Night falls on the roof of Ukraine. At 1500 meters above sea level, this mystically beautiful Carpathian pasture is probably the only place in the whole country where you never hear the sound of a bomb or a siren, but only the ringing of sheep bells.
Stepan Militchevitch, 47, goes up to the mountain pasture to bring the latest news to the four shepherds who, war or peace, must milk the animals before curdling the milk. “I brought your cheese to the soldiers in the Donbass”, says the mayor of Bogdan, a small town in this mountain range located to the west, along the border with Romania. He has just returned from an expedition to the front more than a thousand kilometers away.
Followers of few words like all the shepherds in the world, the four men, who sleep on the spot, claim to be able to count on their battery and a bit of network to follow the course of the war. “on Telegram”. ” Its very important “slips Vasile Tchopïouk, 45 years old, cap screwed above the mustache, which displays more than twenty summers in mountain pastures on the counter. “I discussed with the military service so that shepherds do not go to the army. Anyone can fight, but very few can do their job. And if there is no more cheese, people will go hungry”explains Stepan Militchevitch, before getting back behind the wheel of his Jeep to go back down to the valley.
One might think that, despite the war, nothing has changed in Bogdan. But if the ten thousand inhabitants of this valley are very far from the clashes, they nevertheless do their work among the modest wooden houses of this deprived territory where the Hutsuls reside, a mountain minority who arouses a romantic fascination throughout Ukraine. for its ability to cultivate its traditions while proudly claiming to be Ukrainian.
Soviet film heroes The Horses of Fire (1965), by director Sergueï Paradjanov, this people of shepherds and woodcutters already expressed themselves in the Ukrainian language, a choice then frowned upon by Moscow, but which now makes the film a classic of Ukrainian national culture.
“People adapt”
“People here are very patriotic”, assures the mayor, proudly affirming that a thousand of the men of his valley would have volunteered since the beginning of the war, including his own brother who went to fight in Donetsk, in the Donbass. This figure is called into question by some soldiers returning from the front, but the patriotism extends to the Greek-Catholic priest of the village, who multiplies the round trips between the countries of the European Union and the Donbass to deliver cars. “We are already at twenty-six”, Father Volodymyr lists, scrolling through the photos on his phone. Jeeps, pickup trucks and even a fire truck. The six children of this plump and jovial man allow him to have the right to go to the Czech Republic, where hundreds of villagers have emigrated in recent years who help him buy vehicles for opportunity.
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