Amidst the hurt I personally feel when following the news and war updates, the insane missile attack executed by Russia in an innocent neighborhood shopping center on this 27th of June raised me a plethora of thoughts. Besides the scenes of desperation and destruction, also besides the fact that there were more than 1,000 uninvolved civilian souls inside the place, the geographic place of this terrorist act boosted my attention.
The city of Kremenchuk lies on the left bank of the Dnipro River and despite being quite a small town, is the second largest city of Poltava region. Land of an immensely heartwarming people, it is a very special region in the heart of Ukraine not only for geographic reasons, but also for its history: in this area, was fought the decisive Battle of Poltava in 1709, which resulted on the confirmation of the Tsardom of Russia as the great power in Eastern Europe and the decline of Sweden in those lands.
This was a turning point to the rule of tsar Peter I. After Poltava, Russian Empire then could save its heartland around Moscow and St. Petersburg and then project itself to the Baltics, finally establishing authority on vast swaths of land and repress millions of other nationalities to those brutalities apparently deep-seated on Russian character such as cultural negation and genocide by famine. His sucessor Catherine only hardened these same tactics and Ukrainian people has never forgotten what those people from the north is capable to do.
Three centuries later and after one of the most extense list of atrocities commited by one people against each other, the terrorist dictator who is proud itself from the heritage of Peter "The Great", chooses the same Poltava as the target of a missile. But we have signs that Russian evil just evolved on these centuries: Instead of targeting military lines, he, the evil in person, attacked a civillian shopping mall. Instead of aiming the troops, he bombarded innocent civilians.
Instead of engaging a fight with dignity, military to military basis, he somehow knows Ukraine has the most courageous, proud and well-equiped men and women of our time, so he decided to bomb place full of children in vacation and in the height of summer who were there only to eat an ice cream.
There are already almost 313 years of Russian hell in our lands. The lands that are unalienable territory of Ukraine, belonging to Ukrainians, who want and will exercise our own right to choose our foreign relations and alliances as well as speak our national language.
The attack in Poltava is, above all, an invitation to think. The place were Russia gained historical proeminence 313 years ago must be where the world recognizes there's no place in the civilization for this terrorist entity.