On the occasion of 25 April, a reflection on the Italian Resistance and Ukraine’s struggle against the Russian invasion, in the words of T.K., a Ukrainian citizen. Freedom, memory and responsibility of those who today choose silence.

Ever since high school, I have always celebrated 25 April here in Italy and listened passionately to stories about fascism, partisans and the Resistance.
Curiously, I have never heard ‘my grandfather was a fascist’. Everyone always boasted that they had a grandfather in the Resistance, who shot the Krauts.
For years I felt this Italian pride and admiration for the partisans who died with rifles in their hands, fighting the dictatorship.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, however, many of these acquaintances (and friends) have suddenly become lukewarm towards the armed struggle for resistance. Very quiet.
And they hurt me more, I am honest, than the others.

The others, the uncommitted, those who:
Why do you fight? Why do you not give up? Why don’t you compromise?
WHO MAKES YOU DO IT?

Remembering what dictatorship means

Day after day, I have to remind these people that Ukraine has been invaded by a country with a fascist regime in power.
That the older Ukrainian generations have already lived under dictatorship, in the totalitarian context of the Soviet Union – and I remind you that George Orwell wrote Animal Farm inspired by Soviet communism.

Then I have to explain that the USSR (which many here have idealised, just as they idealised that open-air sewer Russia) was one of the worst disasters to befall humanity.
And that the memory of those years remains very much alive in the peoples who lived through it.
Peoples who, after decades of persecution, oppression and terror, gave birth to free sons.
And these free children are fighting today, because they are well aware that the alternative to struggle is oblivion.

They are not abstract territories

Having reached this point, I must always mention that the territories occupied by the Russians are not blank sheets of paper with numbers drawn on them.

As I write these words, there are Russian citizens living in Mariupol in stolen houses, where Ukrainian owners are buried in the garden, who were unable to escape from that slaughterhouse.

Thousands of families destroyed, divided, broken.
Thousands of homes, of stories, of memories burnt, buried under the rubble of Russian missiles.

Telling the horror

What I do every day – apart from fighting the disinformation of the Kremlin and its servants in the beautiful country – is try to tell stories.
To bring back the human dimension in the midst of geopolitical, military, political, economic analyses.

Reshaping abstract thoughts into reality. That reality made of blood, of bones, of mutilated bodies. That reality made of exposed entrails, jaws blown off, corpses torn to pieces.

Because this is war. This is dictatorship. And this is the cost of resistance.

If Ukraine loses, Europe loses

While I talk about all these things, I also try to point out to these people a truth so obvious and concrete that it is blindingly obvious:
if Ukraine loses, Europe loses.
And I am not talking about values, intangible concepts, undefined images:
if Russia wins today, your children will spend their youth in the trenches in the Polish woods.
This, with the rosy hope that the war will not enter your parents’ homes in Italy, taking away everything you hold dear in life.

The disappointing silences of the ‘committed’

I’ll get to the point. I don’t mind explaining things to people who have always given a damn.
But the committed people of yesteryear? In what bubble are they vegetating?

When I talk about a possible European war, these people – who in their high school days boasted about their partisan grandfather and held banners against fascism in the schoolyard – answer me:
“No, I’m not going to war.”
Or worse, they tell me that I am heavy. That I mustn’t talk about the war, because nobody cares.
They’re tired, I’ve fed them up.

A comfortable resistance

So today, today of all days – a day when I will see hundreds of stories, of sentences, of beautiful words posted on social media – I have a question for these people:
Who are you really?
Are you what you shouted to be, 10, 20 years ago during the occupations, the extraordinary assemblies and demonstrations?
Are you the intrepid, the valiant, the indignant, the anti-fascists?
Or are you your pathetic silence?

Today, like every 25 April, you are all against fascism. Today you are all grandchildren of partisans. Today you are all Resistance.

A resistance remodelled to your liking.
A comfortable resistance, without weapons, without blood, without amputated legs.
The famous resistance of the glorious millennials.
I’d say you’re anti-fascists and partisans with other people’s asses, but I’m not bad.

Hopes and bitterness

I want to hope that this being lukewarm, indifferent, benighted, is just a cultural and educational legacy rooted in Italy’s complex history. And not your inner nature. The eternal ‘I mind my own fucking business’. And if the neighbour’s blood stain should spread until it touches my shoes, I will simply try to move a little further away.

And no, I don’t even believe those few of you who occasionally remember to say something about Palestine.
Because the truth is that you don’t give a shit about the Palestinians either.
You have become what you hate the most.
I know that life has weighed you down, the years have flown by and that spark of anger and indignation that once made you take to the streets has turned into bills and mortgages to pay.

But you were better before.

Happy Liberation Day, my friends. May it be a day of deep reflection.