‘We Laugh…To Hide Our Tears’: The Daily Wire Finds Hope On The Ground In Ukraine

 On Sunday, The Daily Wire’s Podcast “Morning Wire” released a special edition episode, interviewing The Daily Wire’s correspondent Kassy Dillon who recently ventured over to Ukraine for some on the ground reporting from the war torn country.

After securing passage into the country on a bus that was smuggling supplies to various parts of Ukraine, Dillon chatted with some locals who have had their entire world turned-upside down. Still, for the sake of those closest to them, many are braving the worst to help the ones they love — including one mother forced to uproot her entire life to protect her teenage daughter as well as a Lithuanian man who traveled from where he works in Norway to Ukraine to save his fiancé.

Dillon and her crew were offered a free ride into Ukraine after landing in Poland, via a bus which was being used to tow passengers, supplies, and food between the neighboring countries.

A Polish man named Bartek explained to Dillon that “trucks are not allowed across the border, but buses are. So — on the Polish side — they fill the buses with supplies for humanitarian aid and they bring sausages to the army. Once those goods are unloaded in Ukraine, they fill the buses back up with refugees and return to Poland.”

Bartek, who was eager to help The Daily Wire document the scene, then took Dillon into Ukraine where she journeyed into Lviv — a city of roughly 700,000 people.

Once in Lviv, The Daily Wire correspondent interviewed a series of individuals at the Lviv Railway Station, which has been transformed into a major refugee facility for women and children leaving the country.

Dillon chatted with one mother named Lilith, who explained that she has “always been a weak person,” but for the sake of her 14-year-old daughter was keeping her strength and optimism alive.

“For me to leave the country was a very, very hard choice,” Lilith explained to Dillon. “I’ve been spending nights crying, thinking how it’s going to be, how I would do this, and realizing all of that stuff…and how are we come back home? Because you are leaving and you think it’s going to take one week, maybe two, maybe three maximum years, but we don’t know. It can last a month, three, a year.”

Regarding her last conversation with her husband before departing, Lilith explained the sadness and uncertainty that accompanies such an occasion:

Oh, we were crying because….I can’t, I don’t even have words to put to you the way you feel. It’s like I left my heart with him. I felt empty inside. 

Nonetheless, Dillon at one point noted the upbeat attitude of the Ukrainian people, even in the face of chaos and calamity.

“I’m looking around this bus and I see people who are very brave,” Dillon said to Lilith. “And people who are keeping their spirits up. Can you explain where that comes from?”

Lilith theorized that, because of the country’s complicated history, many citizens were expecting something bad to happen in Ukraine like this war with Russia. They were prepared for the worst.

Culturally, Lilith explained that “in Ukraine, we have this very popular poetess … She had a poem, she said, ‘I laugh not to cry.’  So it’s like, probably that’s our position. We laugh because we want to hide our tears.”

Dillon also met Lukas, a Lithuanian man who was traveling into the Donetsk region, to rescue his fiancé from the war. Lukas explained that his fiancé was “scared a lot” and never knew when a bomb would go off around her home — which is why she had not left sooner.

“People are just killing…[Russians] are just shooting people in the head,” he said to Dillon. Yet, Lukas admitted that like many, he was “scared, too” but added that it was his duty to save his future wife:

Kassy: Why are you willing to risk your life to do this?

Lukas: I have no choice, I don’t want to leave her there. Of course I have risk to be killed.

Kassy: But it’s worth it?

Lukas: Yes.

Dillon’s entire interview — which includes other interviews with aid workers, and young Ukrainians who are doing their best to remain hopeful — can be heard here:

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