The road ahead
I have now sent out all the grocery cards I had, and am focused on raising donations and attracting shoppers for our event on May 7. Plus brief thoughts on Ukraine, Russia, and Austrian politics.
This Friday I was invited to a group meeting followed by a casual dinner of “like-minded do-gooders” for lack of a better term. It is a really interesting group of people because it includes experienced professionals who have been working for years (decades) on issues like immigration and asylum, and therefore Ukrainian refugees are only a part of a much broader conversation. I was really pleased to hear the suggestion of a more coordinated communication strategy to counter the far right’s aggressive and often fake news messaging, which, to their credit, comes across loud and clear in the media channels (both traditional and social) they use to create an anti-foreigner fury amongst a large chunk of the domestic population of eligible voters in Austria. During an earlier meeting, months ago, I left with the feeling of lacking cohesion, and this time I left feeling there was a recognition of the need to work together on messaging. I, unlike many in the room, am not an optimist by nature, but this gave me hope.
I also learned some worrying new information from other volunteers helping Ukrainians in Austria. Namely, in at least one federal state (Upper Austria — surprise to no one), retiree refugees have received bills to pay back something like €2,000 of aid money received over the course of the past year as their Ukrainian pensions (often equivalent $100 per month or less) were deducted against the miserly €260 per adult per month Austria pays Ukrainians in Grundversorgung (basic support). What will Ukrainians do when slapped with an official bill for amounts they have already spent long ago and clearly will not be able to pay back? I imagine many will simply pack up and go home, provided they have a home to go back to.
My manicurist was also slapped with a bill of around €800, but in Vienna. Her story is a bit different. She received social payments until she was legally employed. When she got a job in the salon, she let the authorities in Vienna know, and said I won’t be needing the payments anymore, as I am now employed. But her boss employed her not as an employee but as “self-earner”. As “Selbstständig”, she was told she now has to pay back the €800 in benefits she received when she did not have a job. No one seems bothered by the question of how someone was supposed to feed themselves before they had a job. It is a bit like saying to someone who was on unemployment once they finally find work that they now should pay back all the months of aid they received when they didn’t have a job.
One thing Austria never fails to offer: ever more creative ways of taking money back from people who are barely surviving to begin with. Clearly none of the Ukrainians affected have any money for lawyers, and the entire refugee aid area appears to be a lawless zone as it is. This weekend we spent a lot of time (namely a tireless volunteer, herself Ukrainian-Austrian, who built this online calculator to help refugees calculate how much they can now earn legally without losing their housing/benefits, because the state chooses not to provide one) explaining the new rules on earning legally. The rules have technically changed for the better, except no one from the state or the NGOs feels it necessary to explain them clearly in one single source document. Therefore, we refer people (but remember, every state is different, and several states like Lower Austria have not yet adopted this legislation) to the unofficial volunteer-built calculator, but with the caveat that the final decision ultimately lies with your individual social worker who decides your individual case. What could go wrong, am I right?
Add on top of this a massive shortage of housing, big troubles in schools, and a general feeling within Austria that much of the population is tired of the war in Ukraine, tired of inflation, tired of hugely rising energy prices, tired “outside” problems ruining the “good life” we once had here, and I would not be surprised if we see a big wave of Ukrainian families giving up moving back to Ukraine this summer, provided they have homes to go back to.
Two other volunteers, also Ukrainian who have been living in Austria for many years, explained they are counselling Ukrainian mothers in Vienna who are highly educated, have put together nice CVs in German, and are having an extremely difficult time finding jobs. They are sending out their resumes and receiving no feedback. Not even an initial interview. This doesn’t surprise me. This is the casual everyday xenophobia of only wanting to hire those who speak unaccented German and have Austrian-sounding names. Never mind that Vienna is one of the most multicultural cities on the planet by now. HR departments and those who make hiring decisions have not got that message, at least not yet and not across the board.
In short, the mood is — not great.
Volunteers are taking Artem today to an appointment about permanent housing. You remember I wrote about him a few weeks back. He is in a wheelchair and was moved out of the dorm that closed but was not yet assigned a room or bed in Vienna. He has been sleeping this entire time on a cot, unable to take a shower because the showers are outside in a container. I keep saying this over and over because I realise many people simply do not know what is happening behind the scenes. They cannot imagine. This is how everyone involved in the official response gets away with their incompetence, because voters do not know until they are confronted with it firsthand.
Yesterday, as the Austrian TV news was discussing the local election in Salzburg, and the “surprise” double-digit result for the communist party (yes, really), I was addressing envelopes to a refugee “hotel” in the Salzburg region where refugees are “fed” and receive €40 per month pocket money. That is the same set-up which existed one year ago. Anger against a state that does not take care of its poorest is only a “surprise” to those who work on TV and do not talk to real people. I don’t have skin in the game, but I can imagine the state is doing the same terrible job of caring for the neediest families in Austria as it is doing caring for refugees. Hence the anger, hence the votes for “communists”. Important to caveat these communists are not what you imagine when you hear the word. I saw a campaign ad in which the lead communist candidate was arguing a golf course takes up public land and should be open to all, while carefully adding “golf itself isn’t a problem”. Not exactly a pioneer in a red scarf, nevertheless important to observe that both the far left and the far right are attracting more voters, particularly young voters, as the status quo is failing to offer them a palpable vision of the future.
I keep thinking about the 1930s in Austria, and it scares the shit out of me. But I too sit here frozen, unsure what to do with this information. So I’ll stop there. I understand the anger, I just don’t like where it is directed. But I don’t get to have say. When you spend your entire life always being a halfway-citizen (I have lived in six countries to date), you get used to things happening around you without you being a part of them. It is a strange feeling. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I have so much sympathy for the refugees. I know how you are sometimes treated in public life in Austria when you open your mouth and speak Slavic-accented German.
Looking beyond the little alpine nation (I heard a quote recently that 8.9 million is nothing more than a suburb of Shanghai and it keeps ringing in my head, on loop), I heard a podcast interview this weekend which made me stop in my tracks (in this case, hanging up laundry). In this interview with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, Dmitri Alperovitch basically says, in the clearest terms I have heard yet, that both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have exhausted all their professional fighters (killed or wounded were the terms he used), and those being thrown into battle now are often being sent in with only three or four weeks of training.
I knew it was bad, but I did not realise it was that bad.
In this context, I would also recommend a really inspiring recent BBC documentary (you do need a UK VPN to watch it) about Ukrainians being trained in the UK, none of whom were professional soldiers before the war.
I would also recommend reading this Atlantic piece, What the Battle for Bakhmut has done for Ukraine (paywall), which sheds additional light on why Ukraine has done what it has done in recent months.
I came across this very long and detailed thread by Bryan Tannehill yesterday, and I found it very informative although I really do try and avoid all this military strategy stuff because I cannot consume it without thinking about all the people dying on both sides. I cannot read about war without thinking about senseless death. But I find myself coming back to such threads as I ask myself the question no one has an answer to: how much longer will this all go on for?
Ukrainians in the European Union, for the moment, have residence cards (they are referred to as “blue cards”) for temporary protection until March 2024. What will happen after that is anyone’s guess at this point. An experienced politician told me off the record he/she believes there will be a solution allowing those who want to stay in Europe to do so. I, personally, would not bet on it, simply because of the sheer numbers (something like eight million Ukrainians left the country since the war started, and most of them ended up in the EU), and the precedent it might set for those still in Ukraine. I keep thinking about all the people I have met since the war began who left not just because of bombs falling, but because of a lack of economic opportunity at home in Ukraine since the war broke out. Many ordinary jobs simply dried up. Many came to Austria and other EU countries not understanding just how hard it is to find legal employment here. This is, simply put, not an “Anglo-Saxon” or eastern European (in a positive sense) job market. This is a job market where the state has a heavy hand and paperwork is complicated. There is less moving around than in more “capitalist” job markets. Getting hired (and fired) is simply harder.
I imagine this will be one of the big question Brussels will have to wrestle with this year, and I truly hope they don’t leave it to the last minute.
I would also like to recommend again this truly phenomenal podcast on Russia by Arkady Ostrovsky of The Economist: Next Year in Moscow. The last of eight episodes dropped this weekend, and it did not disappoint. It has been very, very hard for even the most liberal-minded Russians to make anything since the war started that wasn’t drowning in self-pity. Arkady succeeds in doing just that, while interviewing the most impressive roster of Russian thinkers and intellectuals one can imagine.
A group of 300+ journalists have written an open letter to Sergey Lavrov demanding the release of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. In it, they repeat the phrase, “journalism is not a crime”. But that’s just it. In Putin’s Russia, journalism is a crime. Because the state seeks to control not just the political and economic spheres of the country, but also the flow of information and therefore influence over residents’ minds. A free press leads to free thinkers, something the Kremlin never wanted, certainly not now as it continues to send tens, hundreds of thousands of Russian men to their near-certain deaths in Ukraine. I am still amazed there are any foreign reporters working in Russia. I know some will cynically say Evan was an easy target — Soviet-Jewish roots — of course the ex-KGB guys chose him first. But just like Navalny is not the only opposition politician starving at present in a Russian prison, Evan may not be the last western journalist to find himself unfairly behind bars, simply for trying to perform actual journalism within Russia.
I wish I could end on a more positive note but that’s all I’ve got today.
This morning I went to Hofer and bought the last four cards I received funding for. Thank you. Those went immediately out in the mail.
The grocery photos continue to come in. No two are ever alike, and that is the beauty of the whole program.
My focus now turns to a new challenge — raising donations of used books and baked goods for Sunday May 7, and no less important — advertising our event far and wide within Vienna so that we can expect a decent number of “shoppers” on the day. I really hope it will also be a nice multinational social event and coming together of sorts. If you are in Vienna, the best thing you can do to help is tell your friends, help us spread the good word. Unfortunately some of the really big local Facebook groups do not let me post about our event, even if it is for charity (their groups, their rules), so I would really need all of my readers’ help to make sure we reach as many people as possible. I also created a sign-up sheet for volunteers on the day here. Two hour shifts, so nothing too strenuous.
Thank you so much for reading and for your continued support!
Hi Tanja, maybe you can publish the Book-Bazar-Event in "Falter-Woche" (www.falter.at - alle Termine) LG Magda