What is courage? To this dizzying question, the dictionaries of maxims and proverbs offer hundreds of answers. “Courage is the middle ground between fear and boldness,” says Aristotle. “The highest form of courage is overcome despair”, wrote Georges Bernanos (1888-1948). But apart from the Greek philosopher and the great French writer, rare are the moralists who, like them, describe with such accuracy this moral force which animates Ukraine today. Why ? Perhaps because courage is not thought of at the tip of the pen but is discovered, learned and experienced in action, the only way to reveal temperaments.
With the Maidan revolution in 2014 which ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, then with the resistance against “Russian-separatist” aggression in the Donbass, the Ukrainians had shown a sample of their immense ardor. Since February 24, their bravery has simply stunned the world. Courage is multifaceted, they teach us. It is not just a question of going to fight at the front, even if this commitment constitutes the ultimate heroism. Courage also means returning from a comfortable exile in New Zealand to help her country, like Iryna Rybinkin, a female doctor who returned to Ukraine to help. It’s phoning families in Russia every day to explain to them that Putin is lying, as Misha Katsourin does. It means continuing to chronicle the martyred city of Boutcha, as the editor-in-chief of The Boutcha City does on a daily basis. It is still rebuilding destroyed houses in Kramatorsk, giving rock concerts in Kharkiv, concealing one’s fear and standing up to the occupier, like Halyna Kozatchenko, “courageous mayor” of Fenevychi, a village of 1,202 souls . All these acts of bravery can be read in L’Express which met Ukrainians in their country, united by the same spirit of resistance.
“The only thing we should be afraid of is fear itself”, declared Franklin D. Roosevelt in one of his most beautiful speeches, on March 4, 1933, at the worst moment of another crisis, an economic one. From the summit of the Ukrainian state (“I need ammunition, not a driver”, declared Volodymyr Zelensky to whom it was proposed to flee the country) to the last of the villagers, passing through the grandmother Rozalia Tchoba, 99, who knew the -real- Nazis and the Soviet yoke, the Ukrainians are doing us a huge service these days. They show us what courage looks like when history and destiny confront a nation with this terrible choice: life or death.
