“I’ve lost touch, since then … I can’t reach her,” an emotional Bill Cotsis says to Neos Kosmos about his friend Athena, or Afina Khadzhynova.
Bill Cotsis met Athena on his first tour of Ukraine in 2004. Sartana a Greek town where Athena lives, “at least twenty-one people have been killed,” says Bill.
He is worried about Athena and devastated to see his beloved Ukraine pounded by Putin’s war machine.
Bill Cotsis, a lay historian, has spent close to thirty years documenting the lives of the Greek Diaspora – in Southern Italy, USA, Canada, Brazil, Africa, and the Black Sea.
“I listen to local Greek dialects, and meet Greeks, I see history come alive… in Southern Italy I met the Italiot Greeks who speak Griko, an ancient Greek [dialect], it was like ancient statues coming alive.”
Bill went to Ukraine to meet compatriots in one of the oldest settlements of Greeks where “over 200,000 Hellenes have lived there since antiquity.”
“I was in Ukraine in 2004 and 2008 and was planning to go again to see friends and make a documentary.”
On Bill’s first visit he went to Odessa, the home of Filiki Eteria, or Friendship Society, where the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire was sparked as an idea in the 1820s.
“I was given an after-hours tour and access to their building and headquarters and there I was told about Sartana, just outside Marioupolis/Mariopol, a Greek town established by Greeks in 1778, “and there was a Greek museum. I had to visit.”
The curator of the museum read Bill Greek poetry written by the father of Athena Khadzhynova.
“I had to meet Athena and she was amazing, in Sartana no one knew who I was, and yet they treated me like a brother…I was family.”
Bill has not been able to get a hold of Athena since the bombing commenced, and her regular audio messages ended abruptly on March 3.
“Within 24 hours of my contacting her, Athena would respond to me, this is the first time she has not got back to me.”
From Billy Cotsis' visit to Odessa. Photos: Supplied
Billy Cotsis at the Filiki Eteria building in Odessa. Photo: Supplied
From Billy Cotsis' visit to Odessa. Photos: Supplied
Athena’s voice recordings on Messenger are eerie, the voice is real, it is alive, defiant, and articulate. But Athena cannot be contacted anymore.
In one of the messages Athena, in fluent Greek, says, ‘Ukrainians, all of us, want to live in an independent nation and our purpose is to be part of the European Union, we want to be part of the civilised world… and not under Putin’s autocracy.’
In another, Athena damns Putin as a ‘tyrant who does not recognise basic logic, or basic humanity… for him human life has no value.’
The final message from Athena is in a text, ‘We live… but the bombs are falling all around us.’
Athena’s father was a leader of the Greek community, and in the “Greek underground under the Soviets.”
The Greeks of Mariupol were “not allowed to speak Greek or express their culture under the Soviet regime.”
“Greek was banned so they had to teach it underground in Mariupol, Athena’s father, taught it underground, at least until the 80s. Greek was taught in secret, in private houses, they weren’t allowed to speak in public, as a Greek you couldn’t show your identity.
“Many of her [Athena] father’s friends went missing, sent off to Siberia, they were prohibited from speaking Greek.”
Athena told Bill that “only when Ukraine gained independence were Greeks able to let their language and culture to flourish without fear.
A photo from Mariupol during Bill Cotsis' travels. Photo: Supplied
Greeks in Mariupol back in the day, with Billy Cotsis pictured second from the left. Photo: Supplied
Bill was ready to head to Ukraine again, to make his documentary on Greek villages, but the 2014 Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula stopped him.
“One of the Greek villages is very close and did not want to put myself in jeopardy, I waited thinking that they’ll leave eventually or slow down, I also had the Malaysian airlines disaster back in my mind.”
The prospect of revisiting Ukraine is distant for Bill. He is less worried about his work and very anxious about his friend Athena.
“I spoke to her around March 2 she said that they were surrounded, and all the power was cut off, so there’s no way of getting any messages to anybody. She did tell me she was leaving as the bombs fell but I have yet to hear from her.”
He is appalled by Putin’s propaganda, that “they’re fighting Nazis, it’s absurd given the prime minister Zelensky is Jewish.
“The idea that a man who has seen his elders killed in the Nazi Holocaust along with six million Jews would now be a Nazi is insane.”
Bill did not want the interview to be about him “I did nothing, Athena deserves credit, she is there, and she is an activist for Ukrainian independence.”
