Nikita in Ukraine

By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor

Anthony Merrill emailed to say he works at the Fort William Henry. He offered to connect us with Ukranians he worked with there in past summers.

On Monday we spoke via Zoom with Nikita Nakonechny, who said he worked summers for the Fort William Henry in 2014 and 2015.

Mark: How are you?

Nikita: Good as possible for now. You understand, probably.

Mark: How scary is it right now?

Nikita: Right now, it’s alright, not scared. Because in first day it was….but now it’s already a second week of war and you already don’t have this feel of scare.

You need to fight. It’s exhausted because you don’t sleep well. You wake up when you hear that some bombs go around, or you hear when somebody uses another weapon and it’s not good for you. It’s a difficult situation but actually you already don’t feel scared, you feel that you need to go on, you need to live. You need to fight. And that’s all.

Mark: Can you tell me where you are?

Nikita: Yes, it’s a small village near Kiev like 30 miles, maybe 35.

First couple days of war I was in Kiev. But after that, I meet my family and we go from Kiev to this village because here we would have big house. So here we have food, water and so on.

But a couple days ago Russian military has come here and we fight here. So yeah, we destroyed bridge, it was like two days ago. And stopped Russian — It wasn’t army it was like two tanks and five IFVs…It’s military machine. Not tanks, but not a car. In-between. So we destroyed bridge after that we called to our army and our Air Force bombed these Russians.

Mark: Has it been peaceful since then? Or more attacks, more explosions?

Nikita: Time to time. Sometimes it’s like, a lot of explosions, bombs. But it can be like, half of the day. It’s quiet. For example, today’s was like very quiet. Only we have like a small attack from Russia and it was three Russian soldiers who was in forest. So that’s all.

Mark: How big is your family?

Nikita: My mom, dad. My grandma, my brother, and me. Five.

Mark: Can I ask, how old are you?

Nikita: 27.

Mark: When did you work at Fort William Henry in Lake George?

Nikita:It was in 2014 and 2015. I even, wait a second…Adirondack Mountains. (Nikita pulled out a framed picture of the Adirondack Mountains.) Maybe you even — I worked in Fort William Henry like a cook — so, probably you even [could have eaten] the burger that I made.

Mark: Your English is excellent.

Nikita: Oh, really?

Mark: I think it is.

Nikita: Thank you.

Mark: Did you learn that in Ukraine or did you pick up a lot of it here?

Nikita: Ukraine but I grab a lot from USA, of course. Because when you speak with native speakers, it gives you a lot.

Mark: Of course. Now, if this were all not happening, what would you be doing right now?

Nikita: Now we all believe in our military, in our army because it’s everything that we have, as you know, from a lot of Russian soldiers, we try to stop them.

When you do nothing, You start panic. You start [to be] scared for the situation because you’re always, like every five minutes you check news. Not because you want to find something good. You just need to close it. You don’t see nothing bad about your friends about your home.

For example, my friend Sergei, maybe you watched his photo in Brovary, rockets, Russians attacked his apartment. So now he don’t have home. It was very good because one day ago he go out from Bro-vary and he’s alive. But he’s homeless. Russian soldiers destroyed it.

Mark: Are you still a student?

Nikita: No, I am not. I’m a teacher. I teach digital marketing for Ukrainians. So if some Americans people will need media buyer in Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and so on. You can call me after war, please.

Because now I try to do…[Molotov Cocktail]. It’s what I do now.

I go and watch what’s happening in my village. I try to find in Europe some defense for our soldiers. Because they need a lot of stuff, from medicine to weapons, and so on.

First days, I tried to use my knowledge of media buying, like in informal war, war for information because Russians in Russia, these people, they think that it’s war not between Russia and Ukraine. They even don’t know that it’s war. It’s called “special operation” — war between Russia and NATO. And they believe that they rescue me, but I don’t need it! I just need that all these people just f*** off from me. Please.

Mark: Is there a way for the word to get through to Russia? They’ve really shut it down so that people there can’t find out what the reality is.

Nikita: You know, they don’t believe in facts, they don’t believe in nothing but [that] they deserve it [Ukraine]. Like, I don’t know how good you know history of Russia and Ukraine. We fight already 500 years. Can you imagine it?

The whole time they make some situation that [make] Ukrainians die, [make] Ukrainians lose language, and so on.

My grandmother was killed just because she speaks Ukrainian. Because in that time in Russia, they have laws that when you speak not Russian, you are enemy. And all these people, all these Russian people, they think that it’s normal.

Even when they say no war, they say no war not because it’s bad to kill Ukrainians. No war just because they don’t have Spotify and don’t have Apple Pay, and so on.

Mark: What are your thoughts on your president?

Nikita: First of all, like all these years I don’t believe in Zelensky. I not vote to him. But now he actually know what to do. He’s very good.

Probably these couple years that he was our president, he don’t feel that he needs to be a president. But now he knows that he can change something. He’s very brave actually. I know him even before he became president and I know that when he say something he actually believe in it. So for military time, he’s very good.

Mark: What would you like the United States to do?

Nikita: Close our sky. Please. On the ground we can [be] fine. We can fight. But on the sky we’re weak.

I want to say [to] like every American people, like thank you very much for all your help for your medicine, weapon, and so on. But we still need to close the sky.

Even when you don’t want like that; NATO send something to Ukraine, just give to us plane. We need to fly. We need to destroy these rockets, these bombs.

Because Russian don’t bomb now military object, they bombed house, they bombed school, they bombed kindergarten. You know they don’t use it like to destroy Ukrainian objects, they use it like terrorist. They want to scare us.

Because first of all they thought that when Russian army came, our soldier run and Ukrainian people will be a part of Russia.

But now they are very angry. The worst is that we couldn’t fight with this. Some cities destroyed. In second day of war when I was in Kiev I go by Metro. Can you imagine? Like Metro is women with children, with animals. I know already six woman in Metro that [were] pregnant already have children.

Mark: Life goes on.

Nikita: Yes. You know what’s the most popular name of these children in this war? For girl It’s Javelin. Because Javelin helped to our sky to destroy Russian helicopters and planes.

Mark: What do you say to people in the United States who say we can’t escalate because we risk going into World War III?

Nikita: You know world war already begun. Now Russia have war with all countries. But you know what’s the most funny? From the whole countries, only Ukrainian fight.

I don’t know [if you’re] watching Russian news or not? Because I do. I need to do it now. From 2014 until now, for the most popular TV show, TV news says that Russia can make from United States…like ground without people after nuclear bomb. It’s [scary]. I understood that in every nation there is some idiot that want to fight with everyone. But it was on the most popular TV show.

Mark: Very scary.

Nikita: They hate us. When I say us I say it about free people. Because for you, it’s normal. You wasn’t in USSR. My parents was, and tell story about it. They hate us because we can choose a president. We can say what we want. Can you imagine that?

Now, if somebody in Moscow or in another Russian city begins to [go out to] street and say no war, he will go to prison for 15 years. They want our death because they‘re scared about it. They’re scared of free people. It’s hard.

Mark: Keep us posted. We’re working on deadline now. I could talk to you for hours. But we’ve got to get back to putting the paper out. But we will we will write about this. And I appreciate your sharing your thoughts with us.

Nikita: Thank you. I really appreciate that you want to speak about it. That you want to show to the world what happened here. Because when you fight alone, yeah, we still will be fighting. We still will be soldiers. But it will be harder.

But now we have good stuff too. You know, when you have a situation like war, you already know who is your friends and who is your relatives. The most popular question in Ukraine is “How are you?”

Probably before it’s like every people say it, ‘how are you’ but now it’s equal to “I love you.” Because when you say how are you? You say it like, ‘Hey, is it quiet near you? Are you safe? Are you alive?

A lot of Ukrainians now try to fight in different ways. Our volunteers make extremely good things. They grab a lot of stuff for our soldiers. Now we [even have a] joke that if our soldiers will need dinosaurs they will have it like after 27 minutes. Alive.

Mark: That’s good!

Nikita: Yes. Now we know that when you fight you need to sometimes laugh. Because when you don’t have this emotion you start to [get] scared.

So a lot of Ukrainians make a lot of jokes. And after that you even don’t [get] scared of these Russian soldiers, because Putin says that it’s second army in the world. Maybe. But you know that our people stole a couple tanks. Because Russian soldier, he tried to find out where [he is and] got out from the tank, our man jump into the tank and just go because, there’s video!

Mark: That’s great.

Nikita: Yes. We have pilot from Air Force, he already destroyed 23 Russian planes. Can you imagine 23? It’s a lot. One man, one pilot. Nobody knows how he looks, but now all Ukrainian women say I don’t know how he looks but I will marry him.

Mark: Is there anything people here in Lake George can do for you, and to help?

Nikita: Don’t forget about Ukrainians. When you, tomorrow or when your newspaper will be, just say to your neighbors that Ukrainians today fight for all free people. Say that it is still war. We still need help. We still need that our sky will be closed.

So I don’t know, go to your senator and say to him that every hour that he must wait are something like one Ukrainian woman dies.

Don’t believe Russian news that there is some agreements that two cities became helped. There is no help. And now in Ukraine we have some cities that [are] already occupied. They don’t have food, They don’t have electricity. They don’t have internet. Now I live near Kiev. And I already don’t have phone. I have only internet. So when I want to call to my dad, I need to use Wi-Fi.

Mark: I’m glad you still have the WiFi.

Nikita: Yes, I’m just happy of it. It is some luck. We have light because my father have solar power plant power station. So we have electricity.

But when Lake George people will ask what they can do, remember us. Remember that it’s still war. There is still people dying. And we need help.

Mark: Thank you. We are praying for you.

Nikita: Thank you. It really matters. A lot. It was nice to meet you.

Mark: And we wish you the best and I hope to be talking to you again.

Zander Frost: And we hope to have you back here. Back in Lake George.

Nikita: Yeah, you have very beautiful mountains and lakes.

Mark: We agree. We agree. Take care. Keep up the fight.

Nikita: We will. Oh, we will.

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