to defend the eastern front, saying some of the best units went north.

So clearly sending the best troops in for this possibly quixotic mission in Kursk is a big gamble. Was a big gamble.

It certainly seems at this stage to be risky, to put it mildly. And there's a lot of grumbling happening already, and mood is fickle. And while there was a huge mood uplift after the announcement of this cheeky operation into Russia, you see signs that it's also under question now. We may be seeing another operation about to start. We have to basically wait and see on that front. But Ukraine's commanders see this as an essential part of a path to victory, maybe their last throw of the dice before being perhaps forced into a peace that might not be particularly advantageous to them or acceptable to the Ukrainian people.

And as a Kyiv resident, do you get the sense that everyone here feels that kind of worry, or is everyone still on the euphoria of the incursion? What's happening, the fingertip feeling for Kievans?

It really depends on the person you ask in particular. But what is clear is that the challenges of war are very different from those in Kyiv, especially those who don't have skin in the game with family members. Many of them do, of course, but, you know, with all the major problems of demobilization, post trauma, disability, money, economics, politics, even if we get to post war, it might be as frightening as war itself.

Ollie, thanks as ever.

Thank you.

So we're still in Maidan, and I'm going to introduce someone who's been behind the scenes here and will continue to be senior producer on the intelligence, Sarah Larnjuk, who's been coordinating this trip and keeping me alive, frankly, and who has traveled, traveled extensively in Ukraine since the start of the invasion. Sarah, what's the plan?

Hey, Jason. So Maidan, in addition to being a cultural hallmark for the purposes of being the background to the revolutions in this country, is also an easy access point to see that secondary war that's kind of going on. And by that I mean Ukraine's cultural revival, its fight to see what it means to be Ukrainian. So shall we relax? So from Maidan now, we're going down these stairs into hallways that largely connect big chunks of the city and which.

Have been acting as shelters also.

Exactly. So these hallways connect to the metro where people have been sheltering. It also connects into a mall and the reason I'm bringing you down here is in fact because at this intersection of these hallways directly under my don, you can always find Ukrainian musicians busking.

Here, like all the time.

Like pretty much all the time. Like right up until curfew. Yeah, dusk, dawn, it doesn't matter. When the invasion happened, Ukrainian government put in place a lot of policies that helped support Ukrainian culture and reject anything in this country that would have previously been more influenced by Russia. So for example, when the invasion happened, they banned Russian language music on the radio stations. And that's just in addition to Ukrainian pride, helped boost this demand for more Ukrainian music, more artistry in not just music, but all of the realms. Early in the war on the radios, you would hear a lot of revivals of folk music. So this is like talking about songs sung by army men in the early 20th century, Sikh riflemen who were part of the Austro Hungarian army. And they sing a song called, in English, oh, the red viburnum in the meadow, Which talks about this plant falling, bending in a meadow metaphor, obviously, and then says, for some reason our glorious Ukraine is in sorrow and we'll take that red viburnum and we will raise it up. So songs like these were revived, but then it really started advancing and it ended up being Ukrainian musicians writing new songs about the war. And then it just became more of an intrinsic interest in Ukrainian music. Like some of the biggest Ukrainian stars are touring not just in Ukraine, but also around the world.

And is it easy to unpick what is a kind of resurgence of patriotism if things like patriotic songs are being revived from the actual cultural revival, or are those things impossibly intertwined?

I think impossibly intertwined at this point, Ukrainian life now revolves around war. And so Ukrainian culture cannot exist untied from the war.

And so to have culture which is distinctly Ukrainian is itself a war crime.

Yeah, it's, it's. I think that I've seen a lot of response to this conflict and in the cultural revival at a desire to define what their values are, not to paint themselves as victims. However, it is in the context of continuous repression that is in a big way what it means to be Ukrainian.

And so that's a very clear cut case as regards music. But where else do you see this revival?

So also in this underground network, you can see other cases of it, because here in all of these little shops that pop up in this little network of tunnels here, you can see this traditional ware called the vishvanka being sold.

Everywhere, well, alongside keychains and Ukrainian flags and what have you.

Yeah, there's also a lot of war merch. But this is particularly the revival of a Ukrainian traditional. The English word is peasant blouse. And for a long time, this vyshvanka dates back hundreds of years. Again, but it was repressed, it was shamed to wear them. And really before 2014 and before 2022, you would never see a young person wearing a bishvanka.

So it is a long sleeved dress. Lots of embroidery up the center, down the sleeves. All have tassels. Tassels hanging from the belt as well.

We love tassels.

Ornate.

I mean, the embroidery is important. It always has embroidery around the cuffs and typically around the collar as well. And so these ones are dresses, but they're also shirts, and they're also unisex. So there's male shirts and female shirts. Obviously, the. The dress ones are for the women. But this embroidery is something that used to be so specific to every region of Ukraine. And over the course of centuries, it was shamed. It became a piece of clothing that Ukrainians didn't wear unless it was a. A much older person at, like, maybe Christmas. But since 2014, you now see Vysh Lanka all over the place on special occasions, you see it just everywhere.

I feel like I've seen President Zelenskyy wearing one.

Yes, you've definitely seen the Ukrainian president wearing one, but you'll also see them just on the streets everywhere or. This week is an interesting time to visit Kyiv, because it just happens to be Ukraine Fashion Week. Went to my very first fashion show this weekend, which was simply bizarre. But it was interesting because, first of all, it was hosted inside of this cavernous Ukrainian landmark known as the Golden Gate. And it presented clothing made by the Gunya Project, which very specifically is looking at modernizing things like the vishvanka and making it into clothing that everyone is really, really proud to wear.

I don't know very much about Ukrainian history, but I know enough to know that there have been cycles of repression and conflict and war here for a very long time indeed. It's sort of sad that this war is what's brought this cultural stuff back to the fore.

It is a very sad silver lining to all of this, and it's something that isn't by accident. So just to give you one last example, there is a place in Kharkiv known in the 20th century as Slovo House. And it was just this place for artists to write and tell their stories and exist. And under Stalin, most of those People ended up being executed. But that house still existed when the invasion happened. And it was among the very first places targeted by missiles in the first weeks of the war. And so this is a repeating story. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance that goes on in my own brain when I go to a fashion show in Kyiv when most of the time we're.

Talking about a woman.

But this feels like one of the ways that Ukrainians can fight back. That actually allows them to come back to normal life a little bit and something that actually gives them joy.

Sarah, thanks for the tour.

Thanks. Jason.

Foreign. Hi. This is Christy from Back to the Bar. You've probably heard about GLP1 weight loss medications and the side effects that can come with jumping in too fast. That's why I love Noom. Makes getting started easy. Their microdose GLP1 program begins with a smaller dose and gradually scales up based on how your body reacts. The Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $99 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at noom.com that's n o o m dot com Noom micro changes. Big results. Average weight loss eight pounds in first month. Meds and personalization based on clinical need and not available to all individuals. Medications are not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. Pricing based on first month only.

Hi.

Hi. How are you?

Hi, Jason.

Nice to meet you.

Very nice to meet you. I understand you are the best person in perhaps the world to tell me about modernized, in the universe, modernized Ukrainian cuisine.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So my name is Yevin Klopotenko and I'm the chef of Ukraine who is changing the grand gastronomy. And I want you to understand what is happening. Okay? So I'm asking you to enjoy my cathedral of the best Ukrainian food.

Cathedral of Ukrainian food.

Let's go.

Let's go. Okay. So take a seat.

Thank you.

I know that you don't like beetroot.

Yes. You've been told it is almost the only food I don't like.

Why? What is your story?

I have to defend myself.

Yeah.

I think. Please don't be offended. What I have tried tastes like dirt.

Yes, exactly. You don't like dirt. There is like a few different tastes in the world. Like if you're describing some style of the chef, normally you're saying this chef working with a lot of ground tastes like a carrot, like a parsi. All the stuff I like all those things. Yeah, but mushrooms? Same story. But Beet is just like dirt. You will fall in love. I think that's my mission for today.

I am open minded.

This restaurant is 100% of Ukrainian products. So we don't have here black pepper, we don't have here lemons, ginger, parmigiano. Because for me it's important to show that in Ukraine we're now fighting for our identity and we want to find everything ours. You can have the best, best restaurant of Ukrainian cuisine from the best Ukrainian ingredients. That's why we ask about the spices. What is it we have here in Ukraine? We don't have the spices. And I was thinking what we have and I understood that in Ukraine we preserved all the spices in the liquors. So we took the vodka we called horilta. So we made infusions. It's our famous drinks, infusions with different herbs. I just bought hundreds of bottles of different infusions and I took from, from that infusions, they're all herbs. Like here is chamomile, edel flower, and this is a yellow pea. And with the smoked paprika from the west Ukraine region. And we have fresh sunflower oil. And that's the taste of the childhood of all Ukrainians. Take a bread and do like Italians do with the focaccia and the olive oil, you will feel the taste of Ukraine.

That is unexpected but really nice.

100% of Ukrainian products. That's all. But just without the cheating. You know, it's the truth, but it's.

A bit of culinary truth, but also a kind of patriotic truth.

Yeah, yeah. My lifestyle is about showing the people that they can be 100 Ukrainians. If you want to understand Ukrainian people, you have to understand how like I was born in USSR and ussr, it's a. It's kind of an awful, awful thing. Like you've been living in USA for 70 years and you had nothing abroad. When the borders are opened in 1991 when the USSR was broke and everyone started to think that everything which is from abroad it was forbidden. And this means it is better. And my way, I'm trying to turn it back. So the restaurant called 100 Years Back in the future. So we went back before the USSR came here. The result now what you're eating is taking part now in Ukraine. So a lot of people start to wear the jewelries which are Ukrainian. They start to have a lot of clothes which are Ukrainian because it's like some kind of renaissance. But now you have to pray because it's borscht. Pray, pray because you will have the most important food for our nation. And you will have the most important food for food for our nation. From the beetroot. From the red, dirty beetroot.

Giving the red dirty beetroot a chance.

You have to put the sour cream there. One spoon.

This much?

Yeah.

Put and mix it. This one, it has the wooden oven flavor because we have here. Wooden oven, because all the food. If you want to recreate the food from the ancient parents, you have to do it how they were cooking. You have to build a wooden oven and then it has the taste. So normally it certainly has the smell. Yeah. And that's the dish now is a part of the UNESCO heritage for the last two years, because my ngo, my organization put it there, because Russian people, they want to say that it's their dish, and they start to tell in the world that borscht is a Russian soup. And they had to fight back. And I won with my team. And now borscht is a part of the world heritage of UNESCO. And it's only 10 dishes there. It's a pizza from Napoli, it's baguette from France and pilav, and there is hummus. It's like a brick of your identity. And this one, borscht is, for us, is the most important thing.

Clearly. I've been eating this the whole time.

Yeah, yeah, it's.

There's no dirt.

Yeah, no, no, because. No, because you were eating maybe fresh beetroot. I took the soul of the beetroot and they put the aroma of the wooden almond.

But normally soul of beetroot tastes pretty good, actually.

Yeah. Soul of beetroot. That's the secret you will tell to everyone that I hate beetroot. Except in the borscht.

My life is already changing.

Okay. Okay, Nice.

Your work is done here. You've converted me after a lifetime.

That's actually what inspires me, and that's actually my job, like what I'm doing for you to discover Ukraine cuisine is very important also, because when you come into some country and you want to discover what is that country about you, normally you're listening for the language, you're looking. You're looking for the lifestyle, and you want to eat the food, you know, and that's what you know you're doing.

This is much more accessible than trying to learn Ukrainian.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Definitely, definitely. It's much. And it's more easy to learn and enjoyable.

Thanks for making the time.

Thank you.

And for providing an enormous meal.

It's a. You know, I want you to try and I Think this. It's like something new.

Very, very Ukrainian.

Yeah. And it's Ukrainian. That's for me. What's most important that you try very Ukrainian cuisine. And you will remember.

We'll never forget it.

Yeah. Thanks.

We're back in Maidan and I don't know if you can hear the generator there, but again it's part of the backdrop of life here and I've come here for the hard parts at the end. Patting a full belly and thinking about where we might go Listen to some traditional Ukrainian music tonight. Feels like we're looking past what's going on in eastern Ukraine and the vibe in Kyiv. Can feel like a lot of people here are consciously choosing to have a more normal day to day existence again. It's not. And it would be really easy to be mawkish about what I've been shown. To talk about feeling the weight of history and the history being made here. To imagine I've parachuted in and understood the grief that is there just below the surface. I don't want to tell you again that Ukrainians are stoic or resilient. It's not enough. I've come to the field of flags that Ollie was talking about before. I was passing through here earlier this week. There's barely space for more flags. And as I walked past here earlier, there was a man with his family. He carefully stepped into it with a flag in his hand. And I presume his wife was holding a picture frame. And I guess the earth is really hard. He was struggling to. To get the flag stuck in. And just then a passerby pulled out a big pocket knife and handed it to the guy. He dug a little hole and planted the flag and passed the knife back. Then the other guy just kept walking. I don't think a word was.