“Kosovo gives me hope for the future of Ukraine”

The story of Kosovo, a country that faced war 25 years ago, gives American photojournalist Brendan Hoffman, who lives in Ukraine, great hope for the future of Ukraine.

One of his photographs from the first days of the occupation of Ukraine is part of the exhibition “Ukraine: A War Crime”, which opened on April 29 at the Barabar Center on the premises of the Grand Hotel in Pristina.

The exhibition is taken from FotoEvidence’s book of the same name, which contains over 360 photos and eyewitness accounts that shed light on the large-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched on February 24, 2022.

Hoffman, who has lived in Kiev since late 2013 and is married to a Ukrainian woman, says it was important for him to learn about the history of Kosovo.

“It was important for me to learn about the parallels between what this country went through 25 years ago and what is happening in Ukraine now. Kosovo is now an independent, peaceful state. “That gives me a lot of hope for the future of Ukraine,” he tells Radio Free Europe.

The photo he took on February 25, 2022, the day after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, is included in the exhibition that opened in Pristina.

However, his wife was six months pregnant and to avoid the risk of being stuck in the Ukrainian capital, they decided to leave. He says that on the way he stopped at one of the points where the Ukrainian army was distributing weapons to people who wanted to fight against Russia.

“We saw a list on the internet of different places around the country where the military was handing out weapons to any man of draft age who wanted to resist the Russian occupation,” he says. “We went to one of them, they let us take pictures and these were men who wanted to fight and the weapons they were given,” he says.

His son was born in Poland and Hoffman now lives with his family back in Kiev.

“Personally and professionally, it’s important to me to be out there and continue to document,” says Hoffman, whose work has also appeared in the New York Times.

For the curator of the exhibition, Svetlana Bachevanova, these photographs are important documents.

“Photos are evidence. As you note, the title of the book is “Ukraine: A War Crime”. So many of the published works are war crimes. The idea was to collect them and publish them so that no one can deny them, as has often happened,” she tells Radio Free Europe.

Bachevanova from Bulgaria, who worked as a photojournalist during the Kosovo war, says: “I took pictures that were considered evidence of war crimes in Kosovo.”

“But the most important thing is that there is no book in Kosovo documenting what happened. Many war crimes are not solved, many cases are not solved and there is no evidence. Do you want to blame him? No, I don’t blame anyone. They say history is written by the winners. The winners write the history. Sometimes I would also say: courageous publisher,” she says.

The exhibition was opened in the Grand Hotel in the center of Pristina. For Lura Limani of the Open Society Foundation, which supported this event, the location of the exhibition has several meanings, as it was a place where international journalists who covered the war in Kosovo in 1998 stayed, and the hotel building was also a base for [Serbian] paramilitary troops who allegedly tortured Albanian civilians.

Kosovo showed solidarity with Ukraine immediately after the invasion began. The state followed the example of the European Union and the United States, imposed dozens of sanctions against Russia and granted protection to Ukrainian journalists in Kosovo.

One of them is Lyudmila Makey, who took part in the exhibition. She tells Radio Free Europe that she is grateful for the support her home country is receiving.

“When I look at these pictures, I am very worried. I remember the first day of the invasion. “It was the most horrible day of my life,” she says.

Makey says that her daughter, who had stayed in Germany after the war began, has since returned to Ukraine and lives in Kiev.

“Every day he writes to me: ‘Mom, I’m alive’.” He stays in the cellar for two to three hours every day because of the shelling and bombing. My dream is that this war ends as soon as possible. This is my dream. We have to win. “We have to win, that’s important,” she says.

Even the photojournalist Hoffman emphasizes the resistance of the Ukrainian people and says that everyone who knows him expresses his conviction that the war will be won by them. However, he says that people are tired because of the long time because they don’t even know how long the war will last.

“Without a future, it is very difficult. But Ukrainians are holding on,” he says, adding that the determination of the Ukrainian people to withstand the invasion inspires him.

The exhibition “Ukraine: A War Crime” in Pristina is open until May 17. This exhibition has already been shown in Tirana and the next stops will be in Skopje, Belgrade and Sofia.

The ongoing war in Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives, millions more have had to leave the country and major damage has been caused to the infrastructure.

Before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2013 and supported separatists in the eastern regions of Ukraine in their fight against the Ukrainian armed forces./REL/