2023-04-27 02:00:04
Classical ballet is not only popular with the cultural elite here, almost everyone enjoys a night out at the opera. In view of the curfew, the doors open earlier than usual, and because of a possible evacuation or the air raid alarm that could go off, the public only takes place in the parterre seats.
Also on Friday, April 7, 2023, then Don Quichot was shown. During the last act of this spectacular ballet, I suddenly heard the siren of the air-raid alarm going off outside, ringing softly in the main hall. But the performance was not cut short, as had been announced in advance. The audience sat and watched, breathless. To be sure, I checked my air raid alarm app, and it was indeed colored red.
It is difficult for readers in the Netherlands to explain why people here react so stoically to the threat of war.
With Don Quixote looking dazed, the dancers made their last graceful pirouettes before the ballet ended some ten minutes later. Only then was the loud clapping audience urged to leave the room quickly. Nevertheless, the dancers emerged once more from behind the closed curtain to receive the congratulations and flowers. Hardly anyone waited downstairs in the cloakroom until the air raid alarm had passed, almost everyone just walked out with a coat.
It is difficult for readers in the Netherlands to explain why people here react so stoically to the threat of war. That danger usually seems bigger than it is from a distance. In addition, air raids in Kyiv have become less frequent than at the beginning of the war, and the city is far from the eastern front. The generators that, when I visited more than a month ago, were still roaring loudly everywhere after a power failure and spreading an unpleasant smell of petrol, are now standing still. In my flat, I did not experience a single power cut during this visit. Putin’s plan to bring this city to its knees in winter by bombing its civilian infrastructure has failed.
Christ is risen!
In villages near Chernihiv, a town about 160 kilometers north of Kyiv, there was heavy fighting in the first days of the war. The village of Novoselivka (literally: New Village) has been almost completely destroyed. This village owes its name to the reconstruction after World War II. Fate was ill-disposed to the residents of Novoselyvka twice.
A little further on is another village that the Russian tanks rolled through without doing much damage.
On Orthodox Easter Monday (April 17) I strolled through a street in Novoselivka with colleagues from Kyiv. An old woman greeted us: ‘Christos voskres!’ (Christ is risen!) ‘Voistine Voskres!’ (He has risen indeed!), we answered her. We got talking to this one babushka, who led us to her destroyed house down the road. In her yard we saw how a new house is being built with wooden building materials on the site of the house, which was almost completely destroyed by tank shells. “Are you getting help?” we asked. The old woman called her cousin, who was working inside. We heard from her that this family has received almost no help from the local authorities or international humanitarian organizations. Only a passing team of the Red Cross gave them a small amount (about five thousand euros) to buy building materials.
This family apparently has sufficient resources to take matters into their own hands and not wait for state aid once the war has ended. Babushka proudly led us around her yard and pointed the vegetable garden (vegetable garden), where the first green blades and stalks had already sprung from the black earth.
Model home
The next day I discussed with the regional authorities in Chernihiv the plan of the OpenDoorUkraine foundation (of which I am the chairman) to build a modular wooden model house of about 60 square meters with modern amenities in the yard of one of the homeless families in Novoselevka. to build. Now the inhabitants are packed like sardines in temporary prefabricated containers donated by the Polish government, which are standing at the entrance of the village. They have been waiting almost a year for compensation to restore their property and return to their trusted piece of land. The deputy governor admitted that they will probably have to wait a long time. It is also still unclear how these people will be eligible for compensation once the war has ended. While the security situation in the region has now stabilized reasonably well, and is therefore no obstacle to starting reconstruction.
The vice-governor responded positively to the proposal and in turn declared himself willing to make the necessary preparations, such as clearing the site of war debris, laying the foundations for the model home, and connecting the existing facilities. Novoselivka is connected to water, electricity and gas, but in the absence of sewerage, a septic tank will have to be installed.
Larger-scale and faster local production of this modular type of wooden houses, which can last for decades, need not cost much more than about 35,000 euros per house. Wouldn’t the duped residents of Novoselivka prefer to wait for compensation and later rebuild their house themselves, I asked the deputy governor. He considered the chance that the inhabitants would not want to return to a modern house in their yard in the short term. We decided to join forces and together look for financing for about a hundred model homes. If a hundred Dutch municipalities each wanted to adopt such a model house, we thought, at least these villagers could go home again.
It is the Ukrainians themselves who have begun to repair their houses or apartment buildings.
Incidentally, I am annoyed by the prospects and dizzying billions in reconstruction aid that Ukraine is promised at international conferences, without a serious start on reconstruction in areas that have been reasonably stabilized. It is the Ukrainians themselves who have begun to repair their houses or apartment buildings. They are sometimes helped by small-scale initiatives of humanitarian organizations (often with a Christian background) from Europe and the US.
In the Netherlands, preparations for our support for reconstruction are progressing slowly. How is it possible that a former ambassador from Moscow, who believes that Ukraine belongs to Russia, was appointed reconstruction envoy?
Where is the counteroffensive?
On Saturday, April 22, the red tulips had finally come out in the beds in the courtyard of our apartment building on John McCainstraat. When I did my last shopping for the long train ride back to Polish Przemysl tomorrow, the benches along Maria Prymachenko boulevard were packed with couples enjoying the spring sun. It has been unusually cold and wet here in recent weeks after a mild winter.
The night before, the air raid siren had gone off for the first time in quite some time. It concerned shahed from Belarus–drones. Almost all of them were shot out of the air and luckily did little damage. But what awaits Ukraine?
The long-awaited Ukrainian counter-offensive fails to materialise. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, because April is also doing what it wants here, the Ukrainian soil has not yet dried up sufficiently to be able to carry out major military operations optimally. The second and probably most important reason: slow western arms deliveries and dwindling ammunition stocks. Thirdly, although Russia did not succeed in making much territorial gains in the winter offensive, the Ukrainian army still suffered major losses in the battle of attrition for Bachmut.
There is a threat of a stalemate along the front line, which is about the same distance as the distance between Amsterdam and Madrid. If the Ukrainian army fails to change this soon, international calls for a ceasefire will swell. But according to the American Institute for the Study of War, such a truce will only play into Putin’s hands. Russia will then have time to replenish the large military losses and to attack Ukraine again at the desired moment. So what awaits the Ukrainian people, who have already suffered so much?
I am beginning to feel increasingly uneasy about the course of the war. Ukraine surprised friend and foe by first repelling the Russian military invasion on February 24, 2022 and the advance on Kyiv. In September of that year, the first surprising counter-offensive followed, in which the Russian lines around Kharkiv proved to be as fragile as porcelain. Virtually all of Kharkiv oblast was liberated, and in November, after continuous Ukrainian artillery barrages in which the HIMARS systems proved their worth, the right banks of the Dnipro and Kherson were liberated. But since then it has stalled and no new counteroffensives have materialised.
Ukraine is often compared to Israel, and the Ukrainians themselves are proud of this. The army, which amounted to little before 2014, has now been given hero status. Just like in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, in Kyiv you will find soldiers, including women, walking through the streets with their weapons and taking the subway. Unfortunately, on my travels through the country I also see increasingly longer rows of photos of fallen soldiers, who are commemorated in the squares in front of the town halls.
The militarization of society will have consequences once the war has ended.
Little Israel surprised friend and foe by defeating the Arab enemy that was considered stronger several times and has since become a regional superpower in the Middle East.
Israel could not afford any defeat. The same now seems to apply to Ukraine, which is on the verge of a likely decisive battle in this war to break through the Russian-controlled land corridor in the south.
The militarization of society will have consequences once the war has ended. We are now also seeing in Israel that civil rights can come under pressure. How will democratic control over the armed forces be restored? And how will the reintegration of soldiers discharged from the army proceed? War veterans are already complaining that they don’t get enough attention.
Yet the comparison with Israel is not entirely valid: Ukraine is a much larger country where a lost battle does not immediately have existential consequences. In that respect, Putin has choked in Ukraine. But population and economy will suffer even more if the war lasts longer. And how long will the West keep its back straight?
Let’s hope those brave Ukrainians surprise us again. The sooner the better.
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