View from Kraków — Changes in Ukraine Refugee Flow?
All Viral Infections Are Not Covid
Krystyna and I both got sick this week — upper respiratory viruses with 3 negative Covid tests between the two of us. Nonetheless, we hope to be well enough to make our flight early next week back to California. The weather here turned from shirt-sleeve sunny Spring warmth to several days of snow, including a 1" thick layer on a car roof which slid down the windshield, pulling along the snow-carpet on the roof behind it, and rolling itself up into a delightful dessert-looking windshield wiper delicacy, like whipped cream frosting or icing on a cake.
Slight Change in the Refugee Flow?
I think our return to the USA will be psychologically easier, given the most recent developments. As can be seen from the report below (dated Saturday afternoon, April 2nd) it appears women (and even some children) are beginning to return to Ukraine. I can confirm this.
Luba Returning to Ukraine
Krystyna’s younger brother, Bogdan, was born with Down’s Syndrome, i.e. trisomy 21. Thursday morning, March 31st, we helped Luba, the Ukrainian lady who has been taking care of Bogdan, to get on the regularly scheduled bus and head back to her home about 50 km east of Lviv. I wanted to drive her there, but fortunately Krystyna adamantly vetoed the idea. Why fortunately? Because a) we got sick; b ) the car got sick (suddenly inoperable power-steering mechanism which will take a week to fix); and c) Luba had so much stuff to take back with her we needed a station-wagon taxi plus an additional passenger car, driven by Krystyna’s older brother Andrzej, to take Luba’s stuff to the bus station.
If, by any chance, you are wondering what to take on the bus when you are heading back to a country recently invaded by the Russian army, the answer is simple: everything. Given that so many have lost most of what they had (including all too often loved ones) the country can benefit from whatever it receives.
Luba’s modern Flixbus arrived on time, and we helped her load all the bags. The bus had originated in Wrocław, and was full, almost all passengers being mature women. There were no empty seats, disappointing a few ladies who had purchased tickets at the last minute, hoping to get on board.
Forty-eight hours later, confirmation arrived that Luba arrived safely — and was glad she’d brought food, since there wasn’t much available in her rural village.
A Few Other Thoughts
In contrast to the reassuring fact some Ukrainian women are returning to their country is the dreadfully unsurprising confirmation of mass executions of civilians in the areas near Kyiv which the Russians occupied for a month. Why unsurprising? Because we already had heard of the Russians’ mobile crematoria and the alleged forty-five thousand body bags they ordered in advance, not to mention their army manual’s recent revision of instructions on preparation of mass graves designed for 1,000 bodies each.
Two weeks before the war, I read a serious piece in the WSJ describing the recent meetings and phone calls between Putin, Macron, Scholz, and Boris Johnson. Only then (yes, I am slow of mind) did I realize that Putin had fallen directly into Hitler’s boots. While the WSJ article did not directly compare Putin with Hitler, it led me to the following conclusions:
·Putin’s aching for a return of Russian greatness is no different than Hitler’s dream of German greatness. Hitler’s drive to have all German-speaking peoples united in a great Third Reich was identical to Putin’s mania to have all Russian-speaking peoples united under the Russian banner.
· Hitler’s hatred of the Treaty of Versailles, and uncontrollable urge to right its historic wrongs (loss of Gdansk/Danzig, the existence of the Polish Corridor [not to mention the existence of a Polish nation-state], the bequeathing of the Sudetenland to a mongrel Czech- Slovak entity, etc.), differs not one iota from Putin’s rantings about Ukraine being a historic anomaly — a mistake whose creation only resulted from stupidities on the part of prior Russian leaders.
· Likewise Hitler’s eager use of blunt violence to quell opposition is mirrored by the poisonings or plummeting to their deaths from hotel windows so frequently experienced by Putin’s opponents.
Many other such similarities exist; hence the term “Putler” appears commonly these days.
However, a recent, 40-page long WSJ Article — 20 Years of Western Mistakes Re: Putin (I’ve downloaded it from behind my paywall for sharing here) examines in far greater depth the background to how we got where we are. The feckless appeasement and self-interested blind eyes of the Europeans are there to see, but not much praise goes to the USA as well during most of this time frame. (Condoleeza Rice and Bush II saw the risks, but could convince no Europeans.) Whilst Churchill was a lone voice in the early 1930’s forecasting where Hitler was headed, we’ve had no such wise a political voice in the West. Certainly grand strategists like Gary Kasparov, unfortunately relegated to the bleachers, foresaw the inevitable end-game necessitated by the opening moves and mid-game strategy, but one has difficulty locating a politician of stature with such acumen: perhaps Tsa Ing-Wen?
