“But you have to do something.” “But that’s no use.” “But what else are we going to do?” “But we never do that!” “Yes, we’ll do it now!”.
But it could have sounded very different when the editorial conference of “ARD-Tagesthemen” decided to broadcast live from Kyiv on Ukraine’s 31st Independence Day, after six months of war. Perhaps, the viewer speculates, it was the presenter Caren Miosga herself who prevailed. After all, according to Wikipedia, Miosga has “Russian roots”. After all, she studied Slavic studies. After all, she was a tour guide in Saint Petersburg. After all, she was the singer of the hit band Kurt and the Dillenbergers. The latter probably didn’t contribute to the decision, but the rest did – maybe. This is speculation. Because it’s strange when the “daily topics” do what “daily topics” usually never do, leave the quaint ARD studio to go on a trip.
Although “never” is not correct, Miosga may have insisted on that in the purely speculative editorial conference, because the “daily topics” were already on the way. In 1996 it went to the then unused federal states. It went to the Baltic Sea. To Warnemünde and Rheinsberg. It was about unemployment, the Wismar trade circle, Kurt Tucholsky and Sabine Christiansen’s hairstyle. And somehow it all sounds funnier than a war special, which you can’t even blame for being purely symbolic, it knows it itself.
“Today Ukraine is celebrating its Independence Day. In the middle of the war. For exactly six months Vladimir Putin has been barbarically questioning this independence, and precisely because our attention in Germany seems to be turning back to our own concerns after half a year of this conflict, we are driven here.” This is how Miosga begins this “unusual edition of the daily issues”. And a small reproach resonates, to the Germans, who in the face of inflation and the gas surcharge are turning to their own smaller needs.
An accusation that Miosga repeats when she asks Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during the course of the show: “Many people in Germany are worried about gas prices and the cost of living. Can you understand that these people are more worried about you own life and get a bit war-weary?” A question that Kuleba answers, just as Ukrainian foreign ministers have to answer such questions. He could understand. Envy it, in fact, because: “What’s at stake here is people’s lives. What’s at stake in their country is people’s comfort.”
And somehow you think it’s strange when a news program that wasn’t broadcast live from the Uyghur camps, from North Korea, from Congo, Iraq or Guantanamo, now raises this gentle accusation. After all, it is part of the business model of news programs that people can watch daily topics and still submit their tax returns. That people look into the unbelievable suffering of the world and then continue to despair of their own stuff. That’s how people are, but you have to do something.
So the topics of the day show Ukrainians. Valentina, for example, who barely survived the flight from her hometown and has now returned to send her daughter to school. Valentina tells how she escaped. How their neighbors died. She cries. Her daughter’s lessons will be digital. The school building has been bombed. Russian language and literature was eliminated, and at the same time Valentina grew up in Russian. Pictures are shown of the little daughter walking through the bombed-out school building in a Ukrainian costume. She cries, clinging to her mother. The staging works the way such stagings work, watching it is completely different. And that’s what it’s supposed to be, even if you ask yourself if it’s worth it: letting traumatized girls walk through a bombed-out school for the German audience, just so that our attention goes back to Ukraine for a few minutes, and then to Yes, turn to your own stuff again. Because people are like that.
Then it becomes heroic. Volodymyr, a metal worker who built buggies for his family before the war, allowing them to race at breakneck speed over hills, which he is now converting for the army. When the war is over, his daughter later says, she wants to invite all Ukrainian soldiers to her grandmother for cabbage rolls. Because Grandma cooks so well and likes to have guests.
Destroyed Russian tanks are shown on Maidan Square – Independence Square. icon images. Foreign Minister Kuleba says he feels as if Ukraine has already won the war. Because according to the Russian plan, Ukraine should no longer exist. One Ukrainian says Independence Day used to be “just a national holiday, only now do I feel with all my heart that our Ukraine is free and independent.”
Then the troop movements of the last six months are drilled through again on a map. Somehow the whole thing reminds you of the year in review on New Year’s Eve. Do you remember back then, the steelworks in Mariupol? Do you remember how the Russian troops stood in front of Kyiv? It’s like it was yesterday and an eternity ago. Do you remember, Kherson? Do you remember, Kharkiv? And then you see Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a church with his wife in professional prayer for Ukraine. (Do you remember, Zelensky?)
Foreign Minister Kuleba says the German-Ukrainian relationship is “as sincere as ever.” New arms deliveries were decided the day before. Kuleba can understand that German politicians sometimes don’t feel comfortable with the direct and honest manner of Ukrainian politicians. (Remember Melnyk?). But that’s not because they’re jaded, it’s because “we’ve finally learned not just to listen, we’ve learned to speak.” (Remember, postcolonial theory?)
The last word belongs to Valentyna from Moschchun. “I wish it would finally stop. Everyone wishes that. I’m not mad at the other people, they’re only human. It’s very bitter for us without a roof over our heads. We want everything to be fine after the war . We still want to live.” The viewer wants that too. want to help her For a moment you are infinitely sad. And then you go back to your own business. Valentyna is right about people.