So, I, like most of the world, have been watching the conflict in Ukraine from afar. This stuff always gets me emotional, so I had to find a coping mechanism right quick so as to get through each day’s news cycle. I decided to try to find the good stories. No, “good” isn’t the word…positive? “Heroic,” perhaps? Just a story each day out of the Ukraine that doesn’t make you want to throw up. Something that makes you want to cheer instead. So far, I have actually found something each day.
For instance, there was the old lady giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers in the hopes that flowers would grow on their graves. There was the 25-year-old woman who when asked what she would do once she escaped the bomb shelter she was in, replied she was going home to make Molotov cocktails. There’s the association of Ukrainian librarians, who cancelled their annual conference so as to vanquish their enemies. But let’s talk about the one that kicked off my hunt for a different kind of news story, and my favorite so far: the Snake Island Border Patrol.
So, this Russian warship rolls up to Snake Island, a truly tiny island in the northern Black Sea, kind of situated between Ukraine and Crimea. The only people on the island are the border patrol…it’s their turf. So Russian warship tells them to surrender their weapons, or else they will bomb them. And what did the Snake Island Border Patrol do? Literally told them to go f*** themselves.
Now, it was immediately assumed that those patrolmen were blown to smithereens, and the President of Ukraine even spoke out calling their deaths heroic. But then…then!!! Today I go do a little research for this blog and find THIS ARTICLE!
They’re alive! I mean, they’re captured…but they’re alive! And they fought until they ran out of ammunition! So today’s “good” story is a continuation of my first “good” story. (I really can’t describe how delighted I am to have discovered this news today.)
Anyway, I hope that the war news isn’t getting you down too much. We can’t let it, because let’s be honest…we aren’t living it. We don’t get to be scared and worried…that’s for the people actually in crisis. We need to be mad about the injustice. We need to be supportive to the Ukrainian community. We need to summon the power of a Snake Island Border Patrolman, and rise up and tell Russia to go f*** itself.
Happy Thursday.
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