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S&U interviews

War & peace

30 March 2023

5 min read

After the anniversary

Ukrainian musician Lyuba Reznichenko reflects on the war’s anniversary and on the aid given in so many ways. Interview by Peter Robertson.

Peter Robertson

Peter Robertson is Christian Aid's senior humanitarian journalist.

A woman sits on a chair in a field holding a large stringed musical instrument.

Lyuba Reznichenko playing her bandura.

Christian Aid.

Christian Aid first met Lyuba Reznichenko in July 2022 after the then-25-year-old had fled her home, and her studies at the music academy in Dnipro, for a remote village in western Ukraine. She was sharing a bungalow with three families, including a friend from her church in Dnipro.

Her parents, brother and three sisters were still in Kherson, under Russian occupation - they were safe but Lyuba could not get to them. She spoke about her worries and said she missed playing music but was enjoying the nature around her.

I caught up with Lyuba, in Lviv, via a Zoom interview. She updated us on the liberation of Kherson but explained her parents were under constant shelling from the Russians.

Lyuba plays the bandura – the national instrument of Ukraine. Her father advised her to take her bandura with her when she escaped, so if she ended up with nothing, she could still busk. She has since staged performances in Lviv city centre to raise people’s spirits and talked about how emotional people get: “They all want peace and victory,” she said.

She also spoke about her faith, the work she has been doing helping refugees and the support she received from Christian Aid’s partner, Hungarian Interchurch Aid.

Lyuba said when she looks back at the past year, she gets frustrated:

“It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.”

What was your life like before the war?

I was studying at the Music Academy in Dnipro. Before that, I went to see my parents in Kherson during the New Year holidays… I was planning to go visit them again in March, but 24 Feb changed everything. I was in Dnipro and my entire family was in Kherson.

What did you feel when you learnt about the Russian invasion on 24 Feb?

Like the majority of Ukrainians, I started getting phone calls at 4am from my friends who were saying: “get up, the war has started.” It was horrible, I was very scared as we heard the first air raids and explosions. Horror is the only thing I remember about that day.

What happened next?

I stayed in Dnipro until mid-March. To avoid plunging into panic and depression and as a believer, I will be honest with you, I prayed a lot. I do believe that God supports, protects and helps. The church I used to go to opened a centre for the first wave of refugees from Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya regions. As my own family was in the area under occupation and I could not do anything to help them, I decided to start helping those refugees.

Then I learnt of an opportunity to evacuate to western Ukraine in March, I grabbed it. This is how I ended up in Transcarpathian Region.

What’s your experience of interaction with Christian Aid?

I stayed with a very kind and hospitable family in a village there. They have many children and helped other refugees and I helped them every time I could. Then, in May I learnt of the Hungarian charity HIA, Christian Aid partner, and registered with them…

They supported me financially. As a student, I did not have any means. I could not ask my parents for helps as they were living under occupation and banks did not work there…

How did you stay in touch with your family?

It was a very difficult situation. There have been protracted periods, like a week, two weeks and a half, when I could not get in touch with them as there was no phone connection, no internet in Kherson. I was horrified by the news I read: a strike here, an explosion there. I was thinking about my family all the time.

But there were moments when I could reach them on a chat app. The connection was bad, but still, and when you hear the voice of your nearest and dearest, that’s a great relief…

How is your family now?

Kherson was liberated on 11 November… But then the situation only deteriorated because the Russians were shelling it from the right bank almost non-stop. My parents tell me that it is going on almost without interruptions.

When did you move to Lviv and return to Dnipro?

At the end of August, I moved to Lviv where I met other believers who were actively involved in charity work. I worked with them, too. We staged performances in the city centre. I played bandura and sang patriotic songs to raise people’s morale.

Then I returned to Dnipro to complete my studies… I continued cooperation with this organisation there… We were quite active there, too. We toured the region with performances, I played bandura a lot.

What is people’s reaction to your performances?

The reaction is abundant. People do react to my songs. They cry, too. They become very emotional. They all want peace and victory.

What do you feel about the first anniversary of the war?

It is all very difficult. When it all started, there was hope that it would end in a week or two. And then a month passed, another… Still there was hope that it will just come to an end.

When I look back at the year, I just become frustrated. It sometimes feels like I am ready to succumb to all that. But I understand that we cannot do that. We must hope, we must pray. I do believe that God will help us and victory will be ours.

What do you think about the UK charity organisations helping Ukrainians?

First, I want to thank you from the bottom of heart for supporting us all this time. This is an awful situation and many Ukrainians need help. Especially those living in eastern Ukraine, in hot spots, which have seen fierce fighting, the newly liberated territories where people have no place to live, where they lost loved one… Those people need more support.

I would like to say that more aid is directed there. Still, it is impossible to live there. It is not safe at all because of the non-stop raids and explosions. Those people who evacuated to the west of Ukraine need help. But they sometimes cannot get it because all the attention is focused on the east.

So if you can it would be good to distribute all the assistance among those staying in the east and those who moved here, to the west.

Podcast

Culture

S&U interviews

27 December 2023

5 min read

My conversation with... Tom Holland

Noticing that Tom Holland is the star of The Rest Is Politics Christmas special, Belle Tindall is remembering her conversation with the historian earlier this year.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A man sits at a table speaking into a microphone but looks into the distance. Behind him, through the window and beyond a wall is Big Ben

Tom Holland recording the podcast at Lambeth Palace Library.

In a festive one-off, two worlds have collided. Tom Holland, of the beloved 'The Rest is History' podcast, has joined Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell in their 'The Rest is Politics' parallel universe. They spend a merry hour talking through religion, politics and the way in which they have both shaped our modern world... plus dinosaurs, always dinosaurs.

And it got me reminiscing - my mind drifted back to earlier in this slightly odd year, on the eve of the coronation, when we had the one and only Tom Holland on our podcast. We called that episode of the podcast - Re-Enchanting History and the Coronation - but for me, it could just as aptly be entitled Re-Enchanting the Weird.

Below is a reflection that I wrote immediately after that fascinating episode was recorded. If you've enjoyed his appearance on The Rest is Politics, you may just enjoy his appearance here too.

Listen now

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Re-Enchanting the Weird

Let me start in the proper place, with introductions.

If you are a fan of history, Tom needs no introduction. But, for those of you who are not yet acquainted with his wonderfully infectious expertise, Tom is the co-host of the beloved podcast, The Rest is History (alongside Dominic Sandbrook). He is also the best-selling author of Rubicon, Persian Fire, Dominion, and the up-coming book for children, The Wolf-Girl, The Greeks, and The Gods. Justin Brierley and I recently had the pleasure of soaking up a little of Tom’s extensive knowledge when we interviewed him for a Coronation special of Seen and Unseen’s Re-Enchanting podcast.

Tom’s most recent book, Dominion, charts the mighty impact that the Christian revolution has had; beginning with its unexpected origins and following its cultural reverberations through to the present age, highlighting its very present influence. We are, to borrow Tom’s own phrase, a society of goldfish who are (perhaps unknowingly) swimming in a distinctly Christian fishbowl. And so, our conversation began there – as he pointed out that, like it or not, the West operates in the residue of the Christian revolution. Christianity has been hidden in plain sight all along. For the sake of eloquence, I’ll let Tom explain:

‘The conceit of the West is that it’s transcended Christianity to become purely universal, purely global. But its values, its assumptions, its ethics remain palpably bred of the marrow of Christianity’.

Throughout our conversation, Tom took us on a whistle-stop tour of what was, what is, and the thread that can be drawn between the two. And while I don’t wish to spoil things for you, I imagine you can guess what the thread is. This conversation touches upon the origins of democracy (as we perceive it), the Reformation and the Nazis, to name but a few. I couldn’t recommend it enough. But I must warn you, you cannot un-hear Tom’s observations. The things he points out, you simply cannot un-see. Christianity will no longer be hidden; it will just be in plain sight.

Seen as it is within in touching distance, we also wanted to get Tom’s thoughts on the Coronation. And this is where the re-enchantment of the weird began. At least, for me.

The very notion of this upcoming Coronation is odd. It is a distinctly peculiar event.

Firstly, it is incredibly old. We are the only country in the world that still does this particular thing in this particular way. What we will see unfold before us is derived from the 10th Century, when King Edgar was coronated by St. Dunstan, and yet it goes back further still - its roots actually lie in Bronze Age Israel.

During the Coronation, the ancient and the modern will converge. As spectators, we will be peeking into times gone by; as Tom (rather excitedly) said, watching this ceremony, and everything that will surround it, will be like ‘seeing a dinosaur… still alive… in a zoo’. I wrote that last week’s conversation with astrophysicist, Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, made me feel small – small in time and small in place. Well, in many ways, so did Tom’s thoughts on the Coronation. The ritual is so very old, and we, so very young.

But there is more. Tom reminded us that the Coronation is not only old, it’s weird. It places the mystical, the supernatural, the sacred, and the down-right strange on centre stage.

Nick Cave, who will be sitting in Westminster Abbey on the day despite not being much of a royalist, explained that he accepted the invitation purely because of its bewildering oddness. In his Red Hand Files, he wrote

‘what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age. Not just the most important, but the strangest, the weirdest.’

Both Nick Cave and Tom Holland have allowed themselves the fun of being curious. Curious about the fact that something profoundly supernatural is about to be taken incredibly seriously in the heart of a so-called secular society. And whatever pragmatic questions I may have about the place of monarchy in the here and now, I think I will allow myself the fun of being curious about that too.

My conversation with Tom re-enchanted the parts of Christianity that, as someone who grew up as a Christian, I used to be quite embarrassed by. Namely, the weirdest parts.

As a teenager, my instinct was to minimise (at least in public) the aspects of the Christian faith that cannot be explained by rationalism. I used to keep quiet about the parts of my faith that outed me as someone who believed in things that are supernatural. I would try my absolute best to blur the details of the most obscure facets of Christian thinking. But, as Tom said, ‘a Christianity that has bled itself of enchantment is a pallid thing.’ And if there is one thing that the whole Jesus movement was not, it’s pallid.

If you, like Tom Holland, crave enchantment, this episode will be for you. Afterall, what better place to go looking for the wonderfully weird than in the ‘greatest story ever told’?