Kateryna, Sofia and Julia showed me how empathy underpins their society. Small acts of care are what solidarity is made of<\/p>\n
What brought us hope and joy in 2023? Writers share their stories<\/a><\/p>\n Hope.<\/p>\n Before I started reporting on Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in autumn last year, I\u2019d 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 \u2013 the grief-felled parents, the improvised graves, the villagers with nowhere to go but their mine-riddled land and ruined homes. I\u2019d 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 \u201cordinary people\u201d 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\u2019s forking paths, have taken them in a direction I hope my British friends never have to follow.<\/p>\n Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian\u2019s chief culture writer<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in autumn last year, I\u2019d never been to an active conflict … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}