A story of hope: Ukrainska Pravda tracks down legendary granny Baba Nadia from Myhalky, who told the Russians where to go

There’s a flip side to Ukrainian hospitality. The uninvited guests who entered Ukraine in tanks were expecting to be greeted with flowers and the traditional bread and salt. Instead, they got curses, Molotov cocktails, bullets and Javelins.

What happened on 25 February 2022 in Myhalky, a village 80 km northwest of the capital, will go down in history as a textbook example of a psyop and non-violent civil resistance. The day after the invasion, when Ukraine's future was looking bleak, a photograph of a placard at a bus stop began to circulate on social media, and in the mainstream media too.

Someone had written, in a language the Russians could understand: "F**k off out of Ukraine and our village, you bastards!" It was signed "Baba (Granny) Nadia".

The Russians never got as far as Myhalky. A few kilometres from the village, they were stopped by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and an ancient forest. "And by Baba Nadia’s message," one of the locals adds.

The image created by this courageous lady, whose identity the media never revealed, instantly became a meme. A Baba Nadia account appeared on Instagram. And Myhalky’s message to the Russians was printed on confectionery labels, T-shirts and sweatshirts.

Who is Baba Nadia, and does she even exist? Ukrainska Pravda reporters went to Myhalky, where they found answers to all their questions.

"There's a Nadia who lives in the alley"

The bus shelter in the photograph doesn’t have the placard or the "Myhalky" sign on it any more, but there are other features it can be identified by: its left-hand wall is painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, and behind it is a field and an abundance of pine trees.

In February 2022, cars full of women, children and pets were driving along this road that passes through the village and goes on to Radomyshl and Zhytomyr, driving past Baba Nadia’s message to the Russians.

"Good afternoon!" we call out to an elderly lady on Shevchenko Street. "We’re journalists from Kyiv looking for your Baba Nadia. Is your name Nadia?"

"I’m Hanna," the pensioner answers. "Hanna Fedorivna. You want to know who Baba Nadia is? I don't know. I can't tell you. I don't know, honestly! (she laughs).

I saw this woman on TV who gave the katsaps [Russians – ed.] pies that had rat poison in. But I didn’t see that placard because I rarely leave the house. People told me there was one…"

"Well, do you stand in solidarity with Baba Nadia at least?" we ask.

"Of course," Hanna Fedorivna says. She starts to cry. "If I had the strength and the will, I’d strangle some of them myself. So much tragedy they’ve caused! But I live in hope. I believe in God, I believe in victory. Ukraine will never surrender, that will never happen!"

Myhalky has seen three wars, revolutions and uprisings in the last 120 years. Its geography and history have taught the locals to cover their tracks and keep their mouths shut.

"I don't know where Baba Nadia is," a man standing near his fence says without missing a beat. "Maybe one of the young people wrote it. Ask the starosta (the village head), or go to Piskivka." [Myhalky is part of the Piskivka hromada – UP.]

"Baba Nadia, Baba Nadia, Baba Nadia," another local, Yurii Herasymenko, says, trying to remember. "There’s one who lives in the alley. But she wasn’t in the village when that placard appeared."

"She's going to kill me!"

"Really, you don't know Baba Nadia?" the assistant at the bakery says, smiling, as she checks our journalists' credentials. "I need to contact her and get her permission."

"Wow! Does that mean she exists?!"

"Well, since it happened, then maybe she exists," the woman laughs. "It wasn’t a dead woman who wrote it. Why are you filming us old folks? Are you making a comedy programme?

"So where can we find her?"

"I don't know!" she says, backtracking now. "They say in the village that there is one somewhere, but she’s incognito."

"Are there many Nadias in Myhalky?"

"Loads of them! But everyone has only one hope ["Nadiia" means "hope" in Ukrainian – ed.] – for victory. Maybe it was that Nadia? You know what, lads, maybe it wasn’t our one. I can't say!"

"We can see that this is a partisan region here, right?"

"Well, you have to be a partisan now so that strangers don't come in. Needs must," she says.

At the shop in the centre of Myhalky, your hungry investigative reporters find cola, chocolate, a couple of paninis, and an unexpected stroke of luck.

When we asked where we should look for the heroic Baba Nadia, one of the assistants gladly enlightens us, beaming happily: "At school, in lessons. She’s a maths teacher. In fact, her name is Tetiana Mykolaivna. She’s a first-rate teacher – a young lady. Well, I say young – she’s the same age as me. I’ll call her now. She’s a good friend of mine."

"Wait, she’s going to come here and tell you everything," the shop assistant says as she returns from the utility room after a short phone call. "But she’s going to kill me because I didn't warn her.

She’s nervous now. She asked: ‘What happened? What happened?’ I told her: ‘Just come straight to the shop after school!’"

"The war will end and we’ll go back to being polite"

Tetiana Mykolaivna Shevchenko was born in 1971. She’s forward-thinking and full of energy. The very woman of whom someone wrote on Facebook in February 2022: "Today, all of us Ukrainian women are Baba Nadia."

The author of that epic message to the Russians radiates optimism even today. When you talk to her, you’re constantly thinking: Ukrainian children don’t have enough teachers like this.

"Um, I feel very ashamed of those words," Tetiana immediately warns us. "You know, a teacher using foul language. But it was appropriate at that moment. It was a message in a language the Russians would understand. I wanted to do something harmful to them that day.

We talked about this with the kids last year: some words are obscene, but there’s a time and a place for everything," "Baba Nadia" continues. I say jokingly: "The war will end and we’ll all go back to being polite again. Because Ukrainians don’t have words like that in our vocabulary."

24 February 2022 started the same way for Tetiana as it did for everyone else. Someone wrote in the school chat: "Children are to stay at home with their parents until further notice."

"Everything froze here," Tetiana recalls. "We’d watch the news and scroll through Telegram. The first thing that struck me was our guys from Zmiinyi (Snake) Island, who so bravely and boldly told that Russian warship where to go. They did it with the kind of humour that’s always been characteristic of the Cossacks – they’re jokers."

"It was being reported everywhere that they’d all been killed," Tetiana goes on. "That struck me. They knew what the outcome would be, but they had no fear.

I thought, well, we, the people of Myhalky, could do that just as well. We'd tell the Russians where to go as well once they got here."

Tetiana made the placard from materials and paint that were left over from the renovation of her house.

"Baba Nadia" carried the wooden frame structure, which only looks light in the famous photo, to the bus stop with her friend, primary school teacher Yuliia Ivanitska.

Tetiana took a picture of the message and posted it as a comment on the Ukrainian General Staff's Facebook page. It then went viral on social media and got into the mainstream media.

"Why Baba Nadia?" we ask the author of this manifesto. "Is that someone in your family?"

"Yes, it’s my grandmother. Thank God she didn't live to see such sad times, with Russia attacking us, tearing us to shreds. My grandmother lived near here, in the Malyn district of Zhytomyr Oblast. She loved Ukraine. So did my father.

I also put a second meaning in this message – hope [the meaning of the name Nadiia – ed.]. After all, we hope that victory will be ours. We are waiting for it and working to help it come as soon as possible."

"There’s no one but us"

All that remains of the former collective farm in Myhalky, which bore the reassuring name of "New Life", are some old buildings and a barely visible Soviet star on top of a metal gate. Some Russian missiles landed here after the invasion, causing damage. The farmer moved to Kyiv Oblast from Luhansk Oblast after the war broke out in 2014.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the bombardments of Myhalky. But in the cemetery directly opposite the ruins of New Life, there are several graves of people who were killed fighting the Russians at the front. One of them is military volunteer Leonid Feshchenko.

"My husband," Tetiana says. "We were divorced, but he’s still my son’s father. They had a really good relationship.

There was a territorial defence unit in Myhalky at the entrance to the village, on the bridge over the Teteriv [River]. Then my husband left for Donbas. He died of his wounds in a hospital in Kramatorsk on 13 November 2022."

Last autumn, several months into the invasion, Tetiana felt she couldn't just sit and watch the news. Arestovych did not reassure her because, she says, "we have a developed critical mindset". [Oleksii Arestovych is a former non-staff advisor to the Ukrainian President's Office, famous for reassuring Ukrainians at the beginning of the Russian invasion – ed.]

So Tetiana got her placard out of the shed and took it to the neighbouring village of Piskivka. She put it up in the park and organised a charity auction. Baba Nadia raised 15,000 hryvnias (just over US$400) from photos and selfies and donated the money towards a pickup truck for Ukrainian soldiers.

"Back then, we still had hope that we would drive them out much faster – that they wouldn’t have time to recover," Tetiana recalls. "But time takes its toll. It’s tough going [the liberation of Ukraine – UP]. We have to understand this. And help, help, help them! Because there is no one but us. No one, only us.

Ukraine's victory isn’t just about the 1991 borders," she adds. "It's a more global issue. And we are a long way from complete victory. Russia is not going to leave us alone. Unfortunately, this is going to take a really long time.

Ideally, there should be nothing there [in Russia] so that all of their territory is wiped out. That isn’t going to happen, of course. That’s just talk and dreams."

"I'm going to educate the future president"

"I was born here, and I went to a local school. After I got married, I enrolled in a correspondence course at Drahomanov University. I live and work here, I don't go anywhere."

Tetiana recounts her life story as laconically as she told the Russians to stay away from Ukraine in late February.

She’d dreamed of being a teacher since she was a child. Whenever she visited her grandmother Nadiia in the Malyn district, Tetiana would sit her grandparents down on chairs and hand out assignments. And they would write diligently in their exercise books.

When the family was busy with work, their cats and dogs would take on the role of her pupils.

"I love what I do," Tetiana says so sincerely that you believe it beyond any doubt. "I’m an advocate for rural education in general. I want to make rural schools as much like city schools as possible. You should see what an impressive classroom we have, with our interactive whiteboard and 3D printer!"

When Baba Nadia from Myhalky talks about her students, hope for a bright future for Ukraine no longer seems like an abstraction.

"Young people have become more serious since 24 February. You know, they adapt to everything more easily. They understand everything, of course. I was discussing the war in Israel with the 11th-graders [16-17-year-olds] today. Why it’s happening.

All this information is available now. We’re not Russians. We can detect fake news easily and filter it out," Tetiana says.

"Well, not everyone in Ukraine knows how to do that," the reporter argues.

"Perhaps not everyone," the teacher agrees, "but we try to foster critical thinking in children. It's essential for their overall development and will help them in the future.

I also teach patriotism. But what is it about? It’s not just about putting on a vyshyvanka [a Ukrainian embroidered shirt – ed.]!"

"Patriotism is about the little things," Tetiana explains. "For example, a child who receives a textbook from the state should cover it. It's a sin not to now. We don't know when they'll be able to print more. That's why we have to look after them, so that more money can be spent on defence."

"Maybe Baba Nadia will be the next president?" asks one of the UP journalists, completely in thrall to Tetiana's wisdom.

"No!" Tetiana laughs loudly. "We need young people to do this. Let Baba Nadia educate the future president...

I'm going to educate the future president, right?"

Yevhen Rudenko, Yevhen Buderatskyi, Dmytro Larin, Nazarii Mazyliuk – Ukrainska Pravda

Translated by Yelyzaveta Khodatska and Artem Yakymyshyn

Edited by Teresa Pearce