Opinion: My aunt lives in Ukraine. We haven’t heard from her in five months | Virginia Wallace
Kramatorsk. The Kazenny Torets. The Donbas. I never really thought these places would mean that much to me. I mean, Kramatorsk sounds like a Soviet version of crematorium, and no one really wants to spend more time than is necessary thinking about crematoriums, although disturbingly that’s what the Donbas has become.
A Russian speaker and Russian Orthodox from the restive Donbas, she saw herself as defiantly part of the Ukrainian nation. Just like Zelensky. She came to visit us in Melbourne, our land of plenty, almost 30 years ago to marvel at the range in our supermarkets and our bounty of everything. And now we don’t even know if she exists any more.
We were in touch by phone until March, when the lines went dead. When we could speak to her, she would say it’s terrifying and she would listen at night to the bombs going off.
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