How Ukrainians Cope with War Guilt: For Many, Art is the Answer

War is made of blood and terror, but it is also steeped in emotion, much of it not logical, easy, pretty, or comfortable to express. In Ukraine, there exists a “maelstrom of guilt,” as film-maker Iryna Tsilyk articulated at a book festival in Lviv recently. “Each of us finds something to be guilty about … Those who left the country feel guilty for those who have stayed. Those who have stayed but live in the rear feel guilty for the military. The military have their own guilt – they feel guilty for their brothers and sisters who have had different levels of experience.”

There is survivor’s guilt when your fellow soldier was killed, and you escaped unscathed. There is guilt for not “doing enough” to aid the war effort. There is the guilt felt when your friend’s boyfriend is serving, but your own partner is exempt from mobilization. Russia’s invasion has not only stripped territories from the Ukrainians but has also penetrated their relationships, creating monstrous rifts between friends, lovers, and family members.

These war-induced feelings are challenging to verbalize and actualize. Art offers a route. The young Odesa-born artist Dasha Chechushkova has created etchings loosely inspired by Goya’s series “Los Caprichos”: lonely, delicately rendered figures accompanied by texts expressing guilt, alienation, anxiety, and fear. “It is like a collection of symptoms and depressions,” Chechushkova explains. “Thoughts that most of the time we can’t tell anyone: loneliness, strangeness, and the distance between people, because we all had so many different experiences now.”

In Kyiv, artist Bohdan Bunchak has also grappled with his own sense of guilt, channeling it through a remarkable 10-minute film. In February 2022, he was a novice, preparing for life as a monk in the far west of the country. “War grabbed me out of that monastery,” he said. Over the next year, he resumed his former life as an artist. Yet, he admits to a “big black hole” in his conscience. He went to the draft office just after Easter 2023. By June, he was fighting near Lyman in Ukraine’s east. On his fourth assault, he narrowly escaped with his life.

One evening, Bunchak and his small squad, which he led, had just completed a mission in the Serebryansky forest. He returned to their base at 11pm, carrying a severely wounded soldier. Exhausted, he spoke with family and friends until 3.30am, anticipating some rest. By the time he lay down, the night sky was brightening into dawn.

At 6.30am, a walkie-talkie call ordered them to retake a lost position. He and his men mustered energy, gulping energy drinks and eating Snickers bars. They planned a joint assault, but the other team came under fire and never arrived. Sharing a trench with two soldiers and a fallen comrade, Bunchak received word that help was coming. As he crawled out to inform his men, an explosion knocked him off his feet, rendering his lower body numb.

Bunchak was taken to a hospital where surgeons removed shrapnel from his spinal cord. The road to regaining movement in his legs was long and painful. Now, a year later, he can walk but still has little feeling in his lower limbs. Attending theological college, he’s contemplating a future in the priesthood. At the same time, he’s involved in a program to help reintegrate veterans into civilian life, also making art about the terrors of fighting in Russia’s bloody war.

Bunchak’s film “You Ain’t Even Try”—a title referencing a Kendrick Lamar lyric—offers a terrifying, 10-minute insight into the haunting feelings of guilt and responsibility he faces. The film depicts his No 2 being killed by explosives from a Russian drone during an earlier mission in the same forest.

The film is not graphic; it avoids the horror and indignity of the man’s death. Bunchak acknowledges that no artwork can convey that reality, nor should anyone see it. He wrestles with whether his work is “not harsh enough” to depict the battlefield’s reality while understanding that “a snuff video is not art.” An artwork, he reflects, should “trigger you to think about the harsh stuff, the horrible stuff, the terrifying stuff—in a safe way.”

“You Ain’t Even Try” combines found materials—film footage, computer graphics, animation. An AI-generated child’s voice repeats, “You are a goddamn murderer” over shots of forest and fields accompanied by church bells. Viewing it immerses you in Bunchak’s psyche.

Bunchak blames himself for not having his first aid kit when he and a fellow soldier were carrying an ammunition box across an exposed area. However, no first aid kit could have saved the man, fatally injured by the blast.

“I feel guilty because I was in charge and had the responsibility,” he confesses, adding an immense burden to the sense of loss. Of Bunchak’s 60-strong company, 11 died, while only a handful escaped without severe wounds.

Towards the end of our conversation, my Ukrainian colleague Artem Mazhulin asks, “Do you think the Russians feel guilt?”

Bunchak replies, “I don’t think about the people in Russia. I think about all these people around us, and what they feel. Because what they feel is the future of my country.”

Source: The Guardian