“The first thing the British readers, the American readers, the Islandic readers see is the houses, the first thing the Ukrainians see are the missiles.”
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Hi everyone and welcome to this Mishcon Academy Session, part of a series of online events, videos and podcasts looking at the biggest issues faced by the businesses and individuals today. My name is Sofiya Ivanenko, I am a trainee in Mishcon and I’ll be hosting today’s event. It is now my pleasure to introduce Anna Shevchenko. Anna is a CEO of the UK leading cross cultural risks and communications consultancy, she speaks eight languages, has worked in 52 countries. She is an author of five books and her articles have appeared in The Times, The Guardian, Telegraph and many more. Her most recent book ‘Around The War In Twenty Stories’ is a collection of real life stories of hope, humanity and humour, collected in Ukraine and across Europe. Thank you for coming in today.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Thank you, it’s a pleasure and thank you for inviting me.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Please could you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you decided to write Around The War In Twenty Stories?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Before I do, I just want to thank Mishcon for inviting because Mishcon is my home for many years because we’ve been training Mishcon trainee solicitors in the company for many years, it’s fantastic that you are all here. Why I decided to write this book um, it actually found me. I didn’t plan to write this book but um it just happened that I started writing different um, stories, views, working with refugees, talking to friends and maybe I’ll start with a slightly controversial, especially for the lawyers. A statement that it’s not my book. Statement number two, it’s not a book but two books and statement number three, it’s not a book at all. And perhaps to explain all these three statements which perhaps don’t fit into any legal frameworks um, I wanted to tell you, give you a bit of a background. It’s a charity project, it’s a charity project and it’s a part of a big project by the Minister of Culture where they spread histories and Ukrainian culture across the world and they contacted me and said, ‘we know that you write books perhaps you would like to write something’ and I said, ‘well actually I am writing already’ and I thought they will forget about this until err, they called me and said, ‘so we are planning, the presses are ready. We’ve got three months to get everything ready, are you read?’ and I said, ‘yes’ and then I remembered my student days and had to wear pyjamas, instant noodles, disappear from the world and we delivered the book on the day of the very sad anniversary of the invasion. The second thing about this story is, about this book is it’s a charity project as I said, we all worked for free and um, not only we worked for free, they are all real stories, real people, true stories and when we asked them and said we’ll sell the book and we will share all the stories with you. The wonders started because the first one said, ‘fantastic we have this wonderful demining project for the farmers, we want to give the money to’, the second said, ‘fantastic we are supporting a dog shelter that’s where the money will go’, the third said, ‘fantastic we are actually using, will use this money for the children’s hospital in Kyiv’. So by the time we got to the character number seven, of course there was no surprise because nobody, not a single person decided that they will have the money, everybody was, everybody gave the money to charity which was fantastic but it was a full-time job and I’ll tell you about this later but we managed to sell the book worldwide and we completed ten projects and I just came from Ukraine where we sort of reported about these ten projects and all the characters were at the presentation. So that was quite literally yesterday I came back. So that’s probably why I decided to write the story but the real reason lies, lies in a quote in the words because of the you know, you’re all lawyers you know that there is a lot to the words and the meaning and that was a quote in a very British book about the Second World War and my neighbour gave me this book and said, ‘well you must read it’ and I said, ‘well really not, not something I want to read at the moment’ but I started reading it on the train and I was struck how it was about us, it was about all of us, about how Ukrainians cope and how people lived their everyday life when the War is around them and so that quote actually triggered the whole story.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
And you say that the book contains real life stories from people in Ukraine and around the world. How did you come to meet the people behind these stories?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
I probably should start with the first story and how I started writing this. You can see probably here, not very well, but you can see it’s a bridge and you can see the toys on the bridge, spread across the bridge and it just happened that at the beginning of the War I was working on the Romanian side of the bridge where the refugees, mainly women with children were walking past. And it wasn’t very easy to meet them but I asked, I still was surprised when I saw the toys and I asked the border guards why you’ve got the toys and the answer was that um, the children are afraid to cross. They are seeing the uniforms, they don’t know and by giving them the toys they are literally walking the bridge choosing the toys and that’s how they cross. And that was quite emotional to see all these mums, to see all the children and there was one girl um, who decided, who picked up two toys and decided that she will just sit in the corner completely closed, she refused to talk, to eat, to drink anything and to open her up I started talking to her about her toys. And I said, ‘what are your toys?’ and she said, ‘well one is Mama Lama and another one is Misha’ which of course in Ukrainian is both the name Michael and a teddy bear and she started showing me. So we were talking about what Llama’s eat and how they sleep or they don’t sleep. So we just opened up a little bit and then she said, ‘shall I show you how my mum, Mama Lama and Misha said goodbye?’. So by then I thought that I can’t show any emotion to the child and I walked out and she ran after me and she gave me her lollipop, from the bag, she had a tiny rucksack and she came from Isum, so the city was erased by then. And all she had, all she carried was this lollipop and I thought if this child embodies the whole notion of Ukraine soul, so to share with a stranger, to give the last thing despite all the pain and the horror and I thought I must write about this and that’s how the stories began.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
That one is one of my favourites um, there are, I think there are a few others um, in that presentation if you wanted to talk us through some of the other stories?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Um, I’ll show you maybe some um, some stories, instead of telling you the stories, I’ll show you the photographs which sum them up. And this story is of a girl who actually said that she stayed with somebody else but she stayed with me and I have this painting as a present and the girl was the, one of the Ukrainian champions in horse jumping, in trials and what happened was that her horse was released from the stables when the stables were on fire in Burshtyn, the first month of the War and that saved the horse because the stables really burned down. And when she stayed with me you could see that she was missing this horse dreadfully and worried sick so I gave her a painting by numbers and the story is called Paining by Numbers and I gave her the painting of the Thames of a pair holding hands and just the Embankment was nice lights you know and very romantic story and she looked at it for a while and she said, ‘shall I, can I chose my own colours?’ and I said, ‘of course you can’. And when she gave me the painting I didn’t even click at first until I showed the photograph of the painting to her father in Ukraine and he said, ‘you realise she drew the War. She chose the paint, she chose the colours and you can see here the fire, the explosion, the dark, burnt figures in the middle but she really um wanted to do with this, with this painting is to show the, with the lilac, the colours of hope, there’s maybe somewhere in the dusk her holes are still there and that hope I think was the key thing of the story and maybe a couple of other stories I wanted to share with you because, um, that is a story of a friend of mine, um, and what would you take, what would you want to take with you on the day of the invasion with four children. You’ve got one car and she decided the most useful thing she would take would be the harp. So she squeezed the harp at the top of the, I know the whole, lots of these stories have an absurd humour. I can see you laughing but they are the stories which are more hilarious like the rifle and, and she squeezed this harp above them and anywhere they went, you know, everywhere they went they were places of extreme danger, this harp was constantly doing ‘da din, da din, da din’ about them and you know there’s an absurdity of humour and the harp and how this harp saved their lives. That was an extraordinary story and I won’t get into details but when you read it, you’ll understand and this is this real character. This, you know, Victoria and she’s the head of the literary agency in Ukraine and she asked to give the money to support Faktor Druk which is the printing works which was, um, uh, bombed by, uh, the Russian, hit by the Russian missile with 50,000 books burned down so we gave the money for several events and festivals to Faktor Druk and you can see it is restored. Unfortunately we can’t claim that we gave them enough money to restore, it was the Warren Buffett, not us but our money helped them to place their orders and also restore the Faktor Druk. And maybe the story which was quite interesting, um, for us, for me to write because it’s a story, um, through the eyes and the nose of a, of a dog. And it’s a national character, a national champ, the dog is a national champion called Rogo and they will have been and how, in the most horrific situation and I sort of made it a little bit softer but still quite a difficult one and the story is called not the sixth sense but the Sixth Scent. How he tracks the scents because he’s a national champion, uh, hunting dog and how he tracks different scents and what is the final scent he wants to track and, you know, not the danger, not, not the sadness but because, you know, they can smell sadness and in Ukraine it was impossible to translate because I just came back from Ukraine where the book came out in, in Ukrainian because it’s not the scent it’s the sense we had to stay with that and it got translated, uh, that’s what the house they came to, that’s the smells they came to when the house was bombed and how this dog describes everything through the nose and that’s the, um, shelter near, had been a dog shelter which they are supporting but you know what was very interesting when I sent the story to his owners there was a silence for a week and they did not come back to me and I thought it was the wrong choice, we shouldn’t have done it through the eyes of the dog. And then, uh, they decided to, uh, you know, to read it a week later because I said, why aren’t you reading this and they said, we’re afraid to read it. They were afraid to relive it basically and they read it and not only they accepted it but I am going in two months to collect the puppy of the national champion as, you know, because I had the dog of the same breed so I understand these dogs reasonably, uh, well but of course they are all different but anyway, so they said to me that, we read the story, we relived the story and we cried again but they gave me the blessing now, that’s the story. That is a very interesting story, called The Book and it shows how people are heroes in, very ordinary people, in the extraordinary circumstances and it’s about the librarians of the youth library in Kherson and how they were hiding the books under occupation because they had lots of books about the Ukrainian war heroes of 2014 and Ukrainian soldiers and they had an exhibition actually just before the Russian troops invaded and they realised that if these books would be found, uh, they, you know, they can trace the families of those soldiers and they would be tortured or killed. So they were hiding the books and they were taking them out past the checkpoints, with all the occupying forces around them and it was very interesting that they came to the launch of Ukrainian book last week and one of them said to me, we didn’t realise we were doing something special, we didn’t realise it was dangerous until we read your story. So it’s a, it’s this sort of instinct of saving the others rather than understanding it was a danger for them. So that was I think for me, and what they did, they asked for the equipment for the children’s library which was all stolen by the occupiers and together with the Ukraine charity and also the private trust we’ve equipped the library again. Maybe a couple, can I tell you about a couple more stories before the questions? Uh, there are two more stories. This one is quite, one is, well two of them are actually quite funny in a way. The head, the blonde lady is the head of the Cultural Association of Ukrainians’ here and she’s a wonderful pianist and she gives lots of concerts for charity. At one of the concerts a Japanese lady came to her and thrust the keys in her hand and said, these are, this is my Toyota, this is for the Ukrainian army, I just, just, I’m just giving it to you, goodbye. And of course there was a stunned silence, then there was some silent fight, then the pianist surrendered and said, come, please come to my house we’ll discuss it so the Japanese woman came, asked for the chopsticks, ate Ukrainian borscht with chopsticks on the floor and said that she was travelling through Ukraine to Kyiv many years ago, fell asleep on the bench and when she woke up her bags were there, some food was there and plenty of money for her. They all saw that she was homeless and she said that she was so taken by the spirit that she decided that Ukraine, and she gave this Toyota and it’s now used in Ukraine. But another, the guy next to her is the director of a restaurant near Lviv and we were driving, we stopped at this restaurant, driving for the Humanitarian Aid one year or one month, and, um, everybody was ordering the same thing on the menu and it was Number 5 and I couldn’t understand why they don’t even look, everybody found themselves two Number 5’s, three Number 5’s. And only when I looked I realised that it was a line which said feed the soldier. So you can order something with this Number 5, and once a week women would come, women from the, uh, restaurant would cook, go to hospital and support the soldiers, and that was interesting to watch how people were celebrating business lunches but everybody was ordering Number 5. But what happened afterwards was probably quite an amusing story because they needed a boiler for the wounded soldiers, that’s what they wanted and, um, somebody who wants to remain anonymous but a very good friend of mine said, I can, I am going to do this, I’m going to support them. She set up, you know, like a direct debit from her pension and we bought a boiler and, um, she said, I can pay for this boiler with one condition that the boiler will be called Beatrice. And I said, for your money honey, anything you like, you know, if it’s Beatrice so be it. So we bought the boiler, sent the receipts, bought the sort of number plate, name plate and she said, my mother would be very proud if she knew that somewhere in the hospital in Ukraine there was a boiler with her name. So there you go, you know, we had some, some of the stories, um, there and you can read I think some of the stories, I’m thrilled the director of the, and the founder of the Ukraine charity is here because we mentioned them there because two of the projects were done with their help and we are just doing small projects, they’re doing projects for millions and I am very proud that we were associated with them. But you see, the projects were very different and, um, very emotional and it was a great honour to be participating with them through the book but that’s probably it apart from a very simple thing. Um, we did around the social media campaign called Simple Maths, and it was a very simple campaign really. If you buy three books that will enable us to buy two Tonie case to store blood to stop, you know, from the wounds and if you buy two books it’s one Selles, it’s a special bandage which stops blood in bleeding in thirty seconds. So basically you are reading, you are giving a book to your friends and also you’re saving lives. And the result was quite, um, good I would say because we’ve sent a lot of the medical supplies to different units at their requests and the, uh, doctor from one of the units called me and said, we need to meet when we are, when you are in Ukraine and he said that, uh, I just brought two wounded soldiers to the main hospital because they are severely wounded and then he brought them and said, but without the Tonie case of your readers they wouldn’t be here at all. So the readers made all the difference and talking about the readers, I just wanted to mention one, you know, I can talk to you about lots of readers but there is a lady, uh, in the white sweater reading as I am, uh, telling the story with her permission because I think she’s probably, for me, the most extraordinary reader and extraordinary hero. The name of this lady is Lady Rose Cecil in the past but she is Lady Rose Cecil, it’s she, and perhaps if you know your history, the British prime minister, Sir Lord Cecil was the British prime minister in the 15th century. So she is that Lady Rose Cecil but for the second year running she drives the ambulances on the frontline in the most dangerous, the most shot at part of, uh, the frontline, two years running and for me it was a great honour to sit and meet her and to give her a book and she ordered some for her friends in Britain to explain. She said it shows what Ukrainian’s are going through but for me she is probably the best reader and to maybe to end up these stories. I mean, I can talk about each of them for a long time but I know that there are questions and it’s a conversation really rather than telling you other stories but if, Ukrainians they are characters or the stories can be translated as heroine or which in English means, heroes and for me they are not just characters. All these people in the stories for me, they are true heroes without realising this, like these librarians who said, we didn’t realise we were doing something special, we didn’t feel it was dangerous, only now we understand it was. So that’s what the book was really about. Okay.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Thank you. Um, 21.00 you can see how much work and love has gone into this book, um, I encourage everyone else to the session to go read it, um, it’s, it’s a difficult read but it’s also a joyous read, um, yeah I couldn’t recommend it more. One of the themes running through the book and kind of running through your presentation is the collaborative effort and spirit, um, to kind of, that made this book come to life and that made Ukrainians go on with their kind of day-to-day life. Could you talk a little bit about the publishing process and some of the challenges that came with it?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Well this I have to go back to the first page because I need to ask you all, what do you see when you look in the cover? What is the first thing you see apart from the title, at the bottom site, what would you see?
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Houses and books.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Houses. The first thing the British readers, the American readers, the Islandic readers see is the houses. The first thing the Ukrainian’s see is, are the missiles. Yeah? And that probably sums up the cover and, uh, also you can see that some houses are without the windows, uh, our wonderful designer, Nadia, when she was designing the cover, her flat in Kharkiv had suffered an explosion and the windows were blown up. So that was the first part of the process but also the key thing is, is that this book was published under shelling in, uh, Kharkiv. Kharkiv is the capital of Ukrainian printing, book printing. Lots of books for the country are printed there and how I know, it’s forty kilometres from the frontline and we are not allowed to mention, um, you know, the address or printing works for security reasons but when it was printed we had the chat on, uh, you know, the chat about the paper, quality of cover, varnish, all sorts of technical stuff and suddenly the designer takes that the, uh, the printing works, are you still alive there? And the answer came back, yes we had ninety windows blown up but we are still printing and we will make sure that the book will be delivered, is delivered to Britain on time. So that’s how the book was done, was printed on time. Those who delivered, uh, to the UK did not charge a penny, nobody, tried to pay for petrol, nobody and on the day of the invasion last year it was presented to hundred organisations. So we started with this, hundred organisations which, uh, helped Ukraine a lot and we were talking about National Archives were saved, the National Archives. The British Library, the Royal Opera House, there were lots of, and of course the volunteers and Ukraine Charity was there was well, um, and we thought that that would be a small thing, you know, maybe locally, maybe for Britain, uh, we are down for the last twenty eight books which are now like gold dust, they all sold out. Uh, the furthest they went were to 24.20 Iceland to the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the request of the Ministry and the farmer in the Northern Territories or New Zealand. So it’s quite, it’s quite an interesting exercise and they definitely went everywhere.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Yep. Global reach.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Without, without any advertising by the way so it’s just word of mouth. People were reading and passing them on and asking to buy.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
I, when reading the book, um, and you and I have discussed this, um, I think another thing that really comes across and something that I think makes us Ukrainian’s so unique is how we use humour to just cope with everyday life and stuff that people are going through right now. How important do you think overall, humour has played in the last three and a half years?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
It’s, it’s everywhere. When you go to Ukraine you know you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry and I had a, um, somebody who read the book, a British, um, historian and she texted me and said, I was crying and laughing at the same time and I didn’t know what to do first and I think one of the stories which you liked as well Sofiya is, to give you the sense of what this absurd laughter is a story where rifle, and it’s a true story of my relatives, uh, two women, uh, in their mid-80s; one can’t see very well, one can’t hear very well and they were moved to the village outside, um, Kyiv at the beginning of the War so the family was hoping that they would be safer there which of course was not the case, and their neighbour going to a young boy, going to the Territorial Army, brought them the rifle and the bullets and said, this is for you for self-defence in case there is an attack and left. And every day these women started, were thinking where will they hide, should they hide this stupid rifle because if they can’t shoot but at least they have to hide it. So the first day was a wardrobe, the second day, no, no, no, it will be found, let’s put it, shove it under the car which is not moving for, for years. No, no, let’s dig a trench in the garden and so their whole days were spent doing this and in the end they ended up, uh, going to the basement five times because they would forget the key, the torch, the, the, anything and they removed all the jams and the pickles and they put this rifle behind those jams but of course the biggest challenge they had and they faced was to remember afterwards where they hid it. So they started writing notes. So, you know, it’s, it’s the absurdity of quite a lot of funny situations and I think the funniest was the 27.13 where, uh, or you know, um, dressing up for the allotment and it’s an absolutely true story of a tall, the story, you know, was a story of a mum, of a hairdresser in Paris, a premier multi-award winning hairdresser who decided after the French Fashion Week to give her mum the Juicy Couture, very posh sports suit and, uh, sweat, sweat bands and she said, mum how are you? And she said, mum, she said, oh I’m fine but it’s too hot to wear this Juicy Couture suit in July, uh, on the allotment. And she said, mum why are you wearing this, do the, wear your swimsuit and she said, no I can’t because we have got our wonderful soldiers nearby and they’ve got reconnaissance drones and of course I don’t want to distract them with my stripy swim, you know, swimsuit, uh, because they need to do their job and they have to do the reconnaissance and not look at me working on the allotment. And you know, this is humour, every day humour which is absurd but also it’s, it’s the reality of life and also what she, she showed me a photograph which every Ukrainian will understand but will be quite difficult for, to decipher for people here and the photograph, all the photographs by the way in the books, all the true, true stories and all the photographs and the photograph is a, of a bathroom where a bed is, a, a pillow and a duvet in the bath. Then next to it there is an axe. There is also the, uh, hairspray and a tiny, tiny Yorkshire terrier. Deciphering for Ukrainian’s is easy because you have to have the rules of two walls, when that there is an attack, you have to be away from glass from the windows in case you’re, you’re hit so that’s why many people sleep in the bath during the night instead of going to the shelter. The axe and the hairspray were of course for self-defence, these are the only two things she found and she decided that the Yorkshire terrier will also be barking loudly so she trained the dog. And this is the absurdity but at the same time the, you know, the, the reality. I was told by a friend of mine in Kyiv two days ago, very proudly, she said, my dog learned a new command and every time I say this she does the right thing and the command is two walls, so that two walls meaning hide away from the, you know, from the blast so, and she was so proud of it. She said, all I have to do is two walls and she goes straight to the place where she can hide and it’s, that’s the reality and she was very proud of how quickly the dog learned the command.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Um, I highly recommend everyone reads The Rifle, um, it reminded me, as I said to you, very much of my grandmothers. It’s exactly, I can picture it, that’s exactly the conversation they would have. Um, of course there is lots of happy and funny moments throughout the book but there’s also some really sad ones. Um, I know which story was the most difficult for me to read, um, but I was wondering which one you found the hardest to write?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Uh, well first of all, all of the stories were very hard to write for one simple reason and I was thinking how similar the reasons are for me, that they are for you as lawyers and that is, I had to switch off my emotions completely and as you sometimes have to switch of your emotions and live and understand what your client’s want to achieve and what they want to do to, to fight for and for me it was very difficult to, not to be subjective and but of course they are not my stories, they’re not my voices, they’re not my emotions so that was very hard but without a doubt the hardest one was a story about my mother because, um, I had to be, not to be subjective, I had to step away and describe her iron will and the tools she uses to fight which are quite extraordinary tools – I won’t tell you what they are – but extraordinary tools, unexpected tools. And of course the toughest one was The Exam, she, she is a Professor at the University. Well the toughest exam was actually to give her the story to read. I did it once it was published because otherwise it would have never seen the light of day and there was a long silence, she said, I can’t believe you described me like this but then her friends started calling and said, that’s exactly how you are, um, so I thought okay. So that’s, yeah, the toughest book without a doubt, the toughest story.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Um, I watched some of your previous interviews and you talked about a couple of humorous moments had with your mum, um, there was I think one at the theatre and again, where you used to play, um, yeah if you’d like, if you’d like to share those with us?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
With my mum there are lots of, um, funny stories and of course, you know, she still thinks that I am, well she still can tell me off for, for not wearing a scarf for example, if I go out and I just keep reminding her that maybe, maybe I, I’m a grown up woman but that doesn’t work but, um, oh god, I had so many this week, I’ve so many funny stories this week and, um, probably the, the hardest story was that we were celebrating her birthday which was eight with some numbers and she absolutely didn’t allow me to put the candles on which would indicate what age and she would not allow me to even mention what age it was, but I thought that was quite interesting. She still lectures, she still goes to University and perhaps I can reveal what tool she uses, she uses Chanel, the story is called Chanel Under Shelling – you will recognise it straight away – and it’s, uh, I think I can put it, show you my mum actually here in the last stories and she is in the dark glasses and wherever she goes, she always puts the red Chanel lipstick as her defence and, which gives her bravery, gives her smile to support somebody because her students were killed, you know, and she still carried on supporting them and the funniest probably, why I am telling you this because in Kyiv, she said to me, where is your red lipstick? I said, I’m sorry I haven’t brought it. She said, you wrote about it so you’d better wear it. So, that’s what I have all the time.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Just some of the things you say remind me of my mum. Let’s just leave it at that. Are there any stories that you have heard of since you’ve published the book or why they didn’t make it to the book?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Yes, yes, uh, there’s one story I heard last week and I’m so, so, um, it’s a very, very funny story but it sums up Ukrainians and it’s sad that I didn’t hear it before and it’s about a woman who, you heard about the hub, that one woman took a hub with her. Another one had to evacuate very quickly and, uh, she didn’t know what to do with her parrot and it’s an absolutely true story and she was looking at the parrot thinking, what, where am I going to put it, we haven’t got the space and all the bags are full and she suddenly realised that three days before she brought very, very, um fashionable high heeled shoes, you know, real serious high heeled stilettos so she took stilettos out of the box, put the parrot into the box, put the stilettos on and that’s how she was leaving and evacuating with a parrot in the shoe box from very expensive shoes, in the stilettos with the rucksack and two children and a suitcase. And for me that sums up, you know, this incredible ability of Ukrainian’s to find the way out of any situation and to be glamorous and to not to forget the parrot. That’s definitely the story I wish was in the book.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
That’s a good one. Um, are you planning on publishing volume 2?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Um, people ask me about this quite a lot. There was so much, so much, um, went into these stories that I don’t think I will write about stories around the War but I would love to write about the, um, what happens after the War and how people cope and rebuild and, um, I definitely will write an article, hopefully towards the next week about the grammar award, about how the language changed in Ukraine and I have seen it, you know, when somebody says to you, two walls for example, everybody would know. If, uh, somebody says to you, prylit, before it was arrivals, uh, at the airport. Now prylit, which doesn’t mean arrival of the plane there but it only can mean one thing and it’s something really deadly, hit the house or the person and, uh, I’ll also write about what silences mean in Ukraine at the moment because you go into a café where, um, people are just chatting and it could be a trendy, hipster café and suddenly you turn round and everybody is standing because it’s 9.00 o’clock and at 9.00 o’clock, uh, everybody in Ukraine, everything stops, traffic, conversations and it’s a minute of silence, every day and it’s quite poignant to see because people are chatting and normal, sort of normal cafés but I actually have a couple of photographs from Kyiv from last week. Is it okay to, yeah, and maybe to give you the taste of Kyiv, you know, literally taste. That everybody has an app on the phone which shows what is flying right and how, and an air alert. But again this is Ukrainian humour. I had breakfast with a friend and she said, nah, your app is not good enough. Mine is better. Yours shows that it’s a ballistic missile, mine shows the type of the missile and whether we’ve got time to finish breakfast or we really have to go to the shelter, so mine is so much better, smarter app. So you see even, even in the situations like this and also in the middle, they, they had chocolate in a very posh, um, uh, you know, patisserie, are made as the anti-tank boulders so this, and they are very tasty by the way, but this is just to show you how they bring and find the way to smile in very, very difficult situations. And these, I don’t know how to show this as a video, this, this one but you have to trust me that if you show, if I show you the left picture with the flags as a video, it’s a sea of flags, absolute sea of flags. Every flag means a life lost and every city has the flags like that and it’s an absolute, I would say, main square like from here to Holborn, the whole thing is covered and they grow every day and it’s their reminder and for me probably, the most poignant thing I’ve seen, um, travelling and going to Ukraine in the last two years is, uh, that picture, that’s near Irpin, and near, near Kyiv and that is the cemetery of rusty cars you would say. But they are not rusty cars, the sort of cemetery, um, they are the cars of the families that tried to escape in March from, um, you know, to evacuate and every single car had a family which was shot, there’s children and wives and fathers and grandparents. So this is now near, um, Irpin on the way to, from Kyiv and everybody stops and it’s now a monument to, you know, to, a memorial to those who died but what absolutely, you know, it’s a real Kyiv in Ukraine but you go past and yet somebody’s walking the dog or a woman is holding the phone telling her son what to have for lunch. So there is this, uh, tragedy and yet there is this reality of normality but then, you know, I really like the quote, Roula Khalaf, who is the FT editor who wrote about Ukraine and he said, you go and see the cafés, you go and see people chatting and laughing but don’t be fooled because it’s just an illusion, everybody has lost somebody. Everybody has got a story to tell and grief and I was, I was in a taxi and the driver, we were talking about traffic and then suddenly when he, when we arrived to the destination he picks up the phone and without any comment, without any explanation or reason, he shows me a video. He said, that was two nights ago and from his window you can see how the kamikaze drone hits and ex, hits another house, three houses away and explodes and explodes and you don’t need to say anything, that’s, that is the secret code that everybody understands in Ukraine that, you know, and that’s how people live. But yet, they still find time for humour and optimism so.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Well I hope you, um, I hope you get to write that book soon.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Thank you. I will, I started thinking about it already.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
And I hope for, for all the Ukrainian’s I hope that also comes sooner rather than later. Um, I think we will now turn to questions. Um, are there any questions in the room?
Audience
Thank you. In hearing a little bit about your role as a translator and being in Ukraine over the last two years before you started working on the book, um, and what that is like and a little bit about that? Thank you.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Uh, well it’s very difficult to talk about it because first of all, I’m not allowed to talk about it but I can, but I think the hardest thing is, uh, again, to be somebody else’s voice, not to have any emotion and, uh, yes you’re trained to do this and you’re also trained not to, um, not to take anything in but it’s hard not to, it’s hard not to and sometimes I work with, um, difficult cases of torture and, and abduction and all sorts of things and, um, it takes a while for people to start trusting me so that I could become their voice and that, that is difficult. And I will leave it at that.
Audience
Thank you. I really liked the story about you telling us about how your mum wears, um, red lipstick for courage, um, I think she’s remarkable. How do you find courage, um, and what gives you help and optimism?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Mm, um, people ask me about how I find courage and I don’t think I have. I don’t think I’m pretty much like the librarians, I’m just carrying on, you know, and as most of the Ukrainians do, you know, you just have to. But, but, um, hope is definitely something that keeps us all going. People are, people, you know, people go through everyday lives, every day, you know, uh, things and I’ll give you another example, I have a friend who said, oh we went to the school of my daughter to see how they all go to shelter. Yes they are all very calm, there is no panic, I was very impressed how, you know, they all went. She didn’t even question that it’s not normal, that the children go to the shelter and she was talking about the process and I think that’s what we all do now. We have the process, from survival, fighting, helping, everybody I know is helping. I don’t know anybody who is not involved in, you know, either supporting in any way, in any way from creatives to, you know, medics, everybody but, but I think we are all in the process. What will happen after the War is a different story and how the trauma will come out and everything but I think, to answer your question, how do we keep going? By process, you know, we are, we are in it, you know, so that’s.
Audience
Thank you, I have like as a Ukrainian, um, but you’ve been to Ukraine, um, more recently. Who is more tired of the War, the Ukrainians or the Western, uh, world and community in support of us, you know, very enthusiastically at the beginning in the main, um, yeah at this, at this stage? Who is more fatigued, is Ukraine ready to kind of just throw in the towel, whatever the outcome?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Um, I think, uh, Ukrainians can’t, of course everybody’s exhausted, they, the Ukrainians are all tired, everybody is exhausted, just exhausted because there are sleepless nights and I mean, every night you, you can decide like my mother to put the ear plugs on but it doesn’t really resolve the situation of, you know, two or three alerts a night or bangs or not knowing what, or how, what happens next. Everybody is exhausted but, um, there is no choice, people have to fight, so I don’t think fatigue, uh, of course Ukrainians are fatigued and tired but they have to keep going. What, um, sometimes people say to me, oh you know the West is fatigued but I think it’s a human nature to, to get tired of intense emotions. You have to think, oh you know, we’ll go and move on. What, um, worries me really is that people will forget that it is not just Ukrainian War. It is definitely, uh, not just existential War but it’s a War of, you know, of good and evil because I can’t tell you, it’s not the place to discuss but the level of cruelty and, uh, you know, evil things is off the scale of any, any notions, any understanding and I’ve seen, I’ve worked with children victims of torture which is unimaginable. And I’ve been, I can, I know it’s on the record but I’ll tell you about it. I’ve been to Avros, as, as the, the expert on conflicts but, but this is beyond and that what worries me, that people will forget that, uh, evil is there and we shouldn’t, definitely shouldn’t.
Audience
Anna, what keeps you going back to the Ukraine. Is it that you have family there, do you ever feel tempted just to stay within safety or are you also, always drawn back to your country?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Oh always drawn back, there is no question and, uh, I start with going to my favourite haunts. I mean, this time of course I went because the book came out in Ukrainian and I had to report on the projects we’ve completed, uh, but I go two or three times a year with Humanitarian Aid, um, and also with my friends to give them support because lots of people who live there say to us, say to me, it gives us incredible support to understand that people remember us, people help us, people come by. That definitely is the reason for me now, definitely.
Audience
And what do you think the recovery and kind of healing process will be like for kind of Ukraine as a whole?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Uh, it’s going to take a while to, for the process even to start because every War, including the Second World War here shows that, um, the trauma doesn’t come out straight away. The, the people have to restore, rebuild, restructure and continue the process. It’s almost like an inertia of now it’s a survival process and then it’s rebuilding process. The trauma starts, here it started, I worked and talked to different psychiatrists like all from just about 1952 so, seven years after the War and I think, um, people have to prepare for this now because the War, the trauma and the healing process starts when people say, ah, we can live now and then it hits. So that, I think it’s, it’s important to be aware of this but there are lots of very good organisations that now work in Ukraine from the countries that experienced War and dealt with it so definitely but it’s a long process and it’s a generational trauma and it’s very interesting, I’ve spoken to a friend of mine who, who was, whose family stayed under shelling and they had a tank on their window literally aimed at their window for three weeks. They couldn’t leave the house but Russian tank was aiming at their window for three weeks and he said to me, that they don’t talk about the War at all, they don’t mention anything at all and then he read my book and in front of me he, he started crying and first time, very strong man, first time he said in three years and I said to him, it’s brilliant that you’re crying and lots of people said to me in Ukraine that it’s a therapy book. That’s the book, they were living but then the emotion comes out. So I think it’s very important for the emotions to come out. At the moment everybody is schtum.
Mishcon online
This is a question from online and it’s from, uh, somebody who used to work at Mishcon, who you may know, Marianne Fuller, so Marianne said, uh, one of your other beautiful and poignant projects, Rucksack was said to be healing the future of Ukraine. Can you share some background on this project?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Yeah it’s a shame I haven’t got the photographs. It’s actually started, it’s a project I didn’t plan, um, to be involved in at all, um, it started from that little girl who gave me the, uh, lollipop and I realised that all the children who are crossing the bridge, they had their tiny rucksacks with them and all their possessions, dreams, hopes, everything was in those rucksacks and as I was travelling back I had a call from the most wonderful, uh, British children’s writer, Di Redmond whom maybe you remember but my children’s generation certainly remember, Bob the Builder, Postman Pat and lots of other stories, um, and cartoons and she said, I want to do something for the children of Ukraine and I said, what for but I want to write about them. I said, don’t write about them, write for them and I put her in touch with, um, the wonderful organisation Children & War UK. They worked in quite a lot of countries and they wrote a therapy book together and I helped them, manage the process a little bit and we delivered this project in eight countries in the end but it was to get this first trauma out and it was quite difficult because, um, at first I remember we, the story is very simple, a boy lost a rucksack and he travels to find his rucksack but he travels back. So he travels to the bomb city, he travels to the burned apartment, a seven year old boy. And then he, there’s hope and, and as he travels it’s all dark and grey and then there is hope at the end and basically it helps the children to deal with the trauma of the horror and then to go forward and it was with the psych, with this psychiatrist, with you know, with special books how to advise how to read these stories to the children and I think the first session was a killer. So 52.04 because Di Redmond turned to me and said, I can’t carry on everybody is crying, the children, mothers, everybody and the psychologist was there and said, that’s what should happen. They are getting the trauma out and even then I was sceptical, even then I was sceptical because I thought, what have we done, what have we done? Until we started getting feedback and the children were, the mothers’ were saying, he’s finally sleeping through the night or he’s, she’s not afraid to, uh, to go into her own room, she doesn’t want the light anymore. So there were these things but also of course there was the special booklet for the parents, how to talk about this but I think the most extraordinary and useful thing that happened to this project was that, uh, these children started bringing these books to their schools in Brussels, in Poland and in Britain to tell their story so that other children would understand what they had gone through and we had a feedback from a mother in Germany saying that, finally he’s accepted, he has not closed, the children understand what he’s been through and he is now more open with them. And I think that was, but it was a painful project without a doubt, very difficult, painful project but helped. And thank you Marianne, by the way.
Mishcon online
There’s one more question online, uh, um, so this is from, uh, Chris who works in 53.36 Mayfair, I’ve been to Ukraine, Kyiv and, uh, Poltava three times since the War started and I agree that the contrast between the day-to-day and evidence of War is surreal. I am thirty nine years old and I stood out like a sore thumb, especially in Poltava as many men my age, um, are few and far between. I worry about how Ukraine will change politically when the War is over. Um, can the current Ukrainian political class really find a long-term solution to end the War and should there be a people-led change to help with the transition?
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Well that’s not probably a question to me but to the politicians. Um, it’s not, he is not the only one who worries about this, of course there is a lot of, there are lots of discussions in Ukraine about, you know, the future and political future whether there should be elections or, you know, or 54.32 today of the Parliament, Ukrainian Parliament voted for continuation of the Marshall Law and mobilisation unanimously which shows that people understand that the country has to fight. What will happen afterwards I think with the process, we will see how this process will develop. What I wanted to pick up on in this question is the lack of, um, men and if you read the book you will see that there are three stories there, out of twenty which are the stories, um, told through the eyes of men and men, a teenage boy and, um, there are stories told through the eyes of a book, of a, a dog, but the rest are women and I think that is also for me, a homage to extraordinary Ukrainian women who have to fight or who have to carry on as well and I think what will happen with this process is that the role of women, and the women become much more active in society and in politics. That I see as one of the key probably things trends now. What I see with the Ministers, lots of Ministers are women and with extraordinary decisions actually. You can only look at Yulia Svyrydenko is now, you know, what she is doing and her, but young women, strong women.
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Any more questions? Thank you so much for coming, this was so enjoyable and insightful, um, I loved speaking with you today. Um, there are some copies of the book here outside, um, if anyone would like a copy please go ahead and take one. Um, we will be downstairs at the drinks reception if anyone would like to come and say hello.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
Can I say something. First of all, huge thank you to John and to Sofiya for organising it but also, crucially, the books, all the books were bought out, fifty books were bought out by Mishcon and all the money went to the Simple Maths, to the Tonie case and Selles and also thank you Mishcon for a wonderful donation. Everything went through straight away so very grateful to you for that and also at the back of the book, of course, there is this QR code so if you want to so a Simple Math and not have a coffee but instead do a Tonie case and somebody’s life, I 57.05
Sofiya Ivanenko
Trainee Solicitor, Mishcon de Reya
Definitely.
Anna Shevchenko
CEO, 3CN Enterprises
You will see it all goes to Just Giving page and yeah. That’s, but it was, you know, it was not designed as a, an author’s book so forget my name, it’s a book which tells the stories of other people and also the book that gives back and that for me is the key thing. So thank you Mishcon for having me.
[Applause]