Category Archives: Ukraine 2018

Traveling again

Ukraine 2018

Time for another trip to Ukraine, though it will really only be a handful of days there, most of them on the move. Then a quick stop in Krakow, Poland, which should be interesting (both in the getting there and in being there).

Most importantly, it will be nice to see my wife again; she’s been over visiting the family for the past month. Skype is fine for keeping in touch, but it’s not the same as having a face-to-face conversation.

As usual, I’m getting a little nervous and concerned, mostly with the travel plans going over. There aren’t all that many ways of getting the Kiev (well, there are, but most of the flight combinations offered you really don’t want to do), and I usually take the quickest version — one long flight that gets me to Amsterdam, and then the shorter 2-hour flight into Kiev. There are two flights to Kiev, one with a short layover from the first flight (50-60 minutes, depending on time of year) and one longer one. I’ve tried the shorter layover in the past and have gotten burned — a late arrival (even slightly) and a distant connecting gate. So I opted for the longer layover, something I’d done a couple times before. Not a super fan of that, but at least you don’t miss the connection.

The problem of late, though, is that that second flight has not been departing on time. The other day it was two hours late. I was doing some calculations, and it is late to Kiev almost 70% of the time. (Just recalculated with the latest numbers — it’s now at about 50% for the 2-ish months I’ve been watching.) Since I have to catch an overnight train once I get to Kiev and it takes about 45 minutes to get from the airport to the train station — after, you know, getting through customs and all — most any arrival delay has the ability to through the schedule completely off. I really don’t want to do a Plan B.

The funny thing is that while that second flight to Kiev has been late A LOT, the big flight over to Amsterdam has been arriving early most of the time — 76% the last time I looked. Most days there’s been almost 90 minutes between arriving in Amsterdam and that first flight to Kiev. Odds-wise, it would have been better to go with the flight combination that didn’t work the last time I’d tried it. I did try to get it changed — still about 3½ weeks out from my travel dates — but it would have cost over $800 — almost 1/3 the cost of the original ticket. So keeping my fingers crossed that I luck into one of the 17% of flights that get there early. (With the latest numbers it’s still 50-50.)

And I won’t even get into the concerns about being in Ukraine itself, especially that part of Ukraine. I haven’t been posting news of late, because things don’t change that much. That’s what a frozen conflict is. But there have been some troubling reports — not all of them confirmed — that suggest things will be thawing in Eastern Ukraine, and not in a good way. Like with my flights, there’s nothing I can really do but make the best plans I can for the information that I’ve got.

By the by, today’s flight to Kiev is a half-hour late.

Ambushed

Politics, Ukraine 2018

I haven’t posted in a while because, honestly, there hasn’t been much to say. Sustained indignation is hard to sustain, especially when it’s essentially the same things day in and day out. It would seem that Putin is getting the frozen conflict in Ukraine that he’s already established elsewhere. And unless a greater number of people around the world are exposed to the ongoing issues in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, it’s going to continue to be frozen and eventually become “just the way it is.” In the end, Putin may never be called to account for his warmongering.

This seems especially likely as Russian apologists are everywhere. My wife had a doctor’s appointment the other day and, as she is not a fully conversant English speaker, a translator is provided as part of the medical service. Since my wife doesn’t have many Russian speaking friends (at least, none that she communicates with on a daily or even regular basis), it is not uncommon for her to spend some time after her appointments (and possibly during them; I don’t know, I don’t accompany her when seeing her doctor) chatting with the translator of the day. I’m sure she likes being able to converse freely, without having to remember what the English is for what she’s trying to say. So, it was not surprising when, after her latest appointment, she was chatting with the woman who had translated for her. I caught a few words and knew that at one point they were taking about food, and not wanting to eavesdrop further (not that I would likely have understood it all anyway), I just sat back down and returned to my book, until such time as their conversation had finished.

They came over a few minutes later, since my wife wanted me to jot down some information. Up to now, the translator had assumed that I was a Russian speaking and greeted me as such, but when I responded with an “Excuse me?” she realized that wasn’t the case. She then conveyed (in English) the information my wife wanted me to record, and the two of them went back to talking a bit more, me in the middle, still not understanding. Curiously, then, the translator directly asked me if I believed that Russia was at war with Ukraine. I said that it was. She asked my wife (in Russian) the same question, to which my wife responded in the negative.

And that’s when the propaganda started. It began harmlessly enough, with the story of a family who by sheer good fortune escaped an incident of shelling. Plausible enough; I’d come across comparable stories. Then comes the false reasoning — “In a war, countries break off diplomatic relations, but since there’s a Russian diplomatic mission still in Ukraine, there obviously isn’t a war.” Fallacious logic on multiple points, plus the semantic use of the term “war.” There was a little back and forth over this, before she attempted to offer more proof of why it was Ukrainian aggression against their own people; supposedly, Poroshenko closed a factory in Donetsk 3 months before hostilities broke out. Even if such a thing did happen — and I remain skeptical because there is no corroboration that I find anywhere — such an event in itself is not proof. There were two other points in this exchange, her claim that everything would be over if Ukraine just stopped fighting (only true if you accept the premise of Ukraine as the sole aggressor against its own people), and she wasn’t able to answer the question of where the “green men” in Crimea came from without trying to bring up a lot of pointless history and statistics.

I was rather taken aback by all this, and really didn’t want to get into it then, especially with someone who was just blowing smoke and throwing up the sand that the Russian media does to confuse and muddy the conversation. Eventually I just said thank you and have a good evening, then got up and walked away. I don’t specifically fault the translator for her point of view, but that’s me giving her the benefit of the doubt. Not only do people more easily buy into propaganda if it reinforces already established beliefs, but people in general to give more credence to something told to them in their first or primary language; anything that has to be translated or filtered is subject to modification. Additionally, you have to consider what the source is — not just the delivery mechanism. With 90 or so percent of the media outlets in Russia owned by the government, there’s only one source for the information, regardless of how many websites, newspapers, radio or TV stations one reads, listens to or sees. Independent or contrary voices get drowned out, and since it seems that “everyone” is saying the same thing, that would seem to make it true.

Were it not an ambush, in a way, and I had the time and inclination, it could have been an interesting, though likely heated, conversation. However, there would have been no winning; you can’t win against a true believer, because anything that doesn’t comport to their accepted worldview is simply a lie. Regardless of what she or others might believe, people will continue to die or suffer until Russia takes its army and armaments back to its side of the international border. At that point, there might indeed be civil unrest in Ukraine, because after 4 years of lies, propaganda and fighting, some hearts and minds will be too entrenched to let any dialog begin.