Christmas spirit
A brief update plus what to read. We have a strange "day off" here in Austria today, the only one of its kind -- a public holiday AND some of the stores are actually open. Surreal.
I am feeling oddly relatively relaxed going into crunch-time holiday season. Which is really weird because I only literally started working on the kids’ Christmas lists (they are teens, I demand links) yesterday, and also only yesterday purchased the first (and hopefully last) rolls of wrapping paper. Before that, I could not even bear to see red and green. But the snow has not yet fully melted, and therefore it is a bit easier to accept the season is truly now upon us.
Mario sent me these 25 cards in the mail which arrived bright and early this morning. Part of our process is Mario works off the very long wait list we have from our Cards for Ukraine website. Many Ukrainians asked us months ago for aid in the form of €50 supermarket cards, and as demand exceeds supply, they have had to wait. This means when Mario sends out a batch (we serve website requests on a first come first serve basis), there are always a certain number of cards who return to sender because the recipients have moved address or left Austria. In those cases, Mario collects those cards and sends them to me, and I use them to deliver cards to those Ukrainians who text me directly. I have some days with only a few requests, and other days I can receive a dozen or more. Some are still new arrivals, others write asking for a card for relatives who joined them more recently. Some are grannies who simply cannot make the very modest amount of money they receive from the Austrian government stretch until the end of the month. I use the benefit of the doubt, and try to send these cards directly, also on a first come first serve basis, of course flagging special situations such as cancer patients for whom extra, direct aid is often found (thank you kind souls still on the cesspool that X has become).
I also had a pleasant surprise of receiving these two boxes of beautiful holiday stamps. The Austrian post office did a tricky thing recently. On the one hand, it dropped the stamp price by 5 cents. On the other hand, it slowed down delivery. So now when I mail an envelope on a Monday, Ukrainians usually don’t write me to say thank you until around Thursday. The 50 cards we sent out under our “XMAS” fundraising program to single moms with kids 12 and under have started to arrive (finally). A little collage of some of the photos I have been receiving from across Austria:
There was an interesting discussion in our Telegram group this morning which neither Vasily who helps me monitor the conversations nor I decided to delete. We let it be. A mother posted a photo of the card she received. In the photo you could see a long, manicured gel-tipped thumb. The kind of manicure you either have to be a semi-pro to administer yourself or you at least need a little disposable income or a friend who does nails to help you. Immediately another Ukrainian mom wrote how she was embarrassed and how could a mother with a manicure dare ask for a donation for a toy for her kid. I knew the mother’s story in the photo — she lives in a dorm in Vienna and her child is handicapped. But I didn’t intervene in the discussion. Another mom jumped in to fill in these biographical details, and the crowd was torn. Some argued if a manicure is the only small pleasure this mom has for herself why criticise it, others seemed firm that it was not ok to ask for help when you have some kind of disposable income. The likes seemed split 50/50. The original poster criticising the photo deleted her post. Everyone had a think about it.
It is the same with the Hofer cards, frankly. Some people write me multiple times, beginning for help. I try to filter those requests with a grain of salt. Others are so modest and yet in such need, and they would not dare to ask me a second time. People, as Vasily always reminds me. Work with people is always a challenge. Which is true, but it is also mega rewarding. I feel a personal sense of relief each time a mom receives a gift card (and also a little annoyance when they send me three consecutive text messages to ask how to use the card or ask me when the post will arrive).
Today I would also like to share with you a bit more about what I have been reading. First, this FT piece from a few days ago about the rumoured political feuds within Ukraine. As several observers have noted already, “politics are back”. While googling for the article, I came across this hell of a letter to the editor in the FT. Just wow. Why not just link to RT? Or did they check this is an actual real person?
Speaking of real people from the west spewing Kremlin propaganda, do watch this unbelievable interview by BBC’s Steve Rosenberg with a former foreign minister of Austria under the far right party, the woman who famously danced with Putin at her wedding. She since divorced and moved herself and her dogs and horses (?) from Lebanon (!!) to Russia. She has happily sung the praises of Putin’s regime very publicly in exchange for whatever creature comforts she now enjoys in Russia. Her Russian skills, ironically, are downright terrible from the few clips I have heard with her attempting to speak the local language, singing the praises of village life a la Tolstoy.
Full interview here: (TLDR she comes across as a pretty terrible, self-obsessed human)
After my last post, it occurred to me a terrible thought. Which is perhaps a logical thought but it took a few days (literally) for the penny to drop in my case. If the U.S. and Europe really do pull funding away from Ukraine, and a rational person would say, ok, then Ukraine should seriously think about seeking the best peace it can under the circumstances of not being able to fight a forever war without western backing — there is absolutely no rationale for Russia to seek a peace now, when its position suddenly becomes stronger than it has been in a long time. Russia, by all accounts, seems to be weathering the storm of war just fine. The economy, especially outside of Moscow and St Petersburg, is doing well with the war creating jobs and boosting salaries in parts of Russia that had been depressed for some time. There seem to be no visible threats to Putin’s rul. So why would Russia even think about peace now? And certainly not in good faith.
That is a scary line of thinking.
Speaking of Orban, I really recommend this fascinating piece by Shaun Walker of the Guardian from the very west of Ukraine, a notably poor region, where a sizeable Hungarian minority resides. The timing coincides with me having heard from the first time from a Ukrainian yesterday a suggestion that if given the opportunity, Orban would love to take a bite out of Ukraine himself, and return the Hungarian-speaking parts to his own country.
Sticking to central Europe, I would also recommend reading Tim Mak’s most recent post to better understand the terrible situation in Poland for both Ukrainian and Polish truckers:
I also like to recommend to you all reporting which highlights sides of stories not always covered by mainstream media. This recent piece by openDemocracy about the lives of those Ukrainians who left occupied territories to essentially be refugees within Ukraine (IDPs) is very much worth your time. It explains the how, and why, and the many layers of grey about day-to-day life within the 17% of Ukraine’s land which is now de facto controlled by Russia. Local residents who chose not to leave essentially have to give in to applying for Russian documents if they want to access healthcare, pensions, etc. We know this anecdotally, but these first person interviews are important. I hear them in bits and pieces from Ukrainians already in Austria for some time whose relatives and friends stayed behind. I hear about this village fell and that village…there seems to be at the moment very little “reporting” from the front itself, probably something which pleases both sides PR teams at the moment.
What life is this?’: Escaping Ukraine’s occupied territories
Finally, I would like to recommend this Bloomberg Opinion piece (paywall sorry) which describes the fears I referred to above — what the actual practical result is of U.S. and EU pulling back funding and weapons from Ukraine at this moment in the war. What that means for Russia and its ambitions. Putin seems to be having a good week. He announced he is running for re-election (zero surprise there) and was welcomed with a red carpet and then some in Saudi Arabia and UAE. To be honest Putin looks happier than we’ve seen him in years in this video.
I was talking about all this with a Ukrainian this week, saying in sort of an exasperated worst case scenario way, well what happens when the EU falls apart, and all the far right governments take over next year, and the war doesn’t stop in Ukraine and…
To which I got a very calm response. It went something like this. Nothing will change. You will have Putin’s friends in government within the EU. But everything else will stay the same.
This stopped me in my tracks. Because, it is totally plausible, and also not a stretch of the imagination to envision a European populace actually ok with such a new, Russia-friendly reality should the domestic hot button populist issues of inflation and “illegal” immigration be addressed. Much of Europe still believes that what happened in Ukraine cannot happen here. (Except if you ask the Baltics. They know.)
Let’s not forget, Russia knows exactly how to push the west’s buttons on these culture wars issues. Meanwhile in Russia they are quite literally raiding gay clubs and threatening abortion access. Which is frightening as the Moscow I used to live in was once one of the gay-friendliest places on the planet (yes, really) and abortions were something you scheduled like getting a cavity filled. I’ll never forget an acquaintance showing up for cocktails one evening after having had the procedure that very afternoon. A one night stand gone wrong. No big deal.
In the context of Russia, a little update on the cultural front. There is a new hit TV show everyone is watching and talking about. It is roughly translated as “a dude’s word” and it is about street gangs in the late 1980s in Kazan, Tatarstan.
You can watch here in Russian, but to watch you have to survive multiple online casino commercials featuring a famous Russian rapper and many half-naked women. Rather fitting, actually. 2023 get rich quick schemes for ordinary dudes financing the showing of a TV show about the 1980s version of such empty promises.
The premise of the show was so controversial (based on some real events and personas of the time) that the city of Kazan did not let the producers film there. Instead, the late Soviet era scenes were filmed in Moscow and Yaroslavl. It is no surprise that a domestic hit focused on tough guys trying to make it on the streets and male violence in general takes off at a time like this. Young people are watching who themselves have no recollection of the Soviet period. Some remember the rough 1990s, and are frightened by it. One woman wrote me she found the show “triggering”, it brought back too many memories she thought she had tucked away forever. I watched the six of eight episodes which are available so far pretty much as fast as I could. The acting is top and the storyline draws you in.
I was also fascinated to learn the drama series is roughly based on a non-fiction book published by the same indie publisher in Moscow which translated by book a zillion years ago. I tried to order the book online today and received a very polite email from the bookseller in Germany: it is totally sold out everywhere in the Russian Federation and a new print run is scheduled for December 28. Incredible.
I have been asked to speak with a local magazine about how Ukrainians are managing in Austria for a year-end piece. I have also been asked to give an interview to two high school students writing about the refugee response. I agreed to do both but the number one issue on everyone’s minds, more so than money and housing and jobs, is what will happen to the residency status of Ukrainian citizens in the EU after March 2025. That is the huge hot potato that has not yet been caught and cooled off. If there are discussions within Austria, I am not party to them, we have no clues. This part really worries me. We do not know when the war will end. Meanwhile, mothers and children as well as elderly, sick, and handicapped people have built new lives here, or rather, are in the long, hard process of doing just that.
Will Europe really one day simply tell the millions of Ukrainians living here that now it is time for them all to go home?