Kateryna, Sofia and Julia showed me how empathy underpins their society. Small acts of care are what solidarity is made of
What brought us hope and joy in 2023? Writers share their stories
Hope.
Before I started reporting on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in autumn last year, I’d never been to an active conflict zone. As a culture writer, I stumbled into writing about Ukraine, led by my curiosity and protected, to an extent, by my naivety. I got more than I bargained for. I had never seen at such close quarters the recent, direct consequences of war – the grief-felled parents, the improvised graves, the villagers with nowhere to go but their mine-riddled land and ruined homes. I’d never before met ordinary people who had dropped everything to sign up to the military to defend their country from an invasion. Because I write about culture, these “ordinary people” have tended to be novelists and cinematographers and playwrights, the kind of people I know and write about in Britain, but whose lives, because of history’s forking paths, have taken them in a direction I hope my British friends never have to follow.
Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer
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