Book by Brazilian brings readers closer to Ukrainian War fighters

War is almost never an attractive topic. But a book written about it can be historically accurate and loaded with seductive information. This is the case of “Trem para a Ukraine”, by journalist Rodrigo Lopes.

He has just published one of the first works by a Brazilian about the conflict that started in February this year, when Russian military forces invaded his neighbor, creating chaos for millions of refugees and much mourning and destruction.

One of the great merits of Rodrigo Lopes’ writing is to have discovered a succession of faces and proper names within a conflict in which, for most readers, a vision clouded by anonymity prevailed. The dramas of the living and the dead are so distant that they would not speak directly to our emotion.

But the journalist discovers inside Ukraine the distress of other Brazilians, a community that is more than a minority, all of them surprised by the war and involved in adventures so that they can leave the country.

This is the case of Sorocaba biologist Vanessa Rodrigues, who worked in Kiev. Or, as the author prefers, in Kyiv, a transliteration of Ukrainian and not Russian, as the capital of the country is generally designated.

Vanessa is married to Vladimir, born in Moscow, but who moved to Brazil as a boy. She is pregnant, which brings a more difficult condiment to the way back. And they both own Thor, a 13-year-old dog that, once all the problems are resolved, can barely board the FAB plane that would bring everyone back — because, among other things, the owners didn’t have the dog’s health documentation.

It took an animal rights activist to circulate a video in which Vanessa asked for an exception to board with Thor, who had accompanied her since her single days in the interior of São Paulo.

In the same convoy of three cars, one of them driven by the Brazilian ambassador to Ukraine and which crossed the border with Poland for the group to take the military plane, were Matheus and Moreno, two football players who played in professional clubs in the country. and who spent days in a futile attempt to board.

Lopes also discovered Clara Magalhães in Ukraine, who lived in Germany and, with the conflict, rented a car, filled it with hygiene products and water bottles and went to help people who left the country as refugees.

In time. The journalist and writer is a reporter and commentator for Rádio Gaúcha, the newspaper Zero Hora and the television network RBS. The title of his book is because it was by train that he entered Ukrainian territory, after trying to enter by plane, by car and even on foot.

Among Brazilians, one of them went to Ukraine and never came back. André Hack Bahi, 43, born in Porto Alegre and father of three, enlisted as a volunteer for the Ukrainian troops, having been very well received for having served in the Army and worked in an armed escort company.

He was killed by the invading Russian troops. Cremated, his family members received his ashes and the posthumous medal that Ukraine awarded him. André was the first of three Brazilian volunteers killed in combat, in the accounts Lopes did before completing his book.

The author did not witness combats nor was he accredited to do so. But he witnessed the tension in every reported episode. His reporter’s spirit has the sensibility to cite the fight for a socket to charge his cell phone on the floor of the railway station with the floor covered by Ukrainians who were waiting for the opportunity to take a train that would take them far from the country.

There is smoke from the fires of buildings recently hit by Russian missiles. And there is the incessant sounding of sirens that forces civilians to take refuge in shelters that could be subway stations, located at depth and protected by enemy radioactivity (things from the Soviet era) or else the floor of a cafeteria in the basement of a large hotel. .

The narrative is tense, with moments of curfew and bombing booms. Or humanized by the existence of volunteers who offer soups or sandwiches to the Ukrainians crowded amid attempts to cross borders.

A final observation on the precise and exemplary nature with which the book, in a few pages, makes the history of the complicated relations between Ukraine and Russia, which is fundamental so that the current conflict is not attributed to the individual pathology of President Vladimir Putin. .

It’s a long story, dating back to at least the 13th century, when the Mongol Empire split between the Grand Principality of Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It is estimated that 13 million Ukrainians died between 1933 and 1945, through Stalin’s criminal agricultural experiments, which killed part of the population of malnutrition, and also through the notorious homicidal arrogance of Nazi Germany.