The Ukrainian teacher appears haggard, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the trauma of witnessing Russia’s deadly military advance on his hometown of Bucha, the suburb northwest of Kyiv whose name has become synonymous with Russian cruelties in Ukraine.

As the Russian troops arrived, Oleh Azarov recalls, he helped wounded and retreating Ukrainian soldiers, even as he feared local infiltrators. Going outside was terrifying, he says, because “you never know how this will finish; people were being killed in the streets.”

“They were very intense days and nights. ... I stayed to see it with my own eyes,” Mr. Azarov says of the occupation of Bucha. Later, the gruesome scenes of bodies left in the open by withdrawing Russian forces – often with hands tied behind their backs and shot execution-style – reverberated around the world.

But Mr. Azarov was not alone in witnessing the atrocities as they occurred: A handful of his students also stayed in Bucha. Now, the teacher is planning how to harness those shared experiences in his classroom.

“I don’t know what I will be able to tell them, what I will be allowed to tell them, and what they can hear,” says Mr. Azarov. “I feel like some of my pupils saw even more than I saw.”

By chance, while speaking to this reporter in front of Bucha’s General Education School No. 1, Mr. Azarov sees one 10th grader for the first time since the war began.

They hug each other warmly, and Mr. Azarov wipes away tears, because Maryna Basyuk has survived.

“The first days we cry; then we tell our stories. ... Everyone is telling stories now,” says Mr. Azarov.

A physical education instructor, he also teaches a civil defense course once known by its Soviet-era title, Defending the Motherland. A year ago, its title became Defending Ukraine – and Mr. Azarov anticipates new interest in concepts like national pride and dignity.

“This situation,” he says, “is forging a nation together.”

Visceral shared experience

Indeed, the combined power of those individual stories is creating a new national narrative in Ukraine, of citizens discovering the will to resist against an overwhelming Russian military force, in a nation that gained independence in 1991 amid the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims Ukraine “does not exist” on its own. Instead, he says, it’s part of a neo-imperial collection of Russian-speaking peoples called Russkiy Mir, or “Russian World,” that in Ukraine’s case must be “liberated” from Western enemies.

But Russia’s war is instead reframing and reinvigorating Ukraine’s own national identity, forged with the value of a visceral shared experience – traumatic though it has already been.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Oleh Azarov in front of General Education School No. 1, where he teaches physical education and a course called Defending Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine, April 20, 2022. The Kyiv suburb has become a symbol of Russian military cruelties.

For Ukrainian educators, the challenge is how to teach that story in the future, how to integrate it into Ukraine’s national history as a watershed event that catalyzed a unity of purpose and strength of resolve.

Martin-Oleksandr Kisly, a historian at Kyiv Mohyla Academic University, says the magnitude of Russia’s invasion is prompting “a new grand historical narrative for Ukraine, because we still lack it.”

“Through all the period of independence we lacked that grand historical narrative, and now there is a possibility of securing it,” says Mr. Kisly, who is from Crimea and is considering an oral history project of the current war. “How we teach it in five years will be different from how we teach it in 10 years – it depends on how this war is finished.”

And, he says, who writes the history.

Varied experiences

Even establishing the record of events will be a challenge. Mr. Kisly is concerned about “re-traumatization” as Ukrainians recount their personal stories, which could affect his own oral history plans.

Every Ukrainian who stayed in Bucha – as well as citizens along front lines across the country – has stories of survival, bravery, fear, and resolve that now echo across the nation.

Ukrainians say the new national narrative, to be credible and relevant, will need to incorporate their varied experiences.

Those voices are evident along the Bucha roads where the Russian armored column was destroyed, where the charred hulks of Russian vehicles – and the bodies on sidewalks and street corners – have now been cleared away.

“I think we should listen to every witness, and collect all the information,” says Olena Viktorivna, a courier driver in her late 50s, who is walking where the ruins of Russian armor once lay.

She describes “bodies piling up” during the Russian occupation, and volunteers refusing to collect them because it was “too dangerous.” Neighbors – her house is around the corner – made holes in backyard fences to move around without stepping onto the street.

But Russia was not the only one responsible for destruction, she says. The Russian column was destroyed, Ms. Viktorivna notes, but it was Ukrainian airstrikes that destroyed it, wrecking civilian houses in the process.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Maryna Goncharenko weeps and holds flowers and a portrait of her father, Mykola, as he is buried one and a half months after the family says he was shot and burned in his car by Russian soldiers, at a cemetery in the Kyiv, Ukraine, suburb of Irpin, April 21, 2022. Family members say they identified the body after Russian forces withdrew from the area only because a volunteer found the remains and tagged them with the car's license plate number.

The Ukrainian voices include those of the Goncharenko family, which finally could bury its patriarch, Mykola, last week. He was killed March 4 when Russian troops shot up and burned his car, says Ludmila, his wife, who survived the incident. The family could only identify the remains, weeks later, because a volunteer had written the license plate number on a tag.

Saying its final goodbye, this distraught family cries and carries red carnations, in a scene now all too common in Ukraine.

Those voices are evident, also, at the Bucha morgue, which continues to grapple daily with an overflow of bodies collected from across the region. Officials now say that toll tops 1,000 dead civilians.

“We are working day and night, 24/7,” says an overworked volunteer. He asks a visitor if they will suit up in protective gear to help.

His name? In a rush, he says, “It does not matter.”

“Only real facts will be taught”

In Borodianka, some 15 miles northwest of Bucha, Ukrainian Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of the Kyiv military region, describes the damage in the district to the Monitor.

“Everything is destroyed,” he says. “Now you can see Russkiy Mir.”

In this town, the front of the building seized by Russians as their military command center is painted with skulls and the letter V. The front yard is carved with sandbagged trenches.

Despite rain, residents inundate a nearby Orthodox church for clothing donations. A few doors down, at a school-turned-volunteer center, the prices of municipal coffins are taped to the door, along with the location of the prosecutor’s office inside: Room 46.

“This situation has united our country, our people, our nation,” says Lieutenant General Pavlyuk. “In 1991 we got our independence in a peaceful way, and now we are paying with our blood.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Two Ukrainian women walk beside destroyed buildings in the aftermath of weeks of Russian military occupation in the Kyiv, Ukraine, suburb of Borodianka, April 21, 2022. Ukrainian civilians describe killings, torture, and abuses at the hands of the occupying Russian forces.

In the future, he says, “Only real facts will be taught, and everybody sees a real situation, a real picture. We shouldn’t tell any fairy tales.”

In Bucha, Maryna, Mr. Azarov’s student, recounts how she spent most of the monthlong Russian occupation in a basement with three families. They cooked for each other with a wood stove, and hid a generator from the Russians that they used to draw water from a secret well.

Her older brother, Oleksandr, was a target of potshots when Russian troops first arrived. A neighbor’s apartment was wrecked.

And a Russian sniper was placed on the ninth floor of a nearby building, its lower floors lined with mines. Russian soldiers smashed the residents’ mobile phones, Maryna recounts, and warned people they would be killed if the sniper’s position was revealed.

“I had never been feeling myself a big patriot, but now I feel hatred for the Russians because no one did what the Russians did, and everyone should know about it,” says Maryna. After taking little notice which language she chose to speak, the lifelong Russian speaker now prefers Ukrainian.

“I am much more aware that I am Ukrainian,” says Maryna. “I feel like I grew up a lot in this time.”

Changed syllabus

Such sentiment means Mr. Azarov expects a “dramatic increase of interest” among students in his civil defense course. Defending Ukraine still uses Soviet-era books, and emphasizes how to pack an emergency bag and first-aid techniques as well as coping with chemical warfare and handling assault rifles.

But there is also an ideological component – which in the past made students’ eyes roll – that is likely to elicit renewed interest in national pride.

“A main goal is to understand why we learn this, and why you would need to love and defend your country,” says Mr. Azarov. “I am sure it will change a lot.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Stone plaques memorialize three former students, killed fighting Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, at the door of General Education School No. 1 in Bucha, Ukraine, April 20, 2022.

Maryna is already converted.

Bolted near the school’s front door are three basalt plaques, etched with the images and names of three former students who joined the Ukrainian military and died fighting Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas – the same eastern region where war began in 2014, and where Russia today is launching a new offensive.

Maryna, subjected to war herself at the hands of Russia, says she now has a greater appreciation for the price those Ukrainians paid.

“I want to thank them,” she says, noting that the middle plaque belongs to the father of a classmate.

“They were defending us. They died for us, for what we have now.”

Reporting for this story was supported by Oleksandr Naselenko.

AP

Supporters of French President Emmanuel Macron celebrate his comfortable election victory in Paris, April 24, 2022. Rival candidate Marine Le Pen polled 42%, the highest her far-right party has ever managed, prompting Mr. Macron to pledge he will reach out to disaffected voters.

At first, when the results of French presidential elections were announced on Sunday evening, there came a great, yogic exhalation: a sense of relief in Washington and other Western capitals that President Emmanuel Macron had defeated Marine Le Pen, a far-right populist with a soft spot for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There followed newly intensified efforts to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to beat back Mr. Putin’s 2-month-old invasion. Kyiv’s Western allies have found inspiration in Ukraine’s courage and its message that democracy is worth fighting and dying for.

But a deeper lesson of the French elections has surfaced: Ms. Le Pen, an anti-system candidate who is deeply skeptical of both NATO and the European Union, won more than 40% of the vote, the most ever for a far-right figure in France. Like the United States, France is facing deep political divisions and broad disaffection.

If Ukraine is showing that democracy matters, the task of political leaders in Washington and Paris – and in many other capitals – is to demonstrate that democracy still works.

The specific pressures and grievances vary from country to country. But they’re rooted in a mix of economic, social, cultural, and ethnic fissures that seem to be making it ever harder for political leaders to gather their citizens around a shared sense of national purpose and policy.

For now at least, Mr. Putin’s attack on Ukraine and the Ukrainians’ defiant resistance have been proving an exception to that rule. Even Ms. Le Pen denounced the Russian invasion during her election campaign. In other European countries, Ukraine’s cause has united rival politicians and millions of ordinary citizens.

In the United States as well, the war has revived a phenomenon that had all but disappeared in recent years: across-the-aisle cooperation in Washington.

Still, if only because the war seems certain to spark steep rises in energy and consumer prices – always difficult for governments to navigate – it is unclear how long this unity will last.

In the U.S., keystone of the Western coalition, the opposing political tribes are already gearing up for midterm congressional elections later this year, with polls suggesting that President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party could well lose control of both chambers.

So can the U.S. president, Mr. Macron in France, and other leaders heal what ails their democratic politics?

It won’t be easy, and it’s bound to take time. But the first step would seem to be an effort to understand the sources of such widespread disaffection, disengagement, and disagreement.

Economic grievances are a part of it. But actually, both the U.S. and French economies have so far proved remarkably resilient in weathering COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, especially when it comes to preserving and creating jobs.

Michel Euler/AP

Supporters of far-right leader Marine Le Pen react to news that she had lost Sunday's presidential election to incumbent Emmanuel Macron. But her high vote share pointed to deep fractures in French society.

Nor does the main catalyst seem to be any particular policy. In France and in the U.S., large numbers of voters who would stand to benefit from policies espoused by Presidents Macron or Biden have still been gravitating to politicians openly, and often angrily, opposed to them.

This anger may be the key: There seems to be a sense of deep, indiscriminate distrust, and resentment, of government. A sense of alienation – the very antithesis of Abraham Lincoln’s famous description of democracy as being “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

So maybe the primary challenge – not just for incumbent presidents or prime ministers, but also opposition politicians whose participation will be essential to any true healing – is to begin reaching out to the angry and alienated people. Talking to them. Listening. Mr. Macron has promised to do more of that in his second term.

The rub, of course, is that none of this is likely to address the short-term imperative of maintaining a unified Western front in backing Ukraine’s resistance to Mr. Putin’s invasion.

But as Western leaders seek to meet that immediate challenge, they may come across an irony: The remedy for their longer term domestic ills may lie not only in Washington or Paris or wherever, but in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

And their best advocate? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Under daily Russian assault, he has consistently delivered a message intended to resonate far beyond the borders of Ukraine, in other democracies where people have the luxury of taking their freedoms for granted.

His countrymen and women, Mr. Zelenskyy says, aren’t risking their lives only for Ukraine, but for values shared in Europe and the wider world.

“We’re fighting for freedom,” he told visiting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this month, “for the right to choose, the right to defend, to be born and to live in a free state.”

Ulung Lupiliyan remembers feeling nervous as he stood in front of a classroom, more than 6,600 miles away from home, preparing to give a lecture to about 40 students at the University of French Polynesia on the island of Tahiti. It was Fall of 2018, and he was nearing the end of a 20-day trip spent hopping from one tropical island to another, visiting Indigenous communities, cultural centers, and even a tattoo festival.

As he started presenting on contemporary Indigenous issues in Taiwan, Mr. Lupiliyan’s anxiety dissipated. The students were curious about him and his people, and shocked by similarities between their languages.

Mr. Lupiliyan left the classroom feeling more connected to Polynesian people and culture, but it wasn’t just personal interest that brought the graduate student to Tahiti. Taiwan’s government helped pay for Mr. Lupiliyan and 11 other members of the Paiwan people to travel to French Polynesia as part of a broader strategy to maintain the country’s presence on the international stage.

Taiwan’s 1971 expulsion from the United Nations ushered in a new era of increasing diplomatic isolation, and all but 15 countries have cut ties with the island as China’s economic and political clout has grown, threatening Taiwan’s autonomy. Meanwhile, Indigenous communities have become an international relations lifeline; they are Taiwan’s sole representatives to the UN, and last month, Taiwan made headlines as a founding member of the Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation Agreement, a first-of-its-kind multilateral trade deal that includes countries such as New Zealand and Canada. Cultural exchanges like Mr. Lupiliyan’s Tahiti trip also help expand and cement Taiwan’s influence in the Pacific region.

Critics worry the Republic of China – Taiwan’s formal name – is exploiting its Indigenous communities without necessarily improving their economic conditions or cultural welfare, but others say that Taiwan has been forced to lean on its Indigenous heritage for the security of all the island’s residents.

“Taiwanese society has a unique phenomenon: It isn’t sure exactly where its roots lie,” says Yapasuyongu Poiconu, member of the Tsou people and head of the Comprehensive Planning Department at Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous People (CIP), the highest Indigenous institution in the country. “Indigenous diplomacy isn’t traditional diplomatic activity. It’s a form of soft diplomacy that’s built on a personal foundation with other people, a way of fostering mutual understanding.”

Tyrone Siu/Reuters/File

Indigenous Taiwanese people dance during an inauguration ceremony of President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 20, 2016. Assimilationist policies caused many traditional ceremonies and art forms to disappear in Taiwan, but some argue that Indigenous diplomacy could pave the way for cultural revitalization.

Finding Taiwan’s Roots

While the majority of Taiwanese people descend from Han Chinese settlers that began coming to the island in the 17th century, people had been living in Taiwan for thousands of years prior. Their descendants make up nearly 3% of the island’s current population, about half a million people. There are 16 Indigenous groups recognized by the government, with the largest being the Amis, the Atayal, and the Paiwan.

Indigenous communities were largely left out of Taiwan’s rapid economic development during the 1980s and ’90s, and today, surveys show Indigenous people are more likely to live in poverty and less likely to receive a higher education. In 2020, the average gainfully employed Indigenous person made 75% of the monthly wages of their non-Indigenous counterparts, according to a CIP report.

The cultural picture is arguably as stark. UNESCO classifies at least five of Taiwan’s 16 Indigenous languages as critically or severely endangered, with the rest described as vulnerable. This is the result of specific assimilationist policies carried out by first the Japanese and then the Chinese Nationalist Party, including suppression of Indigenous languages, restrictions on traditional ceremonies and rituals, and the encouragement of migrations to urban areas far from their traditional lands.

An Indigenous economic and social justice movement emerged in the 1990s, as Taiwan democratized and began distancing itself from mainland China, setting the stage for greater Indigenous participation in state affairs. According to Mr. Poiconu, this shift also coincided with the growing salience of Indigenous issues around the world.

At the same time, linguist Robert Blust’s “Out of Taiwan” theory – that Taiwan was the source of all Austronesian languages stretching from Madagascar to Hawaii – was becoming popular. Huang Shu-mei, a professor at National Taiwan University in Taipei who studies Indigenous heritage, says this idea “reoriented Taiwan’s imagined geography,” converting it from a society rooted in Chinese colonization to one embedded in the greater Pacific. The concept of a connected, Austronesian people has since become the bedrock of Taiwan’s Indigenous diplomacy efforts. From 2002 to 2007 the CIP organized the Assembly of Austronesian Leaders, and in 2016 the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen established the permanent Austronesian Forum. They’ve also invested in economic development and cultural exchange programs throughout the South Pacific.

SOURCE:

Robert Andrew Blust, Encyclopedia Britannica

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

However, it’s unclear if that Austronesian identity really exists beyond Taiwan. Officials and exchange participants from other supposedly Austronesian nations are often unaware of what the term means, and don’t necessarily see themselves even as “Indigenous,” says Professor Huang.

“There’s a tendency to extend linguistic connections to other types of connections,” she says, adding that the Taiwanese “government has been more than happy to go along with this misunderstanding because it can make its policies more successful.”

What is clear is that Austronesian diplomacy has become entrenched in Taiwan, and the state benefits by using Taiwan’s unique heritage to secure its position in the region. But some argue these efforts have little impact on the island’s Indigenous communities.

A win-win strategy?

“I haven’t seen much development in Indigenous industry or trade,” says Daniel Davies, a Ph.D. candidate researching multiculturalism and Indigenous representation at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Given the inequalities in Taiwan’s labor force, Mr. Davies argues that Indigenous families are less likely to directly benefit from international trade agreements like the IPETCA. “They don’t have the luxury of thinking about these things,” he says.

Another inherent tension in Austronesian diplomacy is the contradiction between using Indigenous identity to strengthen a state that has yet to undergo decolonization.

“Today’s government is still a colonial government,” says Mr. Lupiliyan, the Paiwan man who’s participated in several exchange activities sponsored by the government. “It’s also true to an extent that the government is using the colonized to protect its international position.”

But he still believes the main beneficiaries are Taiwan’s Indigenous people.

Assimilationist policies caused many traditional ceremonies and art forms to disappear in Taiwan. Austronesian diplomacy offers all Taiwanese a way of reconnecting to the island’s history, and exchanges allow Indigenous people to learn from cultures related to their own. “When we go abroad, these countries and their cultural activities provide a blueprint for our own cultural revitalization,” he says.

Still, not all cultural exchanges are created equal – Mr. Lupiliyan had been on several government-backed trips before the 2018 exchange in Tahiti, but says that one was unique because it was planned entirely by the Indigenous participants, all young Paiwanese people from the Taimali Creek area in southeastern Taiwan. He says this experience helped him realize Indigenous people can use Austronesian diplomacy, rather than the state, to represent their communities, and “that we could hold more autonomy on a local, community level.”

Done well, he says Austronesian diplomacy can offer a window into what it could look like to live in a society where Taiwan’s Indigenous people have been “mainstreamed,” and are no longer a minority on the margins.

A disco ball spins rhinestones around a room at the back of the library. Meanwhile, over a rainbow array of art supplies, a couple dozen children are spinning with ideas. 

Dillon Helbig is co-leading this writing workshop in Boise, Idaho, handing out copies of his six-step plan on how to write a book. As a local celebrity author, he would know.

The second grader went viral earlier this year for sneaking his handwritten book, “The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis” by Dillon “His Self,” onto a shelf here at the Ada Community Library, Lake Hazel Branch. Librarians – impressed – slapped a barcode on the spine. Readers raced to check it out, resulting in a wait time of more than five years.

“As you can see, I’m a kid,” he tells the Monitor.

Since his escapade, Dillon has inspired peers to put pencil to paper. Now more kids are crafting original storybooks to share – not just here, but also at school. Librarians are seeking ways to preserve the work of their smallest scribes and encourage the confidence to create. 

“Each one of you is a special and creative kid,” Alex Hartman, the branch manager, tells the room. “You are capable of making incredible things, and people are interested in what you can do.”

They don’t even need to be sneaky. Ask Evey Jensen, who’s handed out copies of her original book to her school and the Boise branch. Dillon lit the spark.

“Kinda ever since I started writing them, I’ve wanted to be famous,” she says. “And I’ve wanted people to be happy.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Dillon Helbig (right) works next to Mia Gozart at a kids writing workshop at the Ada Community Library, Lake Hazel Branch, in Boise, Idaho, April 23, 2022.

An inspiration to people of all ages

Dillon’s time-traveling epic of more than 80 pages involves an exploding Christmas tree star and Dillon himself being eaten by a turkey. Hiding his book with his hands, real-life Dillon slipped it onto a library shelf in late 2021. After it was discovered, the library gave him an award for best young novelist of the year, reported the Idaho Press.

The news exploded like his star. His proud parents say fans of all ages – across the country and world – have thanked him for inspiring them to quit procrastinating on creative projects. The book circulated briefly through the library, but the family is holding onto the only copy for now. A slew of publishers, production companies, and reporters have reached out, says mom Susan Helbig; the family is weighing which next steps will be “in Dillon’s best interest.” 

Adult author Cristianne Lane, the other workshop co-leader who pitched the event, floats among tables strewn with paper and markers. She and Dillon have both “self-published” – hers through Amazon. 

“I loved that he published his own, because I’m a big believer in having kids publish their stories to inspire them to be writers,” says the former second grade teacher. 

Today’s session is about ideas, she announces, though kids like kindergartner Cruzen Hartman are already off to the races. The son of the librarian has one book already on display; he’s crafting his latest tale in a polka-dot journal. It’s about cars that are born tiny and then grow big enough to hold humans, titled “The Baby Cars.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Cruzen Hartman peeks out behind his latest tale, "The Baby Cars," following a kids writing workshop in Boise, Idaho, April 23, 2022. Like other Idaho kids, he was inspired by second grader Dillon Helbig, who made news in recent months for sneaking his handwritten book onto a library shelf.

Pencil gripped, fifth grader Rachel McHugh is writing “A Desert With Waves.” A “silly cactus” wanders the desert looking for water and stumbles upon a tornado that is made of water.

“And then they were friends. Until one day ... ,” her voice drips with drama. 

The Monitor is avoiding spoilers.

Courage and confidence

Evey grew up in this library. Literally, says her mom: She took her first steps here.

At home on Sunday, a plump orange cat named Louise lounges on the second grader’s leg.

“Aw, you’re such a good cat,” Evey coos. “Do you think Louise knows that she’s getting interviewed right now?”

Louise features in “My Purrrrrson Is Sad,” a book written by Evey during a COVID-19 quarantine this January. Her mom, Theresa Jensen, helped brainstorm and scored a co-illustrator credit. Over six pages, Louise tries to cheer Evey up – just like real life. The first failed attempt by Louise involves her bringing Evey a dead bird (art imitating life again, apparently).

The author finished a second book in the Evey-and-Louise series this weekend. Before that, Evey had given a copy of “My Purrrrrson Is Sad” to Cindy Hall, the elementary librarian at her Christine Donnell School of the Arts. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Evey Jensen hugs her cat, Louise, at home in Boise, Idaho, April 24, 2022. Louise features in a couple books that Evey has written.

“All these students come to us with this desire to share what’s within them, and some of them are able to kind of cross over that scary vulnerability of sharing it,” says the librarian, noting the book is a popular checkout. “She was brave enough to do it.” 

Separately, fellow second grader Stella Floto – aspiring veterinarian or zoo keeper or author – has also offered Ms. Hall a homemade book that compares and contrasts animals. 

The Lake Hazel Branch, meanwhile, has dedicated shelf space for kid-written books. The plan is for librarians to read all submissions by the end of the year, then choose at least one for reproduction and inclusion in the catalog, along with an award. Workshops will continue, too.

How does it feel to inspire other kids to write?

Dillon pauses, strokes his chin in thought. 

“Huh. I don’t know,” he says after the event.

“I’m gonna feel like a teacher.”

Reuters/file

Female soldiers of an artillery unit in Taiwan take part in a military exercise which simulates an attack by China's People's Liberation Army.

The biggest surprise of the war in Ukraine has been the fierce resolve of Ukrainians to defend their national identity. Their civic solidarity, rooted in democratic ideals, not only helped them win the battle for the capital of Kyiv, but also awed the West into sending major weapons for the battles to come. Their unity around shared virtues has been the unseen armor against aggression by Russia.

This lesson in resilience may mean the most to another small country, Taiwan. It faces the threat of invasion from a much larger neighbor, China, that asserts a dubious claim to rule the independent island. A common slogan on Taiwanese social media is “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow!”

Many Taiwanese now ask if they would put up a heroic resistance during the early days of a Chinese assault to buy time and win military support from the United States and others. “We have to insist our principles – democracy, freedom, and the dignity – are what our people desire for,” pro-democracy activist Annette Lu told CNN.

Like the Ukrainians, the 24 million people of Taiwan have only lately shaped an identity around democracy. Their first direct election of a president was 24 years ago. Since 2016, when a woman, Tsai Ing-wen, was elected on a wave of support for retaining independence, China has stepped up military incursions near the island nation.

Taiwan’s economy accounts for a greater percentage of global trade than Russia yet its troop strength is small compared with China’s. While the island has a natural defense in the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, it would need to rely heavily on people’s morale to fend off Chinese forces just enough to gain time for a U.S. response to Beijing.

“The best defense of Taiwan is done by the Taiwanese,” says Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.

One sign of Taiwan’s new unity is a plan to lengthen the time for active military service from four months to one year, a move widely supported in a poll. Other possible moves include expanding conscription to women and boosting training for the country’s 1.5 million military reservists.

Just before the Ukraine war, nearly three-quarters of Taiwanese told pollsters they would fight for their country if China used force to unify the island with the mainland. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, polls show a significant increase in support in Taiwan for officially declaring independence. In addition, 80% of residents now see their identity as Taiwanese, not Chinese, up from 62% last year. Three decades ago, it was about 18%.

In May, the government plans to change its annual emergency drills for earthquakes and other disasters. People will be asked to also train for a simulated missile attack. Ukraine’s lessons in civic cohesion are finding followers in Taiwan.