Madonna of the Train, ©2022 William L. Brown.
The Russians are firing artillery from the center of the village. That’s only three houses away from my student’s home. If the Ukrainians return fire, she worried, it might hit her. In this occupied area, the Russians cut the village gas and electricity a couple of days ago. My student and her mom cooked breakfast in the old stove using branches from their garden as fuel.
Utilities were restored yesterday, but that’s when they placed the artillery in the village. Seems like every day brings a new threat. My student says she can now differentiate the sounds made by grads, groms and smerches (multiple rocket launchers, missiles, and bigger multiple rocket launchers).
Dnipro was shelled Thursday. A non-military target was hit - a shoe factory according to one report. A missile attack Friday night was countered by air defense, according to the mayor. Ekaterina, the Dnipro language teacher whose Dnipro, Day 4 article I posted, uploaded a video about conditions there March 8. The video is below. The food supply is good, she says, but medicines are scarce.
In the video she repeats a question posed to her. “What lesson will we learn from this war”
She says, “My answer was I don’t believe that this war will change anything, and it will not give us any lessons,” just as the First World War was followed by the Second World War,
“Syria didn’t teach us anything,” she says, citing the recent shooting down of Major Krasnoyarsk, a Russian pilot honored by Putin for his 2016 performance in Syria.
“Peaceful Syrian cities … the cities with civil population, innocent people, were bombed by this exact pilot that [is] now bombing Ukrainian cities. So I don’t believe in the lessons history can give to people, but I seriously believe Ukraine will win this war.”
Also still in Ukraine is my friend Larysa who left Kyiv in a minivan. She is with her adult daughter, nine friends and two cats. As reported in my last article they are living in a kindergarten school in an undisclosed small town, helping with the national support effort: cooking and delivering food, assisting a growing number of refugees. She is glad to have work to do, but feels emotionally frozen. She too is confident of victory.
Larysa can be heard in an interview on Eric Bond’s Talk of Takoma, March 6. There are previous interviews also, and another to be broadcast today, March 13 at 1:00 PM on Takoma Radio. I’m interviewed as well.
Pleas or offers for rides and places to stay in the west, across the border, out of cities under attack fill the Ukraine Expat social media pages. Many are requests for old or infirm folks, others for mothers with children. Ad hoc groups have formed to coordinate rides. People also ask for advice about conditions in countries they or loved-ones are running to. Is housing available? What are the refugee benefits? Are there any jobs?
There are two million refugees now. Warsaw and Krakow are unable to take any more. I was in Krakow last week.
Krakow Glowny train station is a mind blower. There is little to signify “train station” except the train platforms, which are below ground level. Passengers ride up the escalators into a stylish, ultra-modern shopping mall, a dynamic, three-story cathedral of western consumerism; this is what Ukrainian malls desire to be - but aren’t quite. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Ukrainian refugees to ride up that escalator. Their train stations are still in the 19th century, even in Kyiv. Kyiv’s has a grand, chandeliered foyer with a board showing arrivals and departures, worn, dimly-lit waiting rooms, a row of dispiritedly-attended ticket windows, and a few kiosks. The stairs, not escalators, lead up from the platform to a waiting area filled with diesel fumes, a few counters selling food and souvenirs, and a news stand.
Seeing Krakow Glowny and the prosperous area around it makes me angry. Ukraine could be like this, if not for Russia’s interference: the 2014 invasion and the frozen-conflict and hybrid warfare keeping it out of the EU and NATO. Corruption also prevented entry. but now that we see how obsessive Putin is about preventing Ukraine’s turn to the west, I wonder if Russia was involved in secretly supporting corruption and defeating government anti-corruption efforts.
In Glowny there were Ukrainian refugees in groups, lines and rooms. Scores of yellow vested people answered their questions, assisted them with forms, escorted them to the correct room or line, distributed food and water, and handed out sweets to children. Some wore what looked like boy-scout uniforms.
I had first class tickets because they were the only ones available. My reserved seat was already taken by a mom with a child, so I took a random seat, hoping it didn’t become an issue. It didn’t. The only issue was too many people. The train, which was 25 minutes late, was delayed again to add another wagon to the train.
My seatmate was an older male refugee, originally from Azerbaijan, who’d fled the autocratic regime there three years ago. He was with his wife, a son, daughter-in-law, infant grandson and a young woman whose relation was unclear. They all took turns holding the baby. But that doesn’t mean she was related, or even a friend. I’ve seen Ukrainians treat stranger’s children as their own and take a stranger’s child-care for granted. At one point a women whose seat was far in the back of the crowded wagon directed her 7-8 year old daughter to sit in the small space between the Azerbaijani and I, then walked away. We old gentlemen dutifully made a space for the child.
The patriarch muttered about the corruption in Ukraine’s emigration system, and he explained why he liked Biden but not Zelensky. Biden, he said, had better military intelligence, he’d been warning about Russia’s plan to attack for months, but Zelensky didn’t have this information.
The man was lucky to have his whole family with him. His son was one of the few young men in the wagon. Male Ukrainian citizens of fighting age, 18-20 are not allowed to leave.
Returning to Azerbaijan is not an option for them, he was heading to Germany. He had a contact there.
There were several infants and toddlers in the wagon, we rolled from Krakow to Berlin to the sound of babies: crying and happy burbling. One toddler made motorboat noises most of the way. I preferred it to crying.
There wasn’t much anguish in evidence. People looked tired, a few looked stressed One woman had red eyes from crying. Others seemed normal, chatting and eating diner-car sandwiches and pastries.
Ukrainian flag displayed on a building in Germany.
My three friends who crossed the border into Poland are now in Germany. I’ve gone there to meet them. My friends who went by train, a mom and her teenage son, went to a small town near Hamburg. They have distant relatives there.
I visited my friends in their new scenic town on a river. They are relieved to have a roof over their heads in a nice house. They even have their own rooms. But, they are daunted by how expensive things are.
My other friend, whose boyfriend is still in Kyiv, is near Stuttgart. I hope to visit her next week. She speaks a little German and has a lot of ambition. She’s anxious to find a job and get her own place.
Her boyfriend is a man of few words, lately. He reports he is “good” and “at home” in Kyiv. it’s a dangerous place to be.
My waterslide acquaintance is also still in Ukraine, in a sea-side community. She showed photos on social media of her recently purchased $5000 waterslide - burned in a bomb attack. She’s lost her money, and her means of earning it back.
The problem of medicine distribution to Ukrainian pharmacies near the war zone has not been solved. My student, who left Kyiv with his family for western Ukraine, is part of a team working on this. They are with an international pharmaceutical company. They are frustrated that the government has not focused on this issue. Another problem, my student says, is that most aptikas (pharmacies) are owned and staffed by women. Women, especially those with children, are leaving the country by the hundreds of thousands. So, many aptikas are closed or are short-staffed.
“ANTS” Aptika in Kyiv.