100 Days of the War - Memories, Impressions and Reflections

Ihor Zhdanov, Information Defence Project, Open Policy Foundation

The project Information Defence of Ukraine offers you new and ever more creative formats for its experts’ analytical reviews.

Minded that by this the 100 day anniversary of russia's full-scale war against Ukraine we would have already provided a lot of high-quality analysis, we have decided to offer our readers something different: personal memories, sometimes ironic, dark and sarcastic thoughts, and impressions of communicating with friends.

Information Defence of Ukraine offers a preliminary review of May 22nd-29th, which is devoted to the geopolitical situation: UkrEng.

1. Ukrainians are a nationality of paradoxes: about ourselves, our wives, about us and Ukraine.

I always say that war raises both the best and the worst that exists in the individual and the nation as an entire being.

Most Ukrainians without unnecessary reminders collect things for support, sometimes giving the last they have to volunteer at the front. But there is always a little group of those who want to “knock off” even the last.

Near the military enlistment offices are the queues to be mobilised for the Armed Forces, the Territorial defence battalions can be reached only having a “special protection” i.e. a legitimate medical reason for not being able to serve in the official forces. A young man dressed in women's clothes was detained at the border and tried to leave for Poland in order not to serve in the army. Another “creative guy” hid in the trunk of a car in a baby box.

My wife Iryna is the owner and director of a small private online school. From February 24th, she has not stopped teaching even for a day, teachers conduct remote lessons under the sound of sirens, and from bomb