Micro and Macro (Day 49)
A potpourri of topics today, big and small. It's all relative, after all. A warning of what is to come, sooner than anyone thinks.
I found this photo in my camera roll. Also taken in April in Vienna. But another April. An April without the overwhelming swings of emotions and stress I am feeling this 2022. This morning I was texting another volunteer at 6:30am, who agreed to go to the airport to help the Ukrainian family I wrote about yesterday get on their flight to Dublin. He did just that. I was very grateful. Then I spent the next few hours trying to do something with my kids I promised them while also trying to find contacts in Dublin. Thread here:
I wasnât very successful, yet, but I will keep trying. The family landed, called me a bit exasperated, and I had to say: you must be patient. I am trying but I am only one person and I am in Austria. You are now in Ireland. You must ask for help there.
Today I am not on the train station, but it doesnât mean any less work. Does anyone know where a mom and daughter could stay for 17 days while they apply for a Canadian visa? Their money ran out. Speaking of Canadian visas, so many questions about those, so many Ukrainians who want to come to Canada, many coming to Vienna just to applyâŠitâs slow and complicated. Rumors of chartered planes then to Canada from Europe? No one really knows. A good read on this here.
Hi, I got your phone number from your friend Nastya (do watch her interview in Russian with Yury Dud) in Budapest, could you give me some advice about Vienna? Iâm in Innsbruck now staying with friends, not sure what I should do. Put her in touch with a contact in Belgium by the end of the conversation, remember about another Kyiv native here in Vienna, connect them as well. But ultimately hang up without âfixingâ anything.
Seven weeks is a long time. The officials in charge are tired. The charity workers are tired. The volunteers are very tired â we donât have the motivating factor of a paycheck to keep us going. I am torn between continuing to do what I do as a volunteer, which allows me to get more directly involved, i.e. using money to help directly, or to apply for one of the jobs with a charity that needs Russian language skills, to keep doing what I am doing but this time for a paycheck. Except, it would mean I couldnât do anymore a lot of what I am actually doing on the ground.
Frankly, a large part of my work on the station is because I can reach into my wallet and swipe a credit card to fix problems. Little problems, but those that are easy to fix. The problem with bureaucracies like charities is they operate in a world of forms, vouchers, reimbursement, etc. and itâs not an efficient means of distributing immediate aid. Itâs just a simple fact that direct aid works faster, but we donât have the same kind of deep pockets. A conundrum.
I tweeted last night about food because I think it is a real problem. People need âŹ10 in their hands, or âŹ20 or âŹ50. The bureaucratic solutions for discount groceries are overwhelmed and too slow. I called on the grocery chains to act â they made so many bonanza profits during covid lockdown after covid lockdown.
Pivoting to big picture topics, I am listening as I write this (ok half listening) to todayâs The Daily on Russiaâs strategy for phase two of the war. Wide open plains, the army reorganised to be under the control of a single general. Russia trying to surround Ukrainian forces in the east using troops from north and south, cutting them off from Ukrainian troops in the west. It all sounds very ominous. It reminds me of Nehammerâs comments after he met with Putin on Monday:
The next few weeks with be âcriticalâ per the New York Times journalist interviewed.
All I keep thinking about is the future waves of refugees we will meet in Viennaâs train station, each new wave more exhausted and traumatized than the previous one.
Speaking of the Russian presidentâs âconfidenceâ, check out this photo and spot on observation by Julia Ioffe:
Yesterday Putin dragged Lukashenko to some rocket launch place in eastern Siberia. A great thread here by Max Seddon on all the spooky comments by both Putin (total rant about Nazis and genocide) and Lukashenko (suggests sending someone else to the moon other than him). So itâs been seven weeks, the war has not gone according to Putinâs master plan (no surprise when you surround yourself by yes men and threaten all others withâŠextinction?), and old man Putin is sounding even more frightening than before.
This caused me to look up what I wrote on the morning of Tuesday, February 22, completely shaking after having heard Putinâs very public rants on Ukraine on Monday, February 21. I knew it would be bad, but I of course could not have ever imagined the horrors and war crimes and pure evil which have followed since.
The four presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are visiting Kyiv today. The air raid sirens went off this afternoon. The German president was not invited. So are things, at the moment. Macron also made a ridiculous comment about genocide that made me want to scream. Western democracy is indeed, broadly speaking, wobbly like a pile of jelly at the moment.
Questions about what Russia really wants to do in Ukraine? Rid Ukraine of Ukrainians. Watch this:
Re NATO (I know I am all over the place today, sorry about that), I am thinking about what neutrality even means anymore, and the contrasting responses to a rather unprotected position, at least technically speaking, vis a vis Russia with madman Putin at the helm. Yes, I do think he is off his rocker. I am not calling him completely psychotic, but highly delusional, ready to sacrifice thousands of lives and make very risky decisions? Yes, yes, and yes.
Returning back to the situation on the ground in Ukraine, I am growing increasingly concerned not just of course about Mariupol (still havenât met any more refugees from there), but about occupied Kherson, too. It sounds like pure lawless terror. Do read this really upsetting, shocking report from Kherson.
If I may end in a philosophical way, I am thinking about the following dilemma. Experts and people with fancy academic titles are talking about âphase twoâ of the war heating up imminently, the battle for the east, for Donbas, for Putinâs May 9 victory day parades. The west has turned up the temperature on rhetoric to send as many weapons as possible. Also, understandable. At the moment Ukraine is the only thing standing between Putinâs Russia and central Europe.
However, more weapons, more war, means more human tragedy, more refugees, more people to house and feed and care for. You heard in the podcast above about tanks rolling across open plains. You know exactly what that means for the Ukrainian people whose homes lie in the paths of those Russian tanks.
Europe is already struggling under the weight of this burden. Two-thirds of Ukrainian children have left their homes. Can you imagine? I can. And I donât know where we are going to house them all. I do not understand why the U.S., Canada, UK and other rich anglosaxon nations are sending only weapons but not planes to bring Ukrainian civilians to safety. No one who just fled their home has the resources to wait weeks and apply for a visa. They did not flee with laptops and ink cartridges and printers. Many have no international passport, only internal Ukrainian documents.
The west can and and must do more. The burden is extremely imbalanced at the moment, with the EU doing the brunt of the work, and within the EU, countries who border Ukraine are understandably already massively overwhelmed. In other, richer nations further west, bureaucracy is the roadblock. This cannot be all on the EU. This is all (waves hands around frantically gesturing at everything and everyone) not sustainable. People are human and are burning out. Not enough resources, financial or housing, etc. Not nearly enough. Grassroots cannot be the primary solution for millions of refugees. Just look how much time each of us is spending to fix individual situations. Also totally inefficient and more importantly, not sustainable. We need scalable solutions. Cash in hand. Cut the red tape. Airplanes to North America.
We need the American and Canadian PTA moms. You all know exactly what I am talking about.
A lovely example of a grassroots center here in Vienna, set up by a Belarusian woman living in Vienna, helping Ukrainian moms and kids three days a week from 10am-2pm (clearly operating hours must be limited by availability of volunteers), from our local TV news. I contacted Tatjana already, asked if we might find some space for free tutoring. My teen wants to set up a project for the summer and weekends to help Ukrainian kids with German and English. On him, of course, I said â Iâll make contact but this is on you. My plate is full and you are a big boy of 16.
Thank you for reading. Iâll be back at the train station tomorrow.
Keep it up, avoid the cynical if you can and let the truth be told, Thanks and I know that you want to do more and sometime know you can only do so much. I'm retired, NGO coordinator, Haiti, Hospital. Tragedy in my face every day. I feel for you and wish you strength and sanity. Please write more, with truth as a witness for us all. A book in the future is yours to write.
"We need the American and Canadian PTA moms. You all know exactly what I am talking about." Yes. Agreed.