Alpine team Russia (Day 42)
Official Austria still refuses to call Putin a war criminal, refuses to sanction Russian oil and gas, can't find any spies. Yes, really. A selection of must-read journalism on Ukraine and Russia.
Same same but different. In some Vienna establishments, you ask for a Diet Coke, and you get this instead. Looks like a coke, tastes like a coke (actually it’s much better than horrendous Diet Pepsi), is not a coke. A metaphor for Austria’s position in the EU. Looks like EU, tastes like EU, does not behave like EU.
Nearly every EU country has expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in recent days and weeks, since Putin began his insane and murderous war in Ukraine. The rate of explosions accelerated after Bucha. Except Austria. Austria is home to a reported 150 Russian “diplomats” and yet this little alpine nation hasn’t found a single spy among them. This is downright hilarious given Vienna is well known as the spy capital of Europe. A better question would be which of those diplomats isn’t a spy?
Next, Austria’s foreign minister was on the Austrian public news evening interview program, and was given the opportunity to clearly call Putin a war criminal. He did not. A thread here in English summarising the TV interview with Austria’s foreign minister Schallenberg.
After processing these two pieces of information: Austria’s federal government refuses to kick out a single Russian diplomat (spy) and refuses to call what happened in Bucha a war crime, it occurred to me that Austria has likely already been cut out of communications on EU/NATO/US level about the war in Ukraine. Just as many diplomats said long before the war started that classified information isn’t shared with Austria because whatever reaches Vienna is very shortly after transported to Moscow.
Last night I was here:
Today I am already here, wondering if the Austrian people also support this let’s ignore the war crimes next door stance?
And yes, I keep thinking about the past.
A glass is half full person might say, Austria is just slow but will get there eventually. I appreciated this video commentary by Othmar Karas. The first words from an Austrian politician I found myself nodding in agreement with in their entirety.
A glass is half empty person (me) might say, ok, so what does this mean in the context of Putin preparing his Plan B as Plan A invasion and attack on Kyiv failed? In the context of Orban’s reelection in Hungary? What happens when Austria becomes an open Russian asset? I wonder how many people here are asking themselves that question, and I know it sounds crazy, just as crazy as when last April, one year ago, we talked about Putin wanting to maybe invade Ukraine from the north.
Regarding Austria — I don’t have any good answers I just want to draw attention to all of this because it is very worrying and as a small country a lot of what happens here just somehow slips under the world’s radar. I think it’s important to have our eyes and ears open and to question the messaging:
Amidst domestic drama (a scandal involving a drunken car crash, bodyguards used as babysitters — Austria looking more like Russia every day), Austria’s chancellor Nehammer claims he will go to Ukraine soon. I hope Zelensky will think twice before welcoming in Kyiv the leader of a country which is quite literally holding the EU back from doing more via additional sanctions to punish Russia for its war crimes.
Beyond this little alpine nation, today I would like to highlight some incredible, very painful, but very important, history-writing reporting. In no particular order but all must reads. I don’t have subscriptions to all of these (I have zero subscriptions) but I was able to read most of them with a little creativity.
1. The single most painful text I have ever read. I hope it will be translated into English and other European languages soon. From a Bucha hospital. The headline reads “can they make a pink prosthesis with flowers on it?”. It is also critical that this reporting is in Russian for obvious reasons.
2. A beautiful piece by Peter Pomerantsev on modern Ukrainian identity and what official Russia got so wrong. “Kyiv is a city of shrugs that never takes itself too seriously. It is made for strolling through and kissing in.”
3. A really disturbing, extremely detailed report from Trostianets:
4. An equally disturbing and important report from Chernihiv. You would have to be blind to not sense a pattern by now. Bucha was not an outlier. Bucha is the norm. Wherever they go, Russian troops are killing for killings sake.
5. From Russia, economic pain sets in. I also listened to a podcast in Russian yesterday (here) which talked about the initial phase of “hysteria” in support of the war within Russia, which will not last. Soon, economic problems will take over. This WSJ reporting from inside Russia is really important because it illustrates how ordinary Russians are feeling the impacts of the war which may not be called a war in their daily lives.
Thank you for reading. I’ll end here with this beautiful sunrise photo from Kyiv.
Yes, the reading is ghastly; but it is important to read, to respect those who bore witness to the atrocities. The comment section is not letting it be posted in its entirety.
Residents of Bucha told the BBC how some Russian soldiers shot civilians and others cried at the sight of children in the cellars.
- What's the date today?
- The seventh day of the war.
That's how the calendar has been kept at the hospital in Bucha since February 24, when the first rockets exploded in the sky. The 23-year-old Anastasia, a first-year intern at Kiev's Maternity Hospital No. 4, had not had time to leave for surgery in the capital and was already living in the three-story building of the local hospital for a week. She calls the invasion of Bucha, where 40,000 people lived, the time "when Ukraine became under Russia.
"The first day I was sitting in the basement of my house, hearing the sounds of gunshots and rockets, I decided, well, I'm a doctor, people need me. My mother was on her knees begging me not to leave. My father cried, but let me go with the words, "You are my pride."
Anastasia came into the hospital emergency room and said she was ready to work.
That same evening, they started bringing in 70 Ukrainian servicemen per day as a "conveyor belt. Accustomed to the obstetrics and gynecology department, Anastasia had to learn how to work in traumatology and purulent surgery.
"Ukrainian soldiers were raring to go back to war after a couple of days. There were two or three Russians among the wounded. We still respected the "neutral territory" rule then and treated everyone. The Russians' wounds were not serious, we treated them and handed them over to the Ukrainian military. They were almost always silent. Sometimes they would only say that they were deceived, that they did not know where they landed, they were told that there would be a special operation, they did not know that it was Ukraine... We were saying to the third one - well, think of something else already!
At first there were no civilians among the patients. Then the first civilian was brought to the hospital with a torn femur, and every day we admitted 15-20 people with wounds. In those days Anastasia kept a diary. "You wake up without an alarm clock, when even from the entrance you hear an ambulance or just a person who came wounded himself. You wake up. You put on your gloves. You pull on your mask. You check for "ears" [stethoscope] in your neck, a venflon [intravenous catheter] in your pocket, and a tourniquet. One thing on my mind was, "Well, let's go."
The point of no return, Anastasia says, for her was the second of March - when a four-year-old girl Katya was brought in from Gostomel with a head wound. "We realized then that there would be no more Russians in the hospital. It was a collapse for everyone. I turned my gaze back to that calf. And again the words of the Rashists were spinning in my head, that they don't shoot civilians, much less children... And somehow the surgeon's words echoed back to me: "Nastya, it's a child, take the yellow venflon".