New horizons
A few thoughts both on the war in Ukraine itself and long-term perspectives for Ukrainians here in Europe.
This week, I was invited to take part in a podcast recording. It was an interesting and informative if upsetting for me personally discussion. You should listen. I’ll explain.
After nearly two years of dealing with the fallout of war, the human suffering on a civilian level, I have no stomach for military discussions. I still don’t understand how we live in a modern world in which this senseless killing is still ok. But that’s a philosophical matter.
I agreed to partake thinking we would be talking more broadly about the subjects I do feel comfortable addressing. My comments here if not edited for time of course are not my core competency, and certainly not in German, but at the moment it is the case that Ukraine’s male population cannot leave and will have its access to state services massively restricted under the new draft mobilization law.
In short — better I not do any talks that involve words like artillery. I don’t have the stomach nor the expertise.
The following day, I was invited to a call with a relatively junior government official who came across as genuinely wanting to help. Our discussion was related to the labor market and we explained the constraints on those Ukrainians receiving basic social payments from the state, that they are essentially prohibited from full-time work due to the constraints of the category of aid recipient they were placed into from the very start of the war. These conversations do not change anything but they hopefully raise a little bit more awareness about why the number of Ukrainians in full time work is not as high in Austria as the government would like it to be. If your choice is get a job and lose your housing, or keep your housing but no job, you choose the latter. Unfortunately those who design these social aid systems think more about keeping vulnerable foreigners from coming to Austria than they do about helping those already here to find full-time work and become financially independent.
The Austrian government has not yet commented publicly about the legal status it plans to offer Ukrainians post-March 2025. The EU offered three years of temporary protection, which has resulted in three years of “blue cards”. It is on this basis that all Ukrainians are in Europe at the moment. Austria stopped issuing professional work permits (red white red cards) and other programs to Ukrainian citizens, the only exception being marriage. Naturally, many of those who have been here since the war began and now see their future here rather than back in Ukraine, are starting to ask, with an ever increasing sense of urgency, what will be our status post-March 2025?
Although we have not yet heard anything official: we here noises. The noises emphasise knowledge of German (i.e. attended language courses and passed certain levels of certification) and employment. Which to my ears sounds great if you are the labor ministry, not great if you are a pensioner who could not work or a mom with two young kids who never managed to figure out childcare to get into full-time work. To me that sounds a bit like we might, in the future, have two groups of Ukrainians: those with the right to apply for permanent residency status as a result of the language skills they acquired and jobs they found, and worked at for months already, and those for whom temporary protection will be extended until the war is over, but only until then.
This is pure speculation at this point. We do not know and will not know until a formal announcement is made. I can understand Austria not wanting to have to financially support people who have not “integrated” forever. On the other hand, what will they do with elderly who have no homes to go back to? The way I just described it, the most capable Ukrainians from a professional sense will be allowed to stay, while some of the most vulnerable will have some other kind of status, but it won’t be a path to permanent residency and one day citizenship.
All of us would really like the government to elaborate on its plans, so that we can move from discussing rumours to discussing facts. So that Ukrainians can be informed and make decisions accordingly. Some exasperated single mothers asked how they should find jobs in small towns with no childcare, and I had to explain that the Austrian government never came up with a good solution for local moms with this problem, why would it suddenly now solve it for refugees?
The political climate here is shifting, and fast. All week, Austrian twitter has been discussing the far right, how to the media should handle them, what their plans really are. I find myself having a hard time getting worked up about any of it, because this train wreck I feel like I personally saw a long time ago, and even though it unfortunately is playing out as we feared, it isn’t a surprise. For more on this, I would recommend this op-ed (in German). This is also worth reading.
It all reminds me of a phrase I remind myself of often: believe them when people show you who they are. We should believe the 2024 fascists when they tell us what their plans are.
I don’t have any proposals on how to counter them, other than at the ballot box. The ballot box is for them a tool like it is for Trump — a way of getting into institutions so that they can then dismantle them from within. It is the Orban playbook. You use democratic processes to get into power and then once you have power, you expand it and work against the checks and balances set up within the system.
German-speaking far right Europe is now talking about “repatriating” foreigners who emigrated to Europe, have not “integrated” themselves (whatever that means), and about how to “send them back home again”. The parties try to publicly backtrack these discussions, but I can imagine privately they meant every word, and they relish these news headlines because they know it helps them to reach those voters who believe that all the woes of Germany and Austria can be blamed on immigrants.
It is really quite frightening how mainstream these points of view have become. That some people are now in all seriousness discussing if one can strip away a passport and therefore citizenship from someone who legally emigrated to a country. It strikes me as a test of the public mood. Each one of these discussions starts with initial shock and horror, then a debate, then parts of what are suggested are swallowed as perhaps reasonable thoughts by some of the population, and the needle is moved a few steps to the right. Rinse and repeat. Just like how Trump normalised a way of talking that would have been unacceptable in mainstream politics just a decade earlier.
It is in this context that one must see the future of the war in Ukraine, I think. I heard on both the Falter podcast recording with Franz-Stefan Gady and on this discussion with Michael Kofman talk of a “long war”, hints that 2024 will be needed just to hold a line, regroup, retrain, restock, and then “maybe in 2025” the tide could turn. I hear all of this in the context of a Ukrainian population who are already exhausted, frustrated, tired, many of whom are living new lives abroad, and I wonder where they should muster the strength from to keep fighting for X number more years? Is that really a realistic scenario? I haven’t spoken with a single Ukrainian who would say they are ok with 25 year olds getting drafted. I just don’t see there being the resources for a long war, especially when it isn’t clear what the outcome will be, how do you sell mothers on this, how to you go out there are say ordinary young men must now all go fight while the wealthy have positioned their kids comfortable abroad, out of harms way?
And then I listened to this Prof G interview with Ian Bremmer yesterday, and I felt like he spoke a truth about the war in Ukraine which many observers are not prepared to say outloud. It reminded me of the phrase that you should judge people on their actions, not their words. The U.S. should be judged on its actions, not its words. The U.S. is totally pre-occupied with preventing a broader war in the Middle East, with the upcoming presidential election. At the end of the day, if Ukraine were to be partitioned this year, as Ian suggests, nothing would really change for the U.S. It would be a far greater threat for Europe, and I think some (but not all) of Europe is aware of this. Europe is going to have to learn to take the lead in a world in which the U.S. can no longer take the lead on all international challenges. It was interesting to see high-level UK visits to Ukraine this week, but I somehow question, without any expertise, if it is all enough. I am not sure it is.
Follow actions, not words.
2024 may be a year in which everyone, and this includes countries, selfishly turns inwards, taking care of their own shit first. It certainly feels like that is the direction in which we are heading. It may not be Russia’s war to win, but I think it is fair to say it is Ukraine’s war to lose. And at the moment, I am not convinced Ukraine has enough support from its friends nor the will of the people to keep fighting and losing men for X number more years.
I read recently about a “Davos summit on the war in Ukraine” and I almost vomited. To think of “decision makers” (what a horrible term) gathering in luxury resorts in the Swiss alps to discuss the fate of ordinary men sitting in frozen trenches like its World War I. Turns out those talks took place today. I guess what I am trying and failing to say eloquently is there seems to be an ever-growing divide between the rhetoric in fancy conference rooms and the situation on the ground. On the ground, you have a Russia on war footing quite determined to keep going, and a Ukraine which is stretched for resources and according to experts needs the better part of this year to re-arm, re-train, re-group. And then you have a west saying nominally whatever it takes while in practice doing far less than that. It feels all rather dystopian.
Hence, I would listen to Ian Bremmer on this one (Risk 3: Partitioned Ukraine). When we talk about Ukraine already having lost 18% of its territory, that also means that the people who stayed behind, who did not flee their homes, they already live in de-facto Russia, whether they want to or not. They will be pressured into applying for Russian passports to access healthcare and other basic state services. Those people do not have the luxury of waiting for the Ukrainian army to recapture territories (although many would welcome such a development). Their lives go on. And so as the months continue, it feels to me less likely that Ukraine will regain these territories.
I also keep thinking back to Putin’s recent comment at his annual press conference. About Odesa being “a Russian city”. I think about the Ukrainian money that has left the country and new businesses which have been opened in Europe while the war rages on.
As I look around at both politics in the west and the war in Ukraine, I unfortunately no longer have the confidence the good guys will win. A heck of a lot of effort needs to be invested if the good guys are to have a chance. I am not sure we will globally get our act together, at least not this year. Maybe, like many things in life, it has to get worse before it can get better. Before people wake up. It feels at the moment that most people are living in their own individual bubbles, focused on their own individual struggles. Fair enough. The tide will only turn when/if we collectively get our acts together.
Here in Austria, I have distributed all the €50 supermarket gift cards we received over the holidays. Thank you. I continue to receive photos and words of thanks and gratitude. I never, ever would have expected we would be able to help for as long as we have done. I don’t know how much longer we will be able to go on for, but I am grateful for every family we have been able to reach. I also know we need systemic solutions: and unfortunately those are out of my control. We continue to try to highlight the reasons why building an independent life as a new arrival in Austria is so challenging. But ultimately, it is the government that sets the framework and the conditions for those news lives here. Our program is a small help, a temporary aid, but it is not a solution.
But sometimes miracles do happen. I read just now in a group chat for volunteers about Dima. He got an unexpected call yesterday. The multiple organ (two kidneys + pancreas) transplant is ready. If all goes well, he should be operated on tonight in Innsbruck. I could not believe the words as I was reading them. There are so many people out there doing incredible things to make miracles possible. We should not forget about that while struggling to comprehend the hard facts. Miracles do sometime happen.
I don‘t read you often but if I do I find your posts very informative. Good work. And I share your assessment. Let‘s hope for the best. Thank you and kind regards,
Stephan