Deflated (Day 43)
It's hard not to get discouraged by the official response to the refugee crisis. Experts on the war in the east, in Donbas. Evacuations of civilians in Dnipro, Donestk, Luhansk, Kharkiv regions.
I really owe you all a cat photo, and I took care of a kitty today. But I got this photo instead. It matches the mood of the day. The kitty, Musya, fled with her owner and owner’s mother from Krematorsk, a city in the center of brutal fighting in Donestk oblast, eastern Ukraine.
Musya was in a little plastic basket with a lid tied down on either side with string. Musya was black and white and rather tiny. She kept trying to push her nose through the cracks in the basket. She has been on the move since Monday, when she was carried down 12 flights of stairs in a building in which the electricity and therefore lift no longer works. I meet Musya and her owners today, Thursday, 72 hours into their long and exhausting journey.
The daughter was about 50; her mother in her 70s. The mother was very frail and walked very slowly, with a cane. The daughter told me her husband said: you must get her (mother) out to safety. The granddaughter was studying English and German in a university in Kyiv. She is already in Germany, waiting for her mother and grandmother. Mother was teary. She showed me a photo on her phone of her mom, who she had left on the platform with eight bags (including Musya), while she went to get tickets. I met the mother while she was showing a photo of the granny to a volunteer, asking how to get back to the platform. I moved them both plus eight bags and cat to a waiting area. We went to get some coffee and snacks. The daughter kept crying. I listened.
I tried to get them seat reservations on their train to Germany but today it was as if nothing worked. All the trains to Germany were full and although Ukrainians get free tickets, those tickets do not come with train car and seat numbers. So you never know if you will actually be able to stay on the train or be removed (worst case scenario). I always try and pay for seat reservations (€3.50 per person for peace of mind seems like a no brainer), but today it didn’t work. Everything is full. With the Easter holidays soon approaching, non-Ukrainian Europe too is on the move.
At this point I was told by a representative of the charity organization running things at the train station (you will notice I am choosing my words carefully and that is intentional; I want to be able to keep helping and doing what I have been doing for weeks now as a volunteer translator under an umbrella organization which organized us after we organized ourselves — you get the idea) that I should stay in one place. My language skills are needed more than my ability to lift luggage onto train cars as they only have three of us today. They don’t have enough volunteers. They who get paid and only speak German and English. We who speak three or four languages and work for free.
Ok, I thought, but how will the Ukrainians with all their luggage and pets and questions and fears communicate with helpers who can’t speak to them, especially when they are traumatised and still crying, the pain is fresh? I nodded and said sure, but first I will help this mom, granny, cat, and seven bags onto the train to Germany. And that is what I did.
When we don’t have a seat reservation I say take what you can find and if someone tells you to move, just move. Repeat as necessary. I always wish good luck and always worry as I say good-bye. You want to be there for every future eventuality too but you cannot. You hug and say goodbye. Usually there is a god bless uttered as well in my direction. It makes me feel a little uncomfortable but I thank them. “Tanja, we will be praying for you.” I’m not the one that needs praying for, I think to myself.
Many tickets today. Poland, Czech, Germany, Italy. Lots of Germany. Cannot make a seat reservation. Tomorrow the same. I see a group of about 25 women and young children wandering about the train station. Can I help you? The toilet. Sure. We are in Bratislava, on our way to the zoo. Ok. Stop for some snacks. Hope no one will ask what time their train is. Grab some water bottles, sandwiches, fruit puree pouches, some wafers for the kids. They are not spoiled. They are hungry. They are grateful for whatever we give them. Walk them to the subway. Explain where to change trains.
Where are you from? Krematorsk. Oh, I say. Getting hot there. Yes, they nod. You treated well in Slovakia? No complaints. Thank goodness, I reply. On the platform I try to group them together, I am so worried one kid will break free. I hand one mom the cash I can find in my wallet — for an ice cream later, I say. She is surprised but thanks me. The subway arrives and I shout “get out on the second stop! switch to the green line!”.
As I was walking back to the fixed place where I was instructed to stand, a man came up to me, asked me in German, “where those ALL Ukrainians?”. Yes, I said. “But there are so many!” he replied. Indeed, I said, there are thousands. He looked at me, shocked. “Where are they going?” he asked. The zoo. They are going to the zoo.
I drove by two dozen Ukrainian cars on my way to volunteer this morning. They are everywhere. Ukrainians are everywhere. The war is in its seventh week. We have all had time to prepare and adjust and execute.
A mom and her son of about 12 come up to me, tell me they are in a local hotel, have been put up for two nights by one of the charity organizations, have tickets tomorrow to Krakow and from there they plan to go home, to Kyiv. At that moment one of the Austrian charity managers demand I translate the conversation for her, which I do, and then gets very upset that this woman and her son were given a hotel room for two nights. She is so visibly upset that the mom from Kyiv suddenly looks very scared. While translating I say, it will be ok, we will figure this out. I offer to go to the hotel and sort out the issue. I say we can pay if necessary. I am told that too is not allowed. Sometimes it feels like nothing is allowed if you listen to those who think they are in charge of how this should all work. Luckily, in practice, it’s messier. You still find good people willing to help.
We go to the hotel, we speak with a different charity running the hotel room situation. They confirm, via a very nice Russian speaker, that yes the hotel room is for two nights as the train ticket is not until tomorrow morning, and in some cases they even allow three nights. I tell the mom from Kyiv not to worry. I go back to the train station and tell my shift manager what I have learned. She goes on about something late at night and procedure and rules, I just say I also don’t understand how it all works in practice, I am only here in the mornings and have never managed to get a free hotel room from anyone. What I don’t say is that hasn’t stopped me from paying for many a hotel room to help. Because I have not lost my humanity and I still have a heart. Because I cannot imagine what it feels like to flee Putin’s bombs.
I then meet a group of women who are very nervous. Their train to Germany is in 20 minutes. They have eight passports and birth certificates in a pile. Ok, I say, we probably won’t have time to get tickets, but let’s try. We race over to the ticket desks. Our number is called. I put down the documents, explain the hurry. The young man refuses to issue tickets. “I need to see everyone”. But they are old and frail, I say, they are waiting with the luggage by the platform. “Those are the rules,” he says. I lose my temper and start asking his name, at which point another railway colleague jumps in to say loudly to me they have orders and I shouldn’t dare question them.
Do you know how hard it is to bite your tongue when you are volunteering, others are getting paid, and nothing makes any sense?
I grab the women and put the family of eight on the train with no ticket. I warn them there is a chance they may get asked to get off. I tell them if someone says this is their seat, they must move. I wish them good luck. Say you ran out of time in Vienna, I explain. Show that your parents are old and frail. They look at me, and want a guarantee that everything will be ok, and I of course cannot give that. It will be ok, I say. Just go. Good luck.
Next I meet a group of five from Kharkiv. They spent weeks in Dnipro and now it is unsafe there too. Their apartment in Kharkiv is gone. The entire building is destroyed. They joke about the name of their northern suburb, now infamous. They were in Poland and now Vienna for a night and are on their way to a town a few hours by train from Hannover. Do you have someone there, I ask? Another refugee, like us. The teenage daughter looks 18 but is only 14, like mine. I give her my phone number and tell them they can write me later, with questions. I take them to the cafeteria (get a ticket from the charity staff, walk them over). I ask what they need. I go buy some fruit and snacks and deodorant. Little stuff that doesn’t fix anything but might make the train journey a bit more comfortable. They won’t arrive until 11pm tonight.
Run back to the train ticket place, ask about a seat reservation for them. Also no. Only for the small local train in Germany. Help a granny along the way, give her some money for a proper coffee. It’s time to go but there are so many people, and you cannot help them all. And you worry about what happens to them as they get passed from person to person, some caring a lot, others not so much. Everyone is tired. Tempers are short. It’s understandable. Seven weeks of war. The 14yo said there is no online school. There is nothing. She would like to come back to Vienna one day. Maybe to study. They give me a hug goodbye. Good luck. Write with questions.
In the meantime I’m texting and trying to find housing for several different groups of people. Journalists are asking me questions (thankfully). Another volunteer asks me if I am Tanja from the internet. Yes, I say. I am that Tanja from the internet.
I am also Tanja the human and I cried most of the way home. The 14yo girl from Kharkiv was so much like my own 14yo daughter it broke my heart completely. I am boiling over at anger over the indifference, the arcane insanity of the official response, why everything is so complicated and inhuman. I wrote this thread from the parking garage:
Regarding the situation in Ukraine. Two must-reads to better understand where this might go now militarily. Personally, I am very worried about Ukrainian army orders to civilians to evacuate parts of Kharkiv oblast (not the city itself), Donestk and Luhansk oblasts (fierce fighting with more to come), and Dnipro (city of population 1 million already home to many refugees from Kharkiv).
This is a very good essay trying to analyse what Russia can realistically achieve militarily at this moment vs the disconnect with its stated goals (see NATO statement below):
Next, read this analysis from a Kyiv-based defense journalist on what he calls the Battle of Donbas.
I saw an old Russian friend yesterday. These are not times for celebration. We are happy to see each other, but everything is sad. There is a sad cloud over everything. She was very perceptive, what she thinks might happen, her interpretation of where this goes. She too is housing refugees from Ukraine. A short thread on that here:
A tiny bit of good news. Austria finally joined most other EU countries and kicked out four Russian diplomats. Sure it might be for show (there are after all another 146 remaining), but it is important, the symbolism.
In other news, Zelensky clearly understands the weak links in Europe, and did not mince his words.
Of the 93 votes in the European Parliament today against a Russian oil and gas import embargo, 13 of them were from Austria. Ironically, all three political parties had produced former politicians which served on the boards of major Kremlin-friendly Russian companies. Only one has not yet resigned. She has reportedly “fled” to south of France.
I have some good news today. I am a few steps closer to finding housing for some of the Ukrainians I have met along the way, including the woman featured in the story about the road to nowhere, Lower Austria. I am working hard to connect kind souls from Europe and Ukraine to each other. Another family ended up in hospital here in Vienna; I am still trying to help them. So much is luck, and some people continue to have a string of really bad luck. Little pieces of good news give you more energy and you say, tomorrow will be a new today, tomorrow will be better, and however much you think you can do, you can still do more.
Thank you for reading.
I am glad you are finding the will to continue, Tanja. My thought are with you and the situation daily.