When Putin invaded my country, I couldn’t take up arms – I raised my conductor’s baton instead | Keri-Lynn Wilson

We created a new kind of orchestra to fight for Ukraine all over the world

• Keri-Lynn Wilson is a Canadian-Ukrainian conductor and founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra

What is the role of the arts in times of suffering? If we know that a symphony can't halt a slaughter, and that life-and-death decisions in war are made on battlefields and in government offices not in concert halls, why do artists continue to respond to the most tumultuous of events around them, and why do we all yearn to experience what they see and say and sing?

On the day Vladimir Putin launched his attempted full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, we knew this was an assault not just on a nation but on its culture. So my husband - Peter Gelb of the Metropolitan Opera in New York - and I worked with the Polish National Opera in Warsaw to bring together Ukrainian musicians still at home and refugees abroad for a new kind of orchestra, one that would fight for the country's cause all over the world. While I could not take up arms, I could take up my baton as my weapon instead.