Shelters, missiles and drones--a photojournalist speaks (part 2)

American photojournalist Patrick Patterson first appeared on the radar of this editor when he volunteered to come to the aid of Ukrainian refugees flooding into Poland at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Later came his travels to various parts of the war zone and stark, stunning photos, often in crisp black and white. The Corners caught up with Patterson shortly after his most recent stint in Kyiv and far beyond—and the tales he had to tell were as stark and honest as his photography. Below is the second of a three-part series in which the displaced Texan came clean on what he saw, but equally important, what he has felt while both experience the profundity of war… and the Ukrainian people.

[Please note--further photos in the Patreon version of this story on the Patreon link on the site.]

TC: You have spoken about your time in Kyiv under missile attack, but you also spent a great deal of time visiting locations quite close to the front. Can you tell me a bit more about those experiences?

Patterson: There are stories that I have not shared—and some are surprisingly both humorous and fascinating. Once we were on our way to a small village in the Cherniv region. We were probably an hour outside of Kyiv, and it was very calm. When you see soldiers waiting on the side of the road, trying to hitchhike back to Kyiv or getting back to a base, you want to stop and give them a ride. It's not uncommon to pick up a soldier or two in this way, and sometimes I would wake up to find that I needed to move over to make way for a soldier or his rifle.

It was midday and we were heading to a small village in the Chernihiv region. We saw a soldier waiting next to a bus stop an hour northeast of Kyiv.  After seeing us pull the car to the side of the road, the young man wearing jeans and a Ukrainian military jacket ran to our car.

He was super quiet, not saying much.

So we asked him where he was going. He said he needed to go to Cherniv. We weren't going there—it was an hour out of the way.

We picked him up anyway because we wanted to help him. But we kept asking the name of the village and it turned out he had told us the wrong village. We didn't misunderstand—he actually got the village wrong. But as we are driving down the highway I noticed that he had gone really quiet. So I turned around to look at him and asked: 'How old are you?'

And he said: 'I just turned 16.'

TC: Wait—just 16? How could he be in the military?

Patterson: Exactly. All the Ukrainians were like: Shcho ty robysh? What are you doing? You can't wear that jacket.

So he finally told us. He said: 'I'm from Mykolaiv. I met a girl four months ago on-line, and I'm going to see her.

I asked: 'How did you get here?' and he said he had ridden with a semi-driver from Mykolaiv to Kyiv, but then he could not find a ride transport from Kyiv to what was a little rural village in the Cherniv region. He had stopped because he was so tired. He had no food and no water.

When we heard this we stopped at the next gas station, bought a Snickers, water, nuts, all these other things. But when we came back to the car and he was fast asleep. So we called his girlfriend.

TC: I think I can imagine what she said.

Patterson: She said: 'Oh shit, he's really coming. He's on his way!?!' That's when we realized that he was going to the wrong village. She told us where she was, and we agreed to take him to this little village where she lived. But at the same time—after he woke up—we could tell he was getting really nervous?

TC: Nervous?

Patterson: The closer we got, the more nervous he became.

TC: Young love.

Patterson: [Laughs]. At one point we came to an intersection where there was a police station. We thought about turning him over to the police. But we managed to get his mom's phone number and agreed we would drop him off at the girl's house and then we'd call his parents.

We drove two hours to a turnoff next to a long dirt road. It went on forever. A long dirt road with holes the size of the Grand Canyon and it cut through large farm fields. There were so many holes on the road you couldn't' drive more than 10 miles an hour.

This was when we found out that the girl's parents didn't know he was coming.

TC: They had no idea?

Patterson: No. And we asked him: what are you going to do?

He said: 'I'm going to tell her father I'll marry her.'

'But what can you do?'

'I can drive a tractor. I can cook. I can work on cars.'

We said: 'Ok. You need to tell him you have these skills.'

So we get to the village. He was peering out the window and trying to find a home with a red fence. But there were a lot of homes in this village that had the same red fence. So we parked at a community school, and here we found a woman sweeping. We got the kid out of the car. Gave him more food—and then he just goes off  running through the woods. He had been speaking with the girl and he just took off.

It turns out she had stopped answering her phone. She was scared. He said he was going to come, and she said come on, but she didn't expect this. I mean... it's like a 13 hour drive from his village to hers across Ukraine. Sure she told him to come see her, but she didn't really think he would do it.

And now we are in the car and this kid is gone. But we just can't leave. We had missed our opportunity at the police station to turn him in. I mean--he's a minor. He has worried parents somewhere.

So I said: 'We need to go talk to the woman at the school and tell her that there is this kid. We did that and the lady said she'd go look for him.

TC: So what did you do next? Wait for her to find him?

Patterson: We called the mom. And she's at the Mykolaiv police station filing a report. The investigator gets on the phone and says: 'Why in the hell didn't you take him straight to the police?' So he tells us he's going to speak to the police in the Cherniv region and get them to go find him.

But the mom was thankful she knew where he was. She wasn't upset at us.

TC: She wasn't upset.

Patterson: No—this was not the first time he had run away. About an hour later we started getting phone calls. Where he is at? What is he wearing? Where do we think he went?

It turns out that the kid met the girl. The girl and him connected and met on a playground near the school. While they are hanging out he obviously had no idea the police were en-route.

So the police located him, found him. Then we got a call from his parents—who were en-route from Mykolaiv to come get him. It was the third time he'd run away. The mom was like: 'We cant lock him in his room.' She said he'd only run away again.

We kept in touch with the boy's mom. The girl's parents allowed him to live with her and her parents. I found this fascinating. If you forget about the war, this was would be something that a kid would do. Even in the context of a war you had a teenager being a teenager just doing stupid shit.

Keep in mind that this part of the Cherniv region was occupied. The Russians came south in that area and they didn't just take the main roads, they crossed fields and took over small villages.

TC: Were you in danger of getting shelled there?

Patterson: No, no. It was calm there. Anyway, we got messages and calls from the girl after this but we were tapped out. We didn't answer her after that.

TC: Maybe she wanted him to go back home?

Patterson: Maybe. I don't know. But this whole thing started by stopping and picking up a Ukrainian soldier, but it turned out to be quite a trip.

TC: What you said is interesting in that a semblance of life—even a kid's trek—still remains despite the war. But you visited very hard hit areas. What did they look like? I mean were people still functioning in areas that were bombed out?

Patterson: Every area that I went to that was hit still had people living in it. I did not see an area that did not have people. In Bordyanka—where there is now a Banksy mural--there is a man named Viktor. If you stand outside his apartment block and you look up at the building, you will see the center is completely gone. There are bricks and windows and debris that has spilled into the courtyard and it looks like a wave. Still he lives there.

My first day there we were quiet but all the sudden you would hear something—like a sound coming from within. I thought it was a bird or pigeons or metal scraping against itself in the wind. I walked around to the apartment next to Viktor and I kept hearing the same sound.

There were six apartments in the area and a playground, littered with craters. But all the noises were coming from people living there.

As for Viktor, on one side of his apartment the exterior wall was gone. It looked out into the open sky. I was there in June. He had no plastic covering on that wall. He just lived exposed to the elements. His apartment was a mess. The ceiling tiles had caved in. There was debris, dust all over flat. He had moved  a couch into the kitchen, and that was where he slept.

I met a woman in Irpin when I was walking by—there is an iconic building destroyed there. It is one that shows up in photos in the news everywhere. But there I saw a flowerbox—a window with flowers growing and painted flower boxes. I thought: 'Wow. The whole building has been destroyed, but I wanted to meet this woman.

She invited me in. I walked in to have borscht to a brand-new apartment renovated by her husband. Four months after it was destroyed her husband had completely redone it. I mean dry-wall and everything. It was beautiful. Their daughters were running around with the cat, and I'm having borscht and outside all you can see is complete destruction. And even more insane was that the building still had power.

TC: Remarkable. But were there still worse-hit areas?

Patterson: When I think of people's homes... It seemed different in Izyum. Some of the buildings nobody was living in. And this was because everyone that had been living in those buildings—most were dead. And when you were walking through those spaces you would see kids' books, toys. Some closets were perfect, but it was like a tornado. You ask yourself—how could this force come through.

Kharkhiv—I met this husband and wife. I walk up and see a man wearing a head lamp. He's smoking in front of his apartment. I told my friend/fixer Aleks that I wanted to meet this man. When we walked in I noticed that the panel that you buzz yourself in had a red light. Most of the building was caved in, but it had power. The man starts to explain the day his home fell. There was a woman on the second floor sitting in a chair. When the missile hit the force blew a refrigerator out through the wall and ended up crushing her.

He and his wife and daughter were in the basement seeking shelter. His daughter asked him for something—to go get something. So then they moved to a different spot. If his daughter had not said that to him and they had stayed in the same spot they would have been killed.

But since then they have been working. Putting up dry wall, etc. It's a beautiful flat, but structurally—the whole building is coming down. I didn't have the heart to ask them about this.

WC: Unreal. Then tell me—jut your opinion--how long can the Ukrainians maintain this? Even from a psychological point of view.

Patterson: I think we need to take the psychology out of the equation. I mean the factor of giving up. It's not there. The problems they are facing comes down to resources and personnel. The heart of every single Ukrainian that is pro-Ukrainian is willing to die to save the country. I haven't been around anyone that has ever said we should negotiate or we should just have a ceasefire and Russia takes what they've gotten and we'll move on.

I think about this a lot because the Ukrainians have not shown they can advance enough to push Russia out of Ukraine and end the war. They don't have the supplies they need to do that. I think that from what I've seen this ends in one of two ways. It's like am murder-suicide option—you have someone that takes a hostage. Then he has two choices. He can surrender and take the consequences or he can kill himself and kill his captive. That's the Russian side. That's what I'm afraid of. Until there is more involvement from the West I don't see another solution.

Stay tuned for part 3!

More photos on the PATREON site here: https://www.patreon.com/TheCornerswithPrestonSmith

Banksy photo credit Patrick Patterson.