Day 22
Meet Archie from Kyiv. Stories from Vienna. Some feelings about neutrality and bureaucracy. What to read: incredible on the ground reporting and more.
Meet Archie from Kyiv. He was waiting with his family in line to get train tickets to Germany. Or was it Italy? Switzerland? It was all a blur today. Kyiv. Cherkasy. Chernihiv. Dnipro. Kherson. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, sandwiches, croissants. Platform 8A, 5B, 1, 4, 10C-E. Munich, Zurich, Budapest, Nuesiedl, Innsbruck, Villach.
So many people from all over Ukraine, all heading west, so many unsure where they are headed. You ask, do you plan to stay in Austria or continue? And many simply don’t even know the answer to that question yet. How will Europe handle this? Will the world help? Will North America start sending airplanes? Today I spent the morning solving micro problems which seemed very macro to those directly impacted. I kept thinking about scale. The scale of the response required. That our individual efforts are not easily scalable.
That simple things, like finding long-term accommodation for a mother and daughter in Austria, are proving to be so difficult in practice. There are many offers and there are many people in need but the matching service isn’t there. There is a disconnect between people willing to help offering things that Ukrainians don’t need and vice versa.
The response therefore needs to be scaled, but how? How do you suddenly find housing for millions of people? How do you find jobs for them without bureaucratic red tape? If countries fond of red tape, like Austria, insist on maintaining that red tape, this will only push women into vulnerable situations in which they might be enticed to work illegally. Can you imagine, millions of women, most of whom have left behind their husbands and sons, now at the mercy of what Europe decides to do with them? This is right now perhaps the biggest crisis the western world has faced since World War II. The more I think about it, the more I realize we are now in the early days of something that will fundamentally change our societies, who we think we are vs what we do in practice.
This morning started with coffees, teas and hot chocolates. I helped a mom find the bus terminal who was racing to get her son back on a bus to Warsaw. Why back to Poland? Who knows. FlixBus found, run back. Meet a family with two kids and dog who need a place to stay for one night, as the train tickets to Italy were only available for tomorrow. Start searching for a place, but then they cancel, found something else. Another two moms with two kids, aged 12 and 1. They too need a place to sleep for one night. Start asking around. I call a local hotel. They agree to house them for free. Not able to believe our luck, we race over. Hand in Ukrainian passports and something looking like proof of vaccination. Have to wait for rooms. Fine. I run back by coffees and croissants. Meet another family who also ask for a room, but there are no more free rooms. I say we can pay for them, the hotel offers a decent price for a room for 4 people. Include breakfast? Yes please. Wait to fill out documents, pay for the room, explain they have to check out by 12, etc. It all takes time and attention. While you wait, they talk. 3 days on the road from Cherkassy, exhausted, can’t wait to take a shower and sleep in a bed. 5 days on the road, also exhausted, left Kyiv on Monday, men tried to sneak onto the trains while they were leaving Ukraine’s capital, strange men followed her in the Warsaw train station, she managed to duck away and they stopped following her. You listen and nod and are already thinking you have to get back to the station because more people are waiting. The flow of refugees from Ukraine does not stop.
A group of eight tell you they have 10 minutes to catch a train to Frankfurt. You race them to the platform, but you have to wait for the elevator because the baby fell asleep in the buggy. You make it, but it’s a Hungarian train on the platform. The Ukrainian teenager says, “I told you all the trains from Germany are always late”. I look at her, amazed, “How do you know that already?”. It is true. The trains from Germany, white with DB, they are always late. Today by 20 minutes. Sometimes by over an hour. German efficiency like German internet.
I met two young women, early 20s, headed to Croatia with a promise of jobs in a hotel. I helped them find their train, and something compelled me to give them some cash simply because I worry. How will they get there? What will happen when they arrive? What if the offer isn’t real? They were alone and both not older than 22. We spoke a mix of Russian and English. They are too young to have learned Russian in school, but their English wasn’t confident yet. One was very quiet. The other did all the talking. They were grateful. I wished them good luck.
Ukrainians still want to go to Germany, all over, wherever they have someone. Many also want to go to Italy, but we can’t issue free train tickets for Italy here, and we have to warn them they may have to pay for their rail journey in Italy once they get there. This causes stress because they want to know how much, and no one has a good answer. The biggest mystery this week so far, other than why Austria has so few available long-term rooms and apartments and why they are so hard to find and allocate, is what Italy is going to do with Ukrainians and why they haven’t opened their railroads yet. One family asked me about France, but that was a first. We think it might be free to Paris via Germany. They want to keep going to Spain. Why don’t you fly, I ask, explaining there are cheap airfares? We have so much luggage, they say, how could we pay for it all. I didn’t have any good advice for that.
I see a mom and daughter, probably university age, looking a bit lost. We are waiting for friends, they say. We get talking. They left in their heavy winter jackets and boots. They ask about buying sneakers. I take them downstairs and let them each pick out a pair of sneakers and some socks. They are thrilled. They ask about spring jackets. I explain I can’t buy everything otherwise there won’t be money left for the others. They understand. I was torn but I also knew comfortable, light shoes were super important and jackets they will manage to find somewhere else. They understood. Their friends arrived. They left on a commuter train to somewhere in Lower Austria.
I contacted last night an organization I heard about on FM4, which is offering hotel rooms on a long-term basis for refugees, https://www.1hotel1family.eu/de/. I explained about the mom and daughter from Mykolaiv I met yesterday. They offered me something quite rural, and then suddenly, a hotel in Vienna. I quickly reached out to the daughter. She told me they had all been put on a big bus, completely full, to Wiener Neustadt. Oh no, I thought. I reached out to the Austrians, thinking I could go pick up the mom and daughter and bring them back to Vienna, but there was a misunderstanding: the hotel room was only for 1 week and only with breakfast. I turned it down. They need a permanent solution, an apartment or similar anywhere in Austria, somewhere with access to jobs and transport. I will keep searching. I told the I’ll be in touch. I share this one example to illustrate just how hard it is to find long-term housing for one small family. Now imagine millions.
Poland is full, they say. Germany is nearly full, they say. Switzerland seems to be an increasingly popular destination. I ran into an adorable little grey poodle with a denim doggy jacket on (sadly I couldn’t exactly photograph him on the escalator), on a leash led by a young woman, and an older woman with a walking stick. They looked at me and asked for my manager. My manager is a miracle worker working non-stop on Telegram to fix immediate problems. Someone is vomiting needs a doctor. Another family needs a place to sleep for two nights. And on and on and on and on. It never stops.
A mom and daughter ask me what there is to see in Vienna. I write down instructions how to get to Stephansplatz, Albertina, Hofburg. Two moms and two children ask the same, what to do for a day. “It’s my birthday,” one says. I wish her all the best and we all are silent about the elephant in the room. This isn’t how anyone should be spending their birthday or any other day. I show them to the u-bahn and explain where they can change money. Erste Bank still tells us there is no kassa at the train station. So often in Austria the answer is “Das problem ist…”.
On my way home I stop by the Caritas food, drink, and drugstore products donation point and ask them what they need. Everything, it seems. Everything is going so quickly. I buy 30 Krapfen at Spar and as many bananas as I can carry. The nice bakery lady gives me a 25% off sticker when I tell her the Krapfen are for the Ukrainians. I deliver them, and a nicely dressed with perfect manicure Russian-speaking volunteer behind the table looks up and asks me if I am Tanja (my mask has my name written on it in Russian). You wrote that book, she says, Shapka Babushka Kefir, and it was like a flashback from another lifetime. I worked on that book way back in 2014, during the first war in Donbass. I was at your book presentation, she said. I smiled under my mask, “a former life”. It all seems so trivial now.
Last night I got a little emotional thinking about the roadblocks to both solving the Putin problem and solving humanitarian problems here on the ground. This Austrian paralysis, this idea that things are the way they are and cannot be changed because that is the way they have always been done drives me crazy. I cannot understand it.
Life is not static. Situations change. Just because Austria agreed in 1955 due to circumstances then to be officially neutral, does not justify holding onto that position today. Just because we normally want to officially register people before giving them access to the labor market, does not justify making Ukrainians wait for special blue cards which will be issued god knows when in order to work legally, open bank accounts, pay taxes, rent apartments. Financial security will be their number one fear once they have a place to sleep. It’s great that some schools and kindergartens are already accepting Ukrainian children, but their mothers need to be able to provide for them.
Our global security now revolves around one crazy man, and yes, I do think he is crazy now. He has gone full fascist. There can be no negotiations with him. He is only buying time.
Generals are buried in Russian cities without a even local newspaper article. A Z-themed pop concert is planned. From the outside in, it certainly looks as if Russia is on the one hand fucked and on the other hand turning completely inwards. For now Putin does control the message. The dead will pile up, the injured will come home to be treated in Russian hospitals, and no one will be allowed to talk about them publicly. I warned about this. We already knew the denial of deaths by the Russian state from earlier conflicts.
I do not therefore think neutrality vis a vis Russia, a war crimes state, a state which bombs civilian targets on purpose (because it thinks the more civilian deaths the more pressure will be on Zelensky to end the war), which kills civilians on purpose, does anyone any good. Neutrality is an outdated concept, a modern excuse for lack of proaction, just like Austria’s immigration bureaucracy sends a signal to Ukrainians — do not stay here, we will make it complicated for you. Perhaps it’s more comfortable somewhere else? Because if they wanted to make it easier, they would do just that. Make it easier. No one at the highest level has done that yet.
Moving back to the bigger picture, there has been so much amazing reporting and writing over the past 24 hours, I would like to recommend to you the journalism I found the most valuable. I would start by asking you to watch this video with English subtitles of Putin’s most recent tirade.
Maria Snegovaya on cognitive dissonance and why so many Russian still believe what Putin tells them. This rings familiar to anyone familiar with right wing conspiracy theories. We know it from talking with family members who have bought into all sorts of such claims during the covid pandemic. I remember it from the 1990s and the Balkan wars. It’s horrible having flashbacks to reactions you see time and again.
This very upsetting (content and graphic photos) report from two incredible journalists still in Mariupol, encircled and surrounded, starving, an ongoing humanitarian disaster on an immeasurable scale.
A Wall Street Journal piece by Yaroslav Trofimov that I am dying to read but have not been able to get behind the paywall yet. Yaroslav is a fearless reporter. You may have seen his report and video from Kharkiv five days ago.
The funerals. This will be a spring of funerals.
First read this from Ukraine about a mother who buried her two sons within weeks of each other, both serving in Ukraine’s army.
The second a very brave BBC report from Russia about the funerals that officially are not happening en masse and an interview with a Russian priest who dared speak out against the war.
I also enjoyed this thought piece on Europe’s Russian oil and gas addiction, the problem everyone understands and no one wants to talk about because solutions are not easy, not readily apparent, and expensive.
Finally, if you would like to listen to something, I enjoyed this in depth interview with Joshua Yaffa of The New Yorker who has been reporting for ages from Russia and Ukraine. Joshua talks about reporting on the ground, but also provides historical context and helps us frame what has actually happened over this blur of the last few weeks and months which feel already like years.
Thank you so much fo reading. I haven’t had much time this morning to read telegram etc. I will catch up on the latest events in Ukraine later today and will hope to give you a better situational and strategic overview tomorrow. I have been asked to come translate tomorrow at a Vienna hotel housing Ukrainian refugees. I will hopefully then have a better idea after talking to them about how things are going here in Austria on the ground for those Ukrainians who decided to stay here.
Let’s see.
WSJ article sent. Please continue to do what you do to keep these refugees safe.
I am not one to be morally indignant nor to be overcome with some flash rage at the latest injustice. However. The one area I am susceptible to "spinning a baring," is when the vulnerable are taken advantage of. There is a certain level of depravity (I guess) which needs to be in someone's heart to take advantage of someone else's suffering. Thank you for intervening in any way that you are able.
What is the best way to help you with the work you are doing? How/Where can I donate that will be most helpful?