The Biggest Threat to Putin’s Control of Crimea

In May 2020, the Ukrainian writer Serhiy Zhadan stood before a crowd of battle-hardened Ukrainian marines at a base in Mariupol, roughly 40 miles from the Russian border. The soldiers had been holding the line for six years against Russian proxies in the Donbas, and Zhadan had come to boost morale with some poetry.

Glancing down at a tablet in his right hand, he recited a selection of his Ukrainian-language verse with well-worn confidence, as if he had known the audience forever. His last poem of the day had the urgent cadence of a telegraph:

How did we build our homes?

When you stand beneath winter’s skies

And the heavens turn and float away,

You understand you need to live where you are not afraid of death.

Zhadan’s poem speaks to the facing all of Ukraine today. It whispers a terrible knowledge of Russian occupation, which turns the fear of death into a unit to measure distance from home. But for all its wider resonance, Zhadan’s poem draws its inspiration from a specific group