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In the northern Italian region of Veneto, drought has forced half the municipalities to ration water resources. In contrast, the region's Coca-Cola plant has upped production, using even more water that it gets for a cheap price.
Coca Cola ad in Rome, Italy
NOGARA — On the morning of Sat., July 9, several hundred activists from the Rise Up 4 Climate Justice movement arrived at the Nogara train station from all over the Veneto region, in northeastern Italy, and then walked to the town's industrial area. They were headed to the local Coca-Cola plant to protest its "extractivist" policies, which are based on hoarding resources at the expense of the local community.
In the Verona region, drought has caused a severe water crisis that has forced half of the municipalities to restrict water use. On the other hand, Coca-Cola, which uses water as its main raw material, has not slowed production.
Indeed, a regional decree from July 31, 2020 allows it to increase the "average flow rate" of water drawn from the underground aquifer by 37%, and as demand for the soft drink continues to rise, production lines are running at full capacity.
All at a paltry price: one cent (in euros) per every 1,000 liters of water taken from the wells located inside the plant.
In cafés along the way to the factory, 400-milliliter bottles of Coca-Cola "produced in Nogara" are on sale for €3.40. The company has reduced the size of the half-liter bottles, but not the price, a trick used to mask the effects of inflation and pass it on to customers.
Arriving in front of the factory gates, climate activists blocked the road, displaying signs denouncing "speculation" and shouting slogans against the U.S. multinational.
"We talk about water rationing in homes and then there are companies that have direct access to water and use it for products we don't need," a young ecologist, Fabrizia Toninello, told Rainews24.
A group of protesters from northeastern social centers, recognizable by their white overalls, tried to go through the entrance gate, but were pushed back by police in riot gear. There was shoving, shouting, and a few batons flew in the air.
"We want to draw attention to the fact that water rationing applies to private citizens and not to Coca-Cola," explains Sergio Zulian, who arrived from Treviso, a city close to Venice, to participate in the demonstration.
The municipality of Nogara is the only one in the entire province of Verona that does not have an aqueduct. It has a network of pipes built in the early 1980s, but it never went into operation.
When the public water company, Acque Veronesi, tried to start using the pipes, it realized that many were lined with asbestos and was only able to connect a few homes in the city center to the water supply. Two-thirds of the 3,500 private homes and even the hospital get their water from their own wells. Since hardly anyone has meters, the water company estimates consumption at a flat rate of 64 cubic meters per year.
Coca-Cola draws its own water. It has obtained a "concession for the derivation of groundwater through a well" for "industrial, potable, hygienic and sanitary, and assimilated use" from the Veneto region.
In this way, the multinational company, while exploiting water for commercial purposes like the companies that bottle mineral water, pays much less for it. What's more, it is exempt from the costs of purification and disposal, which the rest of the population pays for in their bills instead.
"It is an example of how local institutions are subservient to the multinational," says former mayor Paolo Andreoli, of the Italian Left party. "The Nogara plant is one of the clearest examples of extractivism in our country," the protest organizers wrote in a press release.
A post shared by Rise Up 4 Climate Justice (@riseup4climatejustice)
Coca-Cola is untouchable here. When logistics workers organized by the grassroots union Adl Cobas went on strike for 40 days straight in 2017 protesting working conditions, private guards sent by employers used taser guns against the protesters and for the first time the factory suspended production. The U.S. Embassy in Rome asked then Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni to intervene to stop the protests.
It is also unclear how many wells it operates. "There are at least five," says Roberto Malesani of Adl Cobas. "There are seven, all inside the plant," Andreoli adds confidently.
Three are mentioned in the permits, each of which is connected to a 1,400 cubic meter storage tank, from which "the three different distribution lines dedicated to their respective uses branch off."
All pump water at the rate of 173.80 cubic meters per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for a total of 1.5 billion liters per year on average, three times the consumption of the entire population of Nogara. The final bill is about €14,000 per year. "An unheard-of disproportionate amount compared to consumption. They pay much less than private citizens," Andreoli says.
To demonstrate this, he shows a €39.74 bill for a consumption of 23 cubic meters of water. That's €1.72 per 1,000 liters, almost double what Coca-Cola pays. "A private home consumes between 60 and 70 cubic meters per year, while the plant reaches 1.7 million cubic meters, the equivalent of a municipality of 25,000 inhabitants," he calculates.
In the aftermath of the demonstration, Italian Left issued an alert. "There is a risk that there will be no more water and this would harm the entire population of Nogara, including the Coca-Cola workers themselves," it wrote in a press release in which it called for the suspension of production. "I'm not saying they should stop altogether, maybe just slow down a bit," says Andreoli. "Managers should understand that if the water runs out, the plant will shut down for real."
Twenty kilometers to the south, the Po river is running dry, the underground aquifers are dried up by the drought, their levels have dropped, and the president of Acque Veronesi, Roberto Mantovanelli, was already forced in mid-June to write to all the mayors of the province, asking them to take measures to limit consumption.
The first to take action was the mayor of Nogara, who, on June 21, banned "the use of drinking water for purposes other than domestic and sanitary purposes."
On July 1, as soon as he was elected, the center-left mayor in Verona, former soccer player Damiano Tommasi, extended a similar ordinance by his predecessor Federico Sboarina, of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, recommending that citizens "conscientiously use water also in daily activities at home, reducing its waste."
His colleague in the neighboring municipality of Villafranca, Roberto Luca Dall'Oca, of the center-right, has banned filling swimming pools, watering vegetable gardens and washing cars all summer.
According to data provided by Acque Veronesi, 40 of the 77 municipalities served by the water company have adopted similar ordinances, allowing water to be used only for "hygienic and sanitary uses" and providing fines of up to €500 for those who do not comply.
Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has not faced any restrictions.
At the Nogara plant, the ten production lines and the high-speed line, which cost €15 million and opened in 2020, have never stopped running at full capacity. In the warehouses, "the pallets are full to the ceiling," says a logistics worker. "We are in a phase of overproduction."
After a downturn in sales during the pandemic, the multinational has resumed making more money than before.
Worldwide, 13.7 billion liters of Coca-Cola in its different versions — original, Zero and light — were sold in 2021, 13% more than in 2020, and net profit reached €547 million, 32% more than the previous year. In Italy, it is the most widely drunk beverage. It makes €870 million, employs 22,000 people between direct jobs and the wider network of suppliers, and contributes 0.05% to the gross domestic product.
Staggering figures that make the one cent paid to the state for every thousand liters of water consumed stand out even more.
Giuseppe Ubertone a farmer on the dry field due to drought in Milan, Italy
Among the 8,300 residents of Nogara, few dare question the favorable treatment of the multinational company.
"We have to take into account that this is a company that offers direct employment and linked activities too," says Mayor Flavio Pasini, of the far-right League.
The Atlanta-based giant arrived here in 1975 and over the past decade has invested €100 million in the 146,000 square meters of the Veneto plant, the largest in southern Europe. It employs 427 people hired by Coca-Cola, mostly office workers, while most of the workers depend on contracting companies and cooperatives. There are a total of 2,244 workers, plus another 5,200 in the supply chain. If it were to close, unemployment in the Veneto region is estimated to increase by 1.7%.
According to a study by the School of Management of Milan's Bocconi University, the multinational company distributes salaries of €22.5 million in Veneto each year, contracts to supplier or related companies for €77.8 million, and pays €400 million in taxes. These taxes are mostly contributions paid by employees, since the profits from the small bottles "produced in Nogara" go to the tax havens where the group has its headquarters: from the main one in Delaware, to the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Singapore.
Coca-Cola Italia HBC funds eco-days and park care in the Verona area. It has sponsored the Campiello literary prize in Venice, financed a project by the Arena di Verona Foundation to rebuild 67 columns of the outer city walls that collapsed in 1117, and supported initiatives to give advice to students as they transition from school to work.
"Thanks to the Nogara plant and the daily work of the more than 400 colleagues responsible for ensuring quality in Coca-Cola made in Veneto, we have built a solid bond with the region," Coca-Cola Italia HBC communications director Giangiacomo Pierini told news agencies.
The multinational company also shows great attention to environmental aspects. It has invested six million euros to replace plastic packaging with paper packaging and produces bottles with plastic caps that do not come off, to prevent them from ending up scattered and not being recycled.
Climate activists argue that this is just greenwashing to mask no-cost exploitation of the commons and favorable treatment by local institutions.
On the morning of July 9, as activists tried to force the police barricade in front of the gates of the Nogara plant, over their heads an electronic panel marked the amount of CO2 saved by the factory since the beginning of the year: 1,196 tons "thanks to the photovoltaic panels" installed in the factory and another 9,222 tons "thanks to the cogeneration plant."
The factory produces 100% of the carbon dioxide it uses in the 735 million liters of carbonated beverages bottled at the plant each year, from Coca-Cola to Fanta to Sprite.
That is why it has not been affected by the reduction in supply caused by increases in the price of methane after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has made carbon dioxide "unavailable," as some soft drink producers have complained. Acqua Sant'Anna in Vinadio, in the province of Cuneo, was forced to stop its production lines. In contrast, Coca-Cola, in addition to water, is also saving on bubbles.
In the northern Italian region of Veneto, drought has forced half the municipalities to ration water resources. In contrast, the region's Coca-Cola plant has upped production, using even more water that it gets for a cheap price.
Coca Cola ad in Rome, Italy
NOGARA — On the morning of Sat., July 9, several hundred activists from the Rise Up 4 Climate Justice movement arrived at the Nogara train station from all over the Veneto region, in northeastern Italy, and then walked to the town's industrial area. They were headed to the local Coca-Cola plant to protest its "extractivist" policies, which are based on hoarding resources at the expense of the local community.
In the Verona region, drought has caused a severe water crisis that has forced half of the municipalities to restrict water use. On the other hand, Coca-Cola, which uses water as its main raw material, has not slowed production.
Indeed, a regional decree from July 31, 2020 allows it to increase the "average flow rate" of water drawn from the underground aquifer by 37%, and as demand for the soft drink continues to rise, production lines are running at full capacity.
All at a paltry price: one cent (in euros) per every 1,000 liters of water taken from the wells located inside the plant.
In cafés along the way to the factory, 400-milliliter bottles of Coca-Cola "produced in Nogara" are on sale for €3.40. The company has reduced the size of the half-liter bottles, but not the price, a trick used to mask the effects of inflation and pass it on to customers.
Arriving in front of the factory gates, climate activists blocked the road, displaying signs denouncing "speculation" and shouting slogans against the U.S. multinational.
"We talk about water rationing in homes and then there are companies that have direct access to water and use it for products we don't need," a young ecologist, Fabrizia Toninello, told Rainews24.
A group of protesters from northeastern social centers, recognizable by their white overalls, tried to go through the entrance gate, but were pushed back by police in riot gear. There was shoving, shouting, and a few batons flew in the air.
"We want to draw attention to the fact that water rationing applies to private citizens and not to Coca-Cola," explains Sergio Zulian, who arrived from Treviso, a city close to Venice, to participate in the demonstration.
The municipality of Nogara is the only one in the entire province of Verona that does not have an aqueduct. It has a network of pipes built in the early 1980s, but it never went into operation.
When the public water company, Acque Veronesi, tried to start using the pipes, it realized that many were lined with asbestos and was only able to connect a few homes in the city center to the water supply. Two-thirds of the 3,500 private homes and even the hospital get their water from their own wells. Since hardly anyone has meters, the water company estimates consumption at a flat rate of 64 cubic meters per year.
Coca-Cola draws its own water. It has obtained a "concession for the derivation of groundwater through a well" for "industrial, potable, hygienic and sanitary, and assimilated use" from the Veneto region.
In this way, the multinational company, while exploiting water for commercial purposes like the companies that bottle mineral water, pays much less for it. What's more, it is exempt from the costs of purification and disposal, which the rest of the population pays for in their bills instead.
"It is an example of how local institutions are subservient to the multinational," says former mayor Paolo Andreoli, of the Italian Left party. "The Nogara plant is one of the clearest examples of extractivism in our country," the protest organizers wrote in a press release.
A post shared by Rise Up 4 Climate Justice (@riseup4climatejustice)
Coca-Cola is untouchable here. When logistics workers organized by the grassroots union Adl Cobas went on strike for 40 days straight in 2017 protesting working conditions, private guards sent by employers used taser guns against the protesters and for the first time the factory suspended production. The U.S. Embassy in Rome asked then Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni to intervene to stop the protests.
It is also unclear how many wells it operates. "There are at least five," says Roberto Malesani of Adl Cobas. "There are seven, all inside the plant," Andreoli adds confidently.
Three are mentioned in the permits, each of which is connected to a 1,400 cubic meter storage tank, from which "the three different distribution lines dedicated to their respective uses branch off."
All pump water at the rate of 173.80 cubic meters per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for a total of 1.5 billion liters per year on average, three times the consumption of the entire population of Nogara. The final bill is about €14,000 per year. "An unheard-of disproportionate amount compared to consumption. They pay much less than private citizens," Andreoli says.
To demonstrate this, he shows a €39.74 bill for a consumption of 23 cubic meters of water. That's €1.72 per 1,000 liters, almost double what Coca-Cola pays. "A private home consumes between 60 and 70 cubic meters per year, while the plant reaches 1.7 million cubic meters, the equivalent of a municipality of 25,000 inhabitants," he calculates.
In the aftermath of the demonstration, Italian Left issued an alert. "There is a risk that there will be no more water and this would harm the entire population of Nogara, including the Coca-Cola workers themselves," it wrote in a press release in which it called for the suspension of production. "I'm not saying they should stop altogether, maybe just slow down a bit," says Andreoli. "Managers should understand that if the water runs out, the plant will shut down for real."
Twenty kilometers to the south, the Po river is running dry, the underground aquifers are dried up by the drought, their levels have dropped, and the president of Acque Veronesi, Roberto Mantovanelli, was already forced in mid-June to write to all the mayors of the province, asking them to take measures to limit consumption.
The first to take action was the mayor of Nogara, who, on June 21, banned "the use of drinking water for purposes other than domestic and sanitary purposes."
On July 1, as soon as he was elected, the center-left mayor in Verona, former soccer player Damiano Tommasi, extended a similar ordinance by his predecessor Federico Sboarina, of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, recommending that citizens "conscientiously use water also in daily activities at home, reducing its waste."
His colleague in the neighboring municipality of Villafranca, Roberto Luca Dall'Oca, of the center-right, has banned filling swimming pools, watering vegetable gardens and washing cars all summer.
According to data provided by Acque Veronesi, 40 of the 77 municipalities served by the water company have adopted similar ordinances, allowing water to be used only for "hygienic and sanitary uses" and providing fines of up to €500 for those who do not comply.
Coca-Cola, on the other hand, has not faced any restrictions.
At the Nogara plant, the ten production lines and the high-speed line, which cost €15 million and opened in 2020, have never stopped running at full capacity. In the warehouses, "the pallets are full to the ceiling," says a logistics worker. "We are in a phase of overproduction."
After a downturn in sales during the pandemic, the multinational has resumed making more money than before.
Worldwide, 13.7 billion liters of Coca-Cola in its different versions — original, Zero and light — were sold in 2021, 13% more than in 2020, and net profit reached €547 million, 32% more than the previous year. In Italy, it is the most widely drunk beverage. It makes €870 million, employs 22,000 people between direct jobs and the wider network of suppliers, and contributes 0.05% to the gross domestic product.
Staggering figures that make the one cent paid to the state for every thousand liters of water consumed stand out even more.
Giuseppe Ubertone a farmer on the dry field due to drought in Milan, Italy
Among the 8,300 residents of Nogara, few dare question the favorable treatment of the multinational company.
"We have to take into account that this is a company that offers direct employment and linked activities too," says Mayor Flavio Pasini, of the far-right League.
The Atlanta-based giant arrived here in 1975 and over the past decade has invested €100 million in the 146,000 square meters of the Veneto plant, the largest in southern Europe. It employs 427 people hired by Coca-Cola, mostly office workers, while most of the workers depend on contracting companies and cooperatives. There are a total of 2,244 workers, plus another 5,200 in the supply chain. If it were to close, unemployment in the Veneto region is estimated to increase by 1.7%.
According to a study by the School of Management of Milan's Bocconi University, the multinational company distributes salaries of €22.5 million in Veneto each year, contracts to supplier or related companies for €77.8 million, and pays €400 million in taxes. These taxes are mostly contributions paid by employees, since the profits from the small bottles "produced in Nogara" go to the tax havens where the group has its headquarters: from the main one in Delaware, to the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Singapore.
Coca-Cola Italia HBC funds eco-days and park care in the Verona area. It has sponsored the Campiello literary prize in Venice, financed a project by the Arena di Verona Foundation to rebuild 67 columns of the outer city walls that collapsed in 1117, and supported initiatives to give advice to students as they transition from school to work.
"Thanks to the Nogara plant and the daily work of the more than 400 colleagues responsible for ensuring quality in Coca-Cola made in Veneto, we have built a solid bond with the region," Coca-Cola Italia HBC communications director Giangiacomo Pierini told news agencies.
The multinational company also shows great attention to environmental aspects. It has invested six million euros to replace plastic packaging with paper packaging and produces bottles with plastic caps that do not come off, to prevent them from ending up scattered and not being recycled.
Climate activists argue that this is just greenwashing to mask no-cost exploitation of the commons and favorable treatment by local institutions.
On the morning of July 9, as activists tried to force the police barricade in front of the gates of the Nogara plant, over their heads an electronic panel marked the amount of CO2 saved by the factory since the beginning of the year: 1,196 tons "thanks to the photovoltaic panels" installed in the factory and another 9,222 tons "thanks to the cogeneration plant."
The factory produces 100% of the carbon dioxide it uses in the 735 million liters of carbonated beverages bottled at the plant each year, from Coca-Cola to Fanta to Sprite.
That is why it has not been affected by the reduction in supply caused by increases in the price of methane after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has made carbon dioxide "unavailable," as some soft drink producers have complained. Acqua Sant'Anna in Vinadio, in the province of Cuneo, was forced to stop its production lines. In contrast, Coca-Cola, in addition to water, is also saving on bubbles.
The country's worst economic crisis in decades has toppled the government and led to soaring prices. Pregnant women struggle to access essential supplies.
Kirushna Sutharshan separates a basket of wild greens she has gathered forher family’s lunch.
INUVIL, SRI LANKA — At sunset, as her young son plays nearby and her husband has yet to return from work, Kirushna Sutharshan forages for edible plants near her home.
She bends carefully over her expanding belly — her second child is due in August — but ignores the discomfort. The prices of milk, eggs, spinach and other foods recommended for healthy pregnancies have tripled since January; the once-free iron supplements are no longer available at prenatal checkups at public hospitals; and she cannot afford vitamins at private pharmacies. Even Thriposha, a corn-based nutritional supplement usually distributed to pregnant women for free, is no longer available.
“What can I do?” Sutharshan says, adding that her doctor has warned her that her iron levels are too low. “In the current situation, I cannot afford to buy iron-rich spinach from the market.”
Sri Lanka has worked hard to improve its maternal and infant mortality rates, through advancements in sanitation and health care access. In 1950, a year before free health care was nationalized, 10% of newborns didn’t survive past their first birthday; in 2020, the first-birthday survival rate had reached 99%. But as the country dives deeper into economic turmoil — with the president agreeing to resign, according to a statement by Parliament’s speaker, after thousands of protesters stormed his home — public health experts warn that these gains will be reversed. Foods, vitamins, medicines and medical supplies needed for safe, healthy pregnancies have become unaffordable and inaccessible.
In June, the United Nations Children’s Fund, known as UNICEF, issued a $25.3 million fundraising appeal for Sri Lanka, including funding to provide 122,000 pregnant mothers with cash or voucher assistance. “All essential health services have been severely impacted by critical shortages of medicine,” according to a UNICEF statement. There are ongoing stockouts of essential medicines affecting pregnant and lactating women and children, which are likely to continue for several months.”
For decades, Sri Lankans could obtain free medications from government hospital dispensaries or at affordable prices from private pharmacies. But in March, the National Medicines Regulatory Authority approved a 29% price increase for all medicines, followed by a 40% price increase for 60 medications in April.
Murali Vallipuranathan, a Colombo-based community physician, confirms that imported medications and equipment for cesarean sections and other fetal and neonatal surgeries have become more expensive and difficult to procure. Due to power outages, pharmaceuticals that require refrigeration end up having to be thrown away, he adds.
Physicians, nurses and health associations are campaigning for more attention to the growing crisis, including circulating a list of supply donations requested by the Sri Lanka Medical Association.
Balasubramaniam Manikandan, a Jaffna pharmacy owner, says business has slowed as the prices for vitamins recommended for pregnant women, including folic acid, vitamin C, iron tablets and calcium, have skyrocketed. Black market sellers are also buying and hoarding the supplies, then selling them at even higher prices, he complains.
“Because of the economic condition of the nation, some medicines are not at all available. There is a general shortage of medicines for people from all walks of life, including pregnant women, diabetics, cancer patients and children,” he says, adding that he has gone from restocking his shelves twice a month to once a month.
In May, Japan donated $1.5 million, through UNICEF, in medicine for Sri Lankans, including 53,000 pregnant women and nearly 122,000 children in immediate need. Since then, pledges of aid and loans have also come in from Australia, China, India, the Asian Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Bank.
Sri Lanka’s annual drug purchasing costs are $268 million, says Keheliya Rambukwella, the minister of health. The country’s existing stockpile and the anticipated foreign aid should be enough to last until 2024, he says, but “we will have a tough time until August,” and the “priority now is to make all medicines available to the people rather than affordable prices.”
Dr. Asela Gunawardena, director general of the Ministry of Health, says discussions are also ongoing with the World Food Programme and UNICEF to provide corn, so the country can produce more Thriposha for pregnant women.
Humanitarian aid may help Sri Lanka recover, but Selvarathinam Santhirasegaram, an economics professor at the University of Jaffna, says the country needs better leadership, less corruption and more long-term investments to become less reliant on imports for food, medicine and other health care needs.
“It’s a common saying that ‘we want to taste the fruit before planting the tree,’” he says. “We need to create large-scale farms, plantations and large-scale business ventures.”
Midwives write prescriptions for pregnant women at Primary Medical Care Unit in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
Vijayatharsiny Thinesh, Global Press Journal Sri Lanka
Malnutrition is also a growing concern. A UNICEF survey in Sri Lanka in 2021 found that 43% of families were eating less than before the coronavirus pandemic, and that nearly 80% of families who qualified for therapeutic food aid for severely malnourished children hadn’t received the aid for over two months.
To combat these challenges, the former minister of finance, in his 2022 budget speech, expanded a nutrition voucher program for pregnant and lactating mothers from 10 months of aid to 24 months of aid. But as the economic crisis has persisted, this plan has not come to fruition, and the existing program has been suspended.
More than 80% of households are eating cheaper foods or limiting portion sizes, fueling higher rates of malnutrition, according to a joint survey by the World Food Programme and Sri Lanka’s Department of National Planning.
Vallipuranathan says he has observed more signs of malnutrition among pregnant women, as they prioritize feeding their husbands and children over themselves. He worries that the economic crisis will exacerbate the fact that 1 in 7 women in Sri Lanka is already reported to be malnourished during pregnancy and 1 in 8 children will be born with malnutrition, according to 2021 data from the Ministry of Health.
“What we are seeing now is just the beginning, and if this situation continues, the health sector could get worse. The next biggest problem we would face is malnutrition,” Vallipuranathan says. “This economic crisis may further affect middle-income pregnant women in the future.”
One such woman, Tharsini Ariharan, 36, a preschool teacher from Inuvil, and her husband, a management assistant at the state timber corporation, are expecting their third child this month. They have been spending her entire monthly income, 10,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($27.86), on the medicine and supplies she needs, she says.
“Currently, I have diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy, so I can see the expenses outweighing the income,” she says.
At her last prenatal checkup, her fetus was underweight and she was advised to eat more grains. These types of foods are expensive, but Ariharan says she is trying to budget for small quantities.
For Sutharshan’s family, the 2015 government program that provides pregnant women 2,000 rupees ($5.58) per month in food assistance for 10 months had been a lifeline. But due to inflation, she was getting fewer food products for the same amount during her second trimester — and since entering her third trimester, the program has been suspended.
“I do not know whether to buy things needed for me or for my elder son or the food products needed to prepare the daily food,” she says tearfully.
Her husband can’t find more work, and her iron deficiency is not improving. Fuel shortages have also made transportation difficult, so they have decided to move in with her parents to combine resources for the sake of their child and his new sibling — due in a matter of weeks.
“I’m with my parents now,” she says, “and they are feeding my family.”
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Bot did you get it?
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform via ZUMA Press Wire
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.