politclub helps to understand the processes taking place in ukraine and the world. vitaly portnikov, khrystyna yatskiv, andriy smoliy and invited experts give their assessment and forecast of the development of events based on facts. if you want to understand how our today will affect our tomorrow, watch the saturday politics club, every saturday on espresso. today i have olenka cherninka as a guest, a writer, photographer and mother of the hero. olenko, i congratulate you, today you are visiting us. and you know what i want to talk to you about today. the war changed us all. we will never be the same again . and we got it. this scary,

overwhelming experience, an experience that we may never want to have in our lives. i talk to many people, i ask about many things, but today i will talk with you about probably the most painful topic in your life, because i start every interview from february 24, and i want to start an interview with you from may 20. 2023, i remember... this day and i know that you remember it very well and can you tell me what that day was like? usually they say that a mother feels and knows, and she has such a connection, on this day, the way i experienced all the days since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, how mykhailo went to the great war, i experienced every day, for some reason i i didn't worry about the day at all, i was calm. and if you believe the words of my brothers, i

was calm all this moment, when, as they say, the child was already dead, i did not feel anything, and even when i called my brothers and introduced myself, i oh, hello, because i knew him, i am from his i corresponded with my wife, and here i hear that something is wrong in his voice, and i say that mykhailo is wounded, he says, no, unfortunately, unfortunately, he died, i remember this conversation, my emotions, my condition, i spoke to him to the last second quietly, but my mother and sister heard me from the very other end of the apartment, they came running, i could no longer call my wife, yulia called my wife, and i just heard a terrible scream in the receiver, the cry of martha's despair, that's what it was like... the day of may 20 2023,

a year has passed, almost, almost, and look, this is your experience, of course i would like to never no one experienced it, but we understand that , for sure, during these more than two years of war , a lot of mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, went through the same experience as you, and we understand that... the war is not over, and that's why many more will go through such an experience, that's why i wanted you to share it today, that we should know where to turn, how to act in such situations, do you remember those first minutes, hours, days, what you did, who you are supported, and in general, i received the most support from my sister. yulia cherninka,

from my best friend marina savki and from marta, mykhailo's wife, my sister-in-law, well , of course from my mother, this, it was such support that if it wasn't for them, i don't know if i would be alive today, it was fantastic support that it is necessary to do in such moments, to be honest, for me that period of time was, i don't remember everything, it... everything was like in a fog, i only remember that everywhere in all the instances where we went, me marta supported me by the hand and only said: here you have to sign, here you have to, i didn't even read, because i couldn't i don't understand anything at all, what happens if a person finds himself in a situation like mine, i just remember that i need to file a police report with the sbu, the red cross, the un, the authorities... in cases of missing persons and

the coordination headquarters , this is the main one, where you have to submit everything, all applications according to their requirements. i just recently applied, there is this alexey yukov, he drives, we forgot the name of his ggo, plazdarm, plazdarm and black tulip, we also filed an application there, all the data about mykhailo and the banana boy, who disappeared together with mykhailo, is his brother and close friend. how did i survive? well, actually i really survived because i still survive, i can't call it life because it is survival. i turned first to qualified specialists, never turn to psychologists, they will not

help you, this is not the situation where a psychologist helps. psychologist - she broke up with her boyfriend, she's not doing well at work, well then, corner, then you can go. psychologist, when such a situation occurs, a psychologist is like a poultice for a dead person, he will not help you, you will take one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, two steps back. you need to contact a psychiatrist, and a practicing, qualified one, with good recommendations, so that they give you the right medical support and that a specialist, a psychotherapist, works with me for a year, victoria zabor, she. works as a psychotherapist, we spend an hour with me every thursday on thursdays, and he prescribes and changes medications for me, changes medications so that i don't get used to one or the other, eh, lyudmila oleksiivna samsonova, this

two, two people, these are the two pillars, thanks to which i also survived, and thanks to which i have them on facebook, they read all my posts. it is like my medical history for them, how long did you turn to, how long was it after may 20, when you turned to the specialists, i think somewhere in the middle of june, because yes, somewhere in the middle of june i called mariana savka, yuliechka from me my sister didn't leave at all for three weeks, she was just with me 24/7, i... called maryana, yulichka left sometime then, i called her and said: "i will to go to the hospital, but please go with me so that i don't give up at the last moment, because we, all the children of the soviet union , are used to the fact that psychiatry is something very scary. you made this decision yourself, or did your loved ones, no, i made the decision

myself, because i realized that i was falling into the abyss, and i am still waiting for my son, and i don't want him to see me. in some inadequate state, and the state has actually slipped to inadequate, well, here it is, it is probably worth telling our viewers that that until today you do not know whether he is alive or what happened to him , the brothers all shout with one voice that he died and they are sure of it, there is no body, there is no case, i am not sure, and i will never tell anyone i will believe until the end, i will wait. i will wait, if i have to, i will wait all my life, but i will wait, that's how i got out of this state, i started writing posts, i started writing posts on the internet, talking to my son, i remembered our

stories from his childhood, from the beginning, which he was small, how he was a teenager, what stories we had, what stories we had that were funny and tragic. stories, and more, and i wrote them under one hashtag: lemberg, two dots, mommy don't cry, lemberg, mommy don't cry, lemberg is my son's call sign, at first he had the call sign lviv, but when he moved east, there was the position is lviv, and in order not to confuse the position with the call sign, it was renamed lemberg by the brothers, this is the ancient name of lviv, and here i am... i wrote posts about myself, about my feelings, about how i was a mother until the beginning of a large-scale war invasion great war until may 20th 2023 what i was mom what we did what we got it was just if my son

called me and said mom i need so-so but it's on mars, and i would say: yes, and i would fly to mars. i bought him such things, who will read the book, he will understand that it was simply impossible to do it, and i said, i will do it, and when he wanted to translate, he said, mom, they don't want, well, someone like him, the fighter, of course, no one wanted to translate, he is beautiful, he has proven himself, and all the recommendations that my comrades later wrote to me, and the commanders wrote and commented on him, and i understood that, of course, no one wanted to transfer him, he wanted to, yes, he passed this height, he needs to go even higher, he already passed, gained knowledge, he needs higher, and here he was rushing, rushing, and finally, he left from the first days of the full-scale, from the first days, himself. three times the policeman came, they told him, we will call you back, and he went by himself, and then he said:

"mom, guess what, i'll get a summons, and i'm already here," and he said to me once: "mom, they don't want to transfer me, you have a way to be a slave, well, damn it, who am i and who is a slave, where do i have a way to be a slave, but i know so much that he believes in me as in god and that i am like that for him authority, i said, of course i would find it, i didn’t know how it would happen, but in three days i already had a phone, in the evening i wrote to valery fedorovych, and in the morning mykhailo had already been transferred, valery fedorovych sent me all the documents, here are such stories in this book, stories from his how he became a man, how he became a boy, how he fought, our military stories, reviews of conscripts, well, the book is non-fiction, but it reads like fiction, well , of course, my experience, how i got out of this situation, this... book has long been called a primer for the military, for

relatives, military, for relatives , and for those who do not have it, it is not related to the war, so that he can understand us and we become closer to each other, and why for relatives will he explain, please, why for relatives, what, what is in the book, what i wrote i wrote about my experience, it will be a primer for my relatives. fully evaluated by them today, you know, can you give me a few examples, just tell me what exactly i wrote, and the feedbacks started to be very strong, after the publication of this book, they started writing to me, every day i receive letters from people i don’t know, they are written by mothers, sisters, it wives write, and literally this morning i received a letter, thank you, some inna wrote me the last name, i don't remember, thank you for that. that you wrote this book, while reading it, i got to know my husband when he told me how he

was young, how he grew up, in all these stories, he says, it seems that you wrote about my husband. ivan kadymyt, if you remember, reading my posts on the internet, said: "god, i see artemko, i see my artemko, these are children born in free ukraine." they are completely different, plus or minus there are several years. and this book is literal. as i once dreamed, when i got to the clinic, my doctor was treating me according to viktor frankl's method, and i realized that my son often quoted various phrases, and when i now know that these are frankl's phrases, i understand that my my son read frankl and was interested in him, and so was i fell into very good hands, and when viktor frankl wrote a book in search of true meaning, that's what it 's called. he is a person who lived through a concentration camp, and he shared his experience, how he survived, what he achieved, what he operated on,

what his meanings were, and people, when this war ended, the second world war, this book of his became a primer, because almost the whole world was wounded by this war, and people, reading this book, and it immediately became a bestseller, reading this book, they had for themselves such a primer, a survival primer, and i understood, writing... serhii rudenko and volodymyr vyatrovych wrote me these posts that it should be a book, they just wrote to me in personal messages, it should be a book, and i collected this book, these posts were collected into a book, under this gave the title of this book with a hashtag, and i had a feeling that it might be, well, i don't want to praise myself too much, but it might be similar to something. on viktor frankl's book, only it was during the second world war, and the wounded

society read it, and now our ukrainian wounded society, reading this the book, will find a lot in common, a lot of kinship, will see this experience, and maybe in this experience will find some necessary things for himself, who are these people who are coming to you now at the presentation of this? books when you visit different cities of ukraine? i did not even expect that the presentations would be so crowded and that the book would have such great publicity, because the first edition was sold out in three weeks. "i did not expect that it would be so necessary and so interesting for everyone, the people who come, first of all they come to sign, buy the book at the presentation, they come to sign, and everyone wants to hug me, and i want to hug this person, we hug, each person should spend a few minutes, talk, someone is

a mother, someone is a neighbor, someone is a wife, someone is just a person who is not... " indifferent, and i also noticed that mostly at all my presentations people cry in the hall, some are afraid to read this book, thinking that it is very strong, dramatic, in fact, it is a drama of light, who has already read it, they say, there is so much light here and so much summer, reading it, wings grow and you want to fly, so you cry, sometimes over where... what heads, but these tears are clean and bright, these tears of faith, hope and love, maybe those people who came to you for the presentation, maybe you remember you know, maybe someone told you a story that struck you, and maybe someone had a story similar to yours, and you are ready to share it, there was

not one, there was not one, when a woman approaches. and her daughter-in-law, her husband's wife, wrote a book, the claimant in it was an eagle, the surname orlov, and my mother came to presentation, and my wife could not come to the presentation then, my mother came, and we both cried, hugged each other very much, but she already knows for sure that he died, everyone who knows me, who writes to me, the caring people believe that mykhailo will return, i also really want to believe and i really want him to write a sequel to this book, it would probably be called lemberg's return, i really want it, god willing. olenko, well, returning to what you know about your son today and,

what do you not know about his fate today, you don't know what, what are the answers. they send you that they say nothing, shut up, shut up, i am talking to many of his brothers, i am talking to combrig pavel palisa, i am talking to his combatant, bravo, i am talking to the fim department, because marta was processing the receipt there. help, as a wife, she is afraid of the military, she has a terrible fear, so i had to communicate for her so that marta would receive money, and we are very good friends with her, we were not so friendly before, and now we can go to the beauty salon together,

well, come on, just keep quiet even together with... it's comfortable, and i think mykhailo is happy if he knew that. you are lucky because you have such a wonderful family that supports you. maybe you found out, and when you traveled, traveled with this book, to different cities of our country, maybe there are some special unions that unite such women, maybe there are some organizations that help, because we understand that not everyone in fact sometimes you are lucky. with family, with friends, and not everyone can get such colossal support, there are, of course, unions, there are organizations, and there are, i have been invited more than once, i am not yet ready for unions and organizations, i communicate with ivanka dymyt, this communication is enough for me, she supports me a lot, it is not ready, why tell me,

do you think, we are all different, we are all different. and to be honest, i am a little afraid of this communication, i think that it will harm me, well , this is what my inner intuition tells me for today, maybe i will change my mind later, so far yes, you are afraid, because there can be very there is a lot of grief, i accept every grief in my own way and listening to every story, for me this is another trigger, now even recently... i started reading the news, because i cry every time, every time a photo of a hero who died flies on facebook, i cry over every photo, i thought that i'm not ready yet, i'm not ready, that's how i thought, and i was advised a lot, and i thought about adopting or fostering a child, but my doctor says: until you adopt yourself,

you're not ready, when you will already be able to stand on your feet, it can be very strong and change you, or maybe on the contrary you won't be able to give this child anything, whatever you could, find your resource, love yourself, hug yourself, oh... even psychotherapeutic classes like this, you hug yourself, feel yourself, and feel sorry for yourself, or watch look at yourself in the mirror and talk to yourself, to your self, to feel yourself, to feel sorry for yourself and to understand that god gave you life, and you have no right to waste it, it happens, people leave, people come, people leave again, and more my... psychotherapist said: take the way madonna held her babies, and imagine that this is your baby child, do

you have the right to harm it? you don't have it, you have to treat your life the same way, i 'm trying to understand it now and live with it, feel it and be, be like that. maybe you can advise something else to our viewers who have experienced grief and maybe you know some other practices, or what helped you, movies, books you read, write posts, on facebook, write, don't be ashamed, don't be ashamed do a moral striptease, don't be shy, don't be shy to show your resilience, your pain, don't be shy show your height don't keep it to yourself, choose a hashtag and write a post every day, write about your husband, write about your child, write about your brother,

tell stories, share, let the whole world know and hear and be proud as you are . tell me, please, look, what are the next steps, someone... told you, maybe some government agencies, maybe the military, told you what your next steps should be, what to do, nothing, wait, wait, i passed the dna, my ex- husband also passed a dna test, everything, what we could, we did, now we just have to wait, the territory where mykhailo and bananchyk disappeared is under occupation, no one will set foot there. "if suddenly their wounded were taken prisoner, that side never gives any lists, although it is supposed to give lists according to all

the rules of the un, they should give lists, they don't, unless it is possible to find out through some special telegram channels, find out that i and i do it from time to time, but to no avail, because, well, what else can be done, i would have already gone there, i would have already crawled there and i would kiss that bahmut land and wait for my son and look for him, i don't know what can be done, i did everything that was possible. by the way, i remember this idea of ​​yours, when you talked about how you wanted to go there, i went, but i came as close as possible, through druzhkivka to kostyantynivka. from kramatorsk, i heard it, every morning in kramatorsk you wake up and hear only bang, bang, bang, bang, you hear the war going on, and

the closest to me is my fellow classmate mykhailo, who also serves there, felix, he took me as close as possible , so that i could launch helium balloons with a letter to mikhail and the banana boy, i wrote them a letter, i'm waiting for them, and we were laughing a lot that there would be an incomprehensible object in the sky, well , nothing, it flew away and when i looked at it, he disappeared right out of my sight, i took these jelly balls from lviv, we drove with volunteers in a bus with everyone, shook all the property, and these balls traveled with us all the way. the war continues, and my next question to you will surely be difficult, very difficult, because it seems to me that i am no longer afraid of anything in

this world, even. i'm not afraid anymore, look, women and mothers are looking at you now, whose sons, thank god, are alive, but would you let your son go, knowing what would happen exactly like this, i didn't let him go, i did terrible things that i just didn’t do it, i begged him, his company, where he works, he works as a business analyst in a well-known american it company, he is engaged in banking, his salary was much more expensive than he received those 100 tysia, there was much more, he knows languages ​​perfectly, he is an excellent specialist, to him the aitishniks collected and bought everything, everything, everything , so that only he had everything, everything was the best, only i, i restrained him at the beginning of the war, he

was still... quite a schoolboy, then a freshman, he was eager for the great war, i that i didn't just make it up, i even sinned by telling terrible illnesses about myself, i lied to him, and this time, well, how can you stop an adult boy, that i didn't tell him, that i didn't ask him, that i didn't beg him , he said: mom, one day i will have children, maybe a second and a third, and these the children one day... will also be forced to go to war against moskal, if we don't finish this matter now, we will pass on a very bad thing to our children, we will pass on the war as an inheritance, so the inheritance is bad, that's how he thought, well , maybe it was incorrect construction of the sentence, because really, how can you not

let go of a real man when he... i understand, i understand everyone, and people are afraid, and not everyone can, well, he was like that, brothers, as they said about him, he says, this the guy with whom you can talk about fishing and zhiguli, with whom you can talk about roman law, with whom you can talk about all the world wars, about everything you want, he was an intellectual, he is, i will talk about him. to speak in the present tense, plus, this is the person who when, so the guy said literally, when we were in a terrible situation, and it seemed that everything, we would not get out of here, mykhailo joked and cheered everyone up and laughed, and we were watching on him, we were charged with this positivity, and it was easier for us, he emotionally held the whole team, and the second tells, says: we also said goodbye to

life. here you are walking in the footsteps and for us help, and we persevered, and we left, he went first, as the commander, the commander must go at the end, he went first and left last, and another one of his comrades said that mykhailo saved several dozen lives, that's how fast he was coming i am in lviv with my wife, and i am trying to find free time and go to them in zaporizhzhia, and i also want to visit my parents. well, maybe there are those words that you would like to say to all wives, mothers today, there are those words that i really want to say to everyone, speak and love already and now, nothing put it off for later, because then it may not happen, say that you love, say that you are proud, say everything that you think is the best, never

put it off until... later, because then it may not happen. and i want to thank you, and tell me the book, you can still order, buy, the book can be ordered everywhere on the internet, everywhere, just by typing the name lemberg mom tsinu don't cry, or my last name, the name is olena cherninka, you can order it everywhere on the internet , and you can also buy it in the store, in bookstores, cafes of the old lion, in the bookstore and in many others. olenka, i thank you for your son, thank you for this interview, that you agreed, and you know, i still believe that lemberg will return to us, we all believe, and that we will remember it, and that soon there will be our victory, thank you thank you very much