I disappeared. Between Christmas and a mini-break in London visiting friends, I decided to step back for a few days. We have a holiday today in Vienna — not Orthodox Christmas (although it is), but three kings day — in any event, our shops are closed, and I have finally found the time to sit down and write.
I hadn’t left Austria since the summer, and in summer I drove to our vacation, heading south through the Balkans. I always saw Ukrainian cars everywhere I went. In Vienna, of course, but in Montenegro too. There were fewer Russians, more Ukrainians, and even some Russians and Belarusians who covered up the flags on their plates. As you know if you have been following the news from Kosovo and Serbia — license plates are a big deal in that part of the world. Flags, nationalistic symbols, your home town. The plate says everything. Even in the occupied Ukrainian territories in Donbas, TikTok recently informed me that Russia recently decided to force drivers to switch from their DNR and LNR plates with those flags no one outside Donbas recognises to Russian number plates and flags.
The first thing that struck me in London was the absence of Ukrainian cars. I saw one the entire time. A luxury Audi Q8 with one of those “7777” plates (you buy them for extra $ from the DMV) driving through Kensington. I saw very few Ukrainian flags. A few outside of flats, and one hanging next to the Estonian flag in front of the Baltic country’s embassy.
In central London, it felt like covid never was, the war never was. It felt like 2018 but with much higher prices and iPhone 14s. So for a few days, I also put the war out of my head. I tried not to answer too many messages. I didn’t read my group chat carefully. I kept mostly off twitter. I celebrated New Years with old friends, and their friends, may of whom are Russian.
So little is said about the Russians who have given up everything this year, because, as they themselves say, the bombs never flew on them. They “only” had to sell their apartments, if they could, pack their bags, and leave their home country for a few beginning somewhere else, provided they could afford it. They do not complain, but there is a stillness, a sadness, and when the topic comes up, you can feel no one is eager to dive down that rabbit hole. When your country is taken over by a terrorist and his gang of thugs, and millions of you feel powerless to do anything about it, how do you react? I don’t know. I lived in Russia long enough to know you do not fuck around when it comes to the police and the authorities. I would never have had 0.1% of Navalny’s bravery. The older generations of Russians taught me to remember the lessons of the 1930s. Every family can tell you stories of the knocks on the door in the night. This lives in people’s heads for generations. I am not making excuses, but I certainly don’t have any answers. I know Russians who quite their jobs on February 25, packed up and left, and are having a hard time making a new start. The world did not open them with open arms. Instead, it cut off their credit cards. Suddenly being Russian became equivalent with supporting state terrorism, even if no one asked you ever your opinion of Putin and his government. You were seen as guilty just by association. I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t think anyone does, but I certainly will never like a tweet along the lines of “all Ukrainians are good and all Russians are bad” because it is so far from the truth and generalisations like that are just cheap shots.
I understand Ukrainians and their personal anger towards the Russian nation. I understand Ukrainians are being bombed and killed in their own homes, and that is fundamentally different than simply voluntarily leaving one’s country over its politics. Ukrainians are losing loved ones. Russians are also losing loved ones, but because their own government is sending Russian men to their near-certain deaths. I was told this week a story of a simple woman from a simple village filled with an ethnic minority several dozen kilometres from a central Russian city, population just over half a million. There are no men left in the village. None. They have all been mobilised. No one knows who will drive the tractors when it is seeding time in spring. There is no talk of revolution, only of economic survival. The revolution against the tsar did not start in the hinterland, and this one will not either.
I start to wonder, looking towards 2023, when all the oligarchs, all the men (and a handful of women) who made their fortunes in Russia over the past 30 years, even those who call themselves Putin’s friends, when they finally all get in a room together and say ok, now what. What are we going to do. I do not foresee a right-wing coup. It is clear that people like psychopath Prigozin (drafting murderers and anyone else he can get his hands on, offering wheelchairs with AK47s attached to them to Russian wounded soldiers) and Kadyrov (who has been very silent of late) are seen as toxic to anyone with half a brain. So I can imagine, in a perfect world, a scenario under which Russia’s wealth in exile finds a way to talk some sense into what is left of the state and the army, and Putin goes. But the only way he can go is horizontally. Then there will be a fight for power. Then the war in Ukraine might end, but the civil war in Russia will only get started. It is a dangerous scenario. Right now Russia faces a slow death by destruction from within. The alternative is a fast death by action and then a rebuilding, but that holds a great deal of uncertainty. For now, it would seem, the money that fled Russia is happy to observe from afar. It is sad. It mourns the loss of the Moscow it knew and loved. It is horrified by the mass killing and the brutal war in Ukraine being carried out in the name of “Russians”. But will it act? Will it feel powerful to do something? Are they really true patriots or content to be wealthy citizens in exile of whatever countries will take them?
The names of some very wealthy “Russians” are still on the V&A and Tate Modern in HUGE BOLD LETTERS. I supposed they rebranded themselves as “Americans”. Perhaps that is the problem. We dance around such things. We need to deal with them.
I am not proficient enough to comment on China’s role in all of this. But certainly China seems to be monitoring things closely behind the scenes and intervening when needed. The nuclear threat disappeared from the rhetoric this fall. Thankfully. For sure that did not happen without some interference from both DC and Beijing. But China has its own drama now, with the unwinding of zero covid, something I alluded to in my New Year’s post last year at this time. They held on for so long, and now have given up, without having vaccinated older generations properly, so China will clearly be focused on its own internal mess for the near term. But China’s mess is the world’s mess, as we see from the shocking (to most laymen) deficit of antibiotics and basic drugs in Europe right now.
The talk of a cease fire is complete bullshit. It is simply Putin buying time. Ukraine is reportedly planning a new offensive for March. Russia is losing an untold number of untrained men, and needs time to round up even more men to be sent to their deaths. It has no other plan.
On New Year’s, hundreds of Russian soldiers were reportedly killed in a single strike when Ukraine learned of their location in Makiivka, Donestk region. This thread talks about the chatter on Russian Telegram. Russia is still not informing relatives when their loved ones are killed in action. Can you imagine what this mother is going through right now? What could the state possibly offer her to make up for the loss of her two sons. Nothing. And for what? For nothing. I read in the spring an article about a Ukrainian woman who also lost two sons. But she knew what they were fighting for. They were buried as heroes defending their motherland. The entire town came out to pay its respects. Russia doesn’t even tell mothers when their sons have died. I cannot imagine anything worse. At what point will the mothers stop delivering their sons as cannon fodder? That is really the question no one has the answer to. I fear fatalism is so strong, as is fear of the state, and a feeling of powerlessness when you are deep inside Russia, that many will continue to do just that, wiping away tears, as if the choice is not theirs to make. Your destiny is not in your own hands. It never was. What can one do if you have no money and no connections and the border is far away, with no path to survival beyond it?
If you read one thing this weekend, read this, from Bakhmut. Then look at these shocking and touching photos, also from Bakhmut. I naively had no idea there were still children left in the city, the vast majority of whose population has left.
The first thing I did when I came back to Vienna was meet with L. L is a 63yo woman who arrived in Vienna in December from Bakhmut. She got my phone number in the arrivals’ centre from another Ukrainian. I met her before Christmas and gave her a Hofer card. She told me she lived in a basement for eight months. No electricity. No water. I asked, why did you wait so long? She said, I hoped it would end. Eventually, she took her savings and paid a local to drive her out to safety. She stayed with friends in Zaporozhye, but there were five of them living in a one-room apartment. They helped her find a used smartphone, and they found her a ride to Europe. Why Austria, I asked? Because that was where the car was going, she replied. In early January, L wrote me, explaining she wants to go to Norway as she has not yet received a housing assignment in Austria, and therefore is not yet “registered” as living here. She found a Flixbus to Krakow, and a Wizz Air flight to Bergen. She would need money for the tickets. I promised to help. I tweeted. You responded.
A generous donor, who asked to remain anonymous, sent me €200. I took them in cash to L, who met me, standing in a coat and slippers, out front of a shelter in central Vienna, where she is still sleeping on a cot. She told me a Russian-speaking employee would come that evening who promised to help her buy the tickets online, and she would give him the cash. Do you trust him, I asked? Yes, she nodded. Ok, I said, handing over the money. Just in case, I offered the name of a Russian-speaking volunteer who could also help with the internet purchasing. Finding the money is often the hardest part, and thanks to my community of generous readers, we are usually able to raise a few hundred Euros for these situations without too much trouble. This morning, I opened a message from L with photos of her bus and flight tickets. I sent them to the donor. Thanks all around.
I also received a message two night ago in desperation from a mom of three, living in a hotel where the food is terrible, her kids are always hungry, her husband no longer sends alimony because he developed a gambling addiction and lost everything. I connected her to a kind reader, who cannot help with a lot, but even taking the time to message back and forth, and perhaps send a €50 supermarket card. That is already a huge help. It is a sign that someone out there cares. That you are not forgotten. That you are not invisible. I suggested any kind of hourly work that pays cash. Knowing the door is still shut to legal work for women in her situation (free housing from the state), because, Austria.
While in London, I received a very moving voice message from a woman in her 70s who was just in tears after receiving her Hofer card, saying it was the first financial help she received since arriving in Austria months ago. I played it back for my Russian friends to hear. People often forget what a difference €50 makes when you have next to nothing. It is so sad that this has fallen on the shoulders of civil society, and of course it is much easier to just ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening and wish it would all just go away. I cannot tell you how many times I look at my phone and see new unread messages and I really do not want to open them. It is hard. Especially when it doesn’t feel like things are improving.
Reader, it does not feel like things are improving. Those who were desperate months ago are still desperate. I had to tell a granny and granddaughter this morning, whom I have already tried to help, a lot, with their mess of a housing situation, that I cannot send a second card because we can only do one card per family, one time, because the waiting list is so long. If I say yes to one, I say yes to thousands, and that would not be the right thing to do, while so many are waiting for help the first time. So, yes, it is heavy, and yes, it does weigh you down.
Going into 2023, I must step back in terms of the number of hours I spend on all this, while hopefully learning to work smarter. I have accepted a full-time job which I will start next week, in an office, nothing to do with humanitarian work, in the private sector. I am looking forward to this new challenge, but this also means telling “my Ukrainians” to use the Telegram group as a resource and not ask me individually about their individual problems. Our volunteer admin, Vassily, helps me to regulate the discussions and keep the tone calm and respectful.
I am driving most new requests for cards to our website, which Mario is still miraculously maintaining and running the bulk purchases of cards when we receive donations. I am so, so grateful. I will make time on weekends to deliver cards in person to those without addresses in Vienna, such as recent arrivals to Austria, and work on my own little waiting list, which is finally getting a bit smaller, thanks to some very generous donors yesterday. I will still look at my phone, but not with the frequency I do now. I am helping a journalist next week to meet with some Ukrainians in Austria, I will still share feedback informally with those politicians who ask (yes, there are a few). In other words, I hope to keep helping, but it will no longer be my first priority.
I also hope to keep writing, because this is such an important part of the process, both to document and as a form of therapy and processing. I really hope to continue writing personal stories of Ukrainians in Austria. Those 12 days of Christmas stories were very popular per my Substack statistics, and nearly all the families received some kind of direct aid from readers after their stories were published. I hope to do more of this. Perhaps on a weekly or biweekly basis. If you are a paid subscriber, I do not know yet what 2023 will look like, but I will try to keep sharing media I enjoyed and such stories. I hope you will still find value in your subscription, even if it is not published with the same frequency as in 2022.
With that, thank you all for your support. Wishing you all a happy new year, happy Orthodox Christmas to those celebrating tonight, and here’s to going into 2023 with as much optimism as glass half empty folks can muster. I see you and feel you.
Congratulations on your new job! The scope of what you have done and the goodness it has put into the world can likely never be adequately quantified. But there is no doubt in my mind that your actions have not only improved people’s circumstances but saved lives as well. I admire you more than I have words to describe properly. Happy New Year! May 2023 be kind and generous to you.