Day 24
The war continues...will peace talks succeed or is this only the beginning of the next phase? Update on humanitarian (keyword: housing) situation in Austria. What to read/watch.
I took this photo years ago when I parked near a local shopping street and looked up as I emerged from the car to see this beautiful old building which is now just an ordinary apartment building like any other. I have been thinking a lot about apartments as the requests roll in from Ukrainians desperately searching to get out of army cots in giant, cold halls and into rooms and apartments. Some can afford to pay, others can’t. Each situation is different, but one thing unites them: everyone has a sense of collective desperation.
Ukrainians see and feel the slowness of the official response here. Austrians, many in fact, want to help but don’t know how to connect with people in need. The bottleneck? Bureaucracy and official organizations, in my opinion. But there is only so much you can do as an individual. I don’t have a system. I keep track of who asked for / is offering what, and if I think I find a match, I connect both sides. I received a very happy voice message late yesterday afternoon from the mom and daughter from Mykolaiv who are now happily in two bedrooms in a private home in Wiener Neustadt. There are everyday angels among us. I just worry there won’t be enough of them.
I wrote this thread here last night and this morning as the pennies started to drop in my head. I now fear this is more than just poor execution. I wonder if that is the intention. Not that it changes anything for Ukrainian women and children and elderly. It doesn’t.
There will be a big pop concert today for Ukraine in Vienna, literally across the street from the “welcome center” which is the first point of contact for refugees wishing to stay in Austria. Just down the road, there are thousands of Ukrainian women and children sleeping/living on cots in a giant expo hall. I have feelings about all of this. I shared a few here last night.
This afternoon and tomorrow morning I will be back at the train station. I am meeting a family of 4 people today plus dog coming from Budapest today. Two of them are handicapped (I hate that word I am not sure what is the right term, apologies). They have a train tonight to Amsterdam. It will be my job to get them tickets and take care of them until that train. I do not personally know the Russian-speaking young man in Hungary currently caring for them. We have a mutual friend and are coordinating over Messenger. Such is this crisis. It feels like a big responsibility but I promised to do my best.
So tomorrow I will update with stories from here. In the meantime, some excellent journalism to recommend.
Oliver Carroll on Ukraine’s incredible trains during war:
Natalia Gumenyuk from destroyed Okhtyrka:
Incredible FT visuals team on the war in Ukraine itself. Even if you like me don’t understand / are not particularly interested in military strategy, this is just amazing how they put this together, this multimedia effort, with photos and video embedded in the 3D maps:
Briefly from Moscow, things there are not normal. Three updates from three different mommy chats I scanned quickly last night and this morning:
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2.
I still don’t think any of this slows Putin down. I believe the peace talks to be merely a pause to regroup. We have seen video footage of tanks on the move in eastern Siberia. They will draft more young men. I don’t think Putin cares if he loses 7000 or 25,000 men, or more. I worry this is all just the beginning of a wider war that will spread beyond Ukraine. If you listen carefully, to the threats by Russia to Bosnia, to the western experts who seem already prepared to give Moldova away. And yes, I know this makes no rational sense.
I do not believe Putin and his entourage to be rational actors. Hitler also was not rational (and I know people do not like these comparisons because of the Holocaust which I do understand but both Putin and Hitler were/are war criminals) and did not act alone. German officers and generals helped him. No one stopped him in time.
Today the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces put out this warning:
Ukraine warned today peace talks could take “weeks”. I just don’t see how you negotiate peace with a madman. I think both sides are going through motions both to look like they are doing the right thing and also to buy time. I’m not criticising those efforts, rather saying they are like a parallel path not really steeped in reality. Again, in my totally uninformed opinion.
I must run back to mom duties so that I can go volunteer at Vienna’s central train station this afternoon. Tomorrow, I promise an update about what is happening here on the ground. I leave you with this incredible piece of photoshop from Odesa:
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