By the way, do you know who transported humanitarian aid through Lake Lagoda to Leningrad during the Blockade? Many did—including my great-uncle Hryhoriy Yevdokymovych Naumenko. He died a few years ago, at nearly a hundred. Back in 2014, his children wouldn’t let him go to Kyiv to the Maidan. He had even packed his things.

Yet he went through Ladoga, wrapping his hands around the steering wheel with a rag and setting fire to the rag, so that the smoldering cloth would keep his hands from freezing and losing mobility.

When the rags began to burn, he would stop, jump out of the cab and put the fire out on the ice. Eventually, he would set it on fire again.

The Germans were bombarding heavily. The ice around the next car would suddenly turn into a black star that spread in wide cracks—and next thing you knew, the car was gone and only the black star would remain.

Thus Naumenko from Kyiv would feed blockaded St. Petersburg. And now, these assholes talk about an immortal regiment, about the bloody heroism of the ruzzian soldier.

My grandpa Grisha chauffeured on the Finnish front, too. I can tell you about that.

Maryna, Kyiv