The Battle for Ukraine

Posted by Barbara on February 28, 2022 in Europe, Human rights, News, Politics, security, Security | 6 comments

Who knew this latest horror was just around the corner? Actually, I assume rather a lot of people did, but not the types I hang out with. Right now, just down the road from me in South London, there are queues on the High Road with people’s cars rammed to the gunwales with clothing and bedding for Ukrainians who have fled their country.  They are all headed for the Polish Church and Polish Club, where the local Red Cross are taking in offerings to be sent to people whose only failing was to live in a country adjacent to one run by a dictator.

For me, the Ukraine invasion feels very personal: my grandmother was born in Odessa in Southern Ukraine and her father, my great-grandfather, brought her over to Britain as a small child, along with her mother and her brother, at the turn of the 20^th century . They were Jewish refugees from the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917. In this area permanent residency by Jews was allowed, but beyond it Jewish residency, permanent or temporary, was mostly forbidden.

The Pale of Settlement included all of modern-day Belarus, Lithuania and Moldova, much of Ukraine and Eastern Poland. Life in the Pale for many was economically bleak. Most people relied on small service or artisan work that could not support the number of inhabitants, which resulted in emigration, especially in the late 19th century. Combined with the frequent pogroms or attacks on Jews within the Pale, this inspired people like my great-grandfather to leave the region at the end of the 19^th century in search of a better life in the UK or US.

He was a tailor, and the story goes that when he got off the boat at the docks in London there were people there who asked if anyone could sew. He stepped forward and was taken to the East End of London, where he immediately started work at a sewing machine. It was only when night fell that he started looking for somewhere to stay.

When I was 13 my school offered those who were good at languages the chance to study Russian. I seized the opportunity, and the entire extended family was very excited that at last we would be able to translate the birth, marriage, medical and other certificates my family brought with them from Odessa.

In my working life I used my Russian language skills extensively in the 1990s and 2000s, when the countries of the former Soviet Union were exploring the challenges and opportunities of democracy and accountability. I organised and managed programmes funded by the British Government, the EU and divisions of the United Nations.  Several of these were in Kyiv, and as well as working there I have taken holidays in the beautiful Ukrainian countryside.

We now look on in horror at the battle between Putin’s Russia, which has denied its people meaningful democracy and self-determination, and Ukraine, which has fought so hard to rid itself of the Soviet legacy and is well on the path away from autocracy and state control.  Our dear friends from Lviv in Western Ukraine fled to Poland two days ago, leaving nearly everything they own behind.

Nobody knows how or when this will end, but Ukraine has the free world cheering it on and, hopefully, supplying it with the tools to withstand its powerful aggressor.  We watch and pray.