Ukraine – The Bear and the Bees

Goodbye to Ukraine and all that…

I have a thing about dawns and sunsets, but this is an apt goodbye to Kyiv. Note the statue surrounded by sandbags and protective scaffolding.

I’m now back at home having spent a great Christmas there and thankfully (but with reservations) I’m now finished working in Ukraine and I have a new job, back in Australia. I haven’t felt like writing for a while and I have been trying to finish various administrative tasks that really don’t float my boat and so sadly, I drag my feet and try to catch up on sleep. But as much as I miss home when I’m not there, after the past 18 + months of being in and out of Ukraine and the surrounding countries, it’s fair to say that when I wasn’t there, I felt a strange emptiness, especially as the conflict is very much ongoing and in some areas has got markedly worse. That certainly doesn’t mean that the whole of Ukraine is under fire all of the time, but the whole of Ukraine is still liable to be hit by missiles and there are still a lot of folks there doing their best to help the people.

This arch in Kyiv was originally dedicated to the ‘friendship’ between Ukraine and Russia. It’s now just known as ‘friendship arch’

Over my last deployments there I found myself spending long periods travelling by road from the North to all points of the compass and I saw the Cemeteries in all of the small towns full of floral tributes and military banners flying. Official estimates of fatalities are around 70, 000. Those sources who are in the know and it isn’t public knowledge, estimate that Ukraine has had almost a quarter of a million people, military and civilian killed and injured. Despite that, the Ukrainians are a people who aren’t giving up.

At one of our bases, we noted a surge in ‘strangers’ coming in and out of the hotels. The staff in one, some of whom speak Russian, recognised the strangers accents whenever they spoke Romanian or English and they knew that they were Russian, even when they were travelling on foreign passports. The hotels realised what was going on and with a nod from the intelligence services, simply refused to take the new guests. It was interesting to note that they complained about the cost of everything in the cafes and restaurants and didn’t seem 100% comfortable being anywhere nice.

I had experienced several unnerving incidents when out for early morning walks, as described in a previous post. I started to see the absence of the normal with people I had never seen before walking the routes I regularly covered. They greeted me in English each time and became aggressive when I answered them in in Romanian. They were clearly trying to discover what foreigners were out and about that time of the morning, for whatever reason.

It became ridiculous with the newcomers trying to listen into your conversations and look at your laptop screen when you were checking your email in the business centre. Several times, I slammed the lid of my laptop shut as a response to some very obvious snoopers trying to edge around the back of my chair (which was almost against the wall!) and trying to see what I was doing. It got worse when there were uniformed US Military staying at the hotel and I wasn’t sure if it was their electronic ‘hoovers’ at work on the internet or Ivan’s, but whatever it was, it really slowed the internet down. Some time later I was talking to a retired diplomat who worked as a contractor advising the embassy there. He confirmed that at that time the Brits and the Poles had brought their TSCM (Technical Surveillance Counter Measures) people into the hotel to ‘debug’ the rooms they were using and found numerous listening devices and even some hidden cameras. Maia Sandu, the Moldovan President confirmed the Russian had been planning a coup at that time, so clearly they had been fairly advanced in their planning.

Because of the nature of my previous work I did get to see a lot of the country and I don’t know why I was surprised but Ukraine has many castles dotted around and maybe I’ll post about them another time. Kyiv also has fantastic buildings and there are some great historical statues in beautiful squares, which I loved to walk though, with one eye on the nearest air raid shelter of course.

This is a feminist addition to the Princess Olha (Olga) statue. It’s a protest against the fact that bullet proof vests are not made with women’s bodies in mind. There are moves afoot to change that apparently.

The beautiful blue St. Micheals Cathedral.

St. Micheals is at the eastern side of Mykhailvska square. It’s also on the edge of an escarpment that overlooks the Dnieper river. The constant gregorian chants from the monks who live in the surrounding complex are hypnotising and its easy to spend an hour or more in there listening and looking at the icons and paintings. I didn’t ever have that kind of time however.

Now that I am back in Australia and in a new job, Ukraine is behind me but its not going to leave me. Time for a new chapter. Literally.

Ukraine atmospherics (UKR7)

My current location is a small city in a relatively safe area. I’m not going to be specific for reasons of operational security. Especially given my new readership. It has been a peaceful place, but of course the war has brought it’s own trauma to the people who live here and those who have been relocated here.

We are still establishing safe houses and refuges for our clients staff who are evacuating from the cities due to the ongoing attacks and of course, the targeted destruction of infrastructure. It’s getting much colder now and winter is certainly coming. The 21st of December is officially winter and that’s a few weeks away yet, but you can feel it in your bones.

One of the benefits of maintaining a presence in one place for a long period of time is that you get to know the patterns of life in a location. I have mentioned those patterns before in the context of anticipating enemy action by looking for the ‘absence of the normal’ which in an urban setting is shuttered shops, deserted squares, no women and children on the streets etc. As an ‘operator’ or soldier, that tells you that something might be about to happen and you’d better prepare accordingly.

Currently in Ukraine, unless you’re on the front line and I am not, the war comes to you when you are least expecting it, in the middle of the night, when you are sleeping or in the day when you’re out shopping or picking the kids up from school. It comes in the form of missiles and suicide drones in the main and despite a very good air defence network, there’s often little to no warning. Consequently, most of the casualties are civilians and it’s heartbreaking to see how many victims there are every day. The government doesn’t release figures of its military casualties, but it certainly does with its civilian victims as it hardens everyones hearts even further against the invaders.

I mentioned that I am in a safe area and it’s really quite beautiful. However, a lot of the architecture could be politely described as ‘Soviet’ and it’s falling apart, but in the older part of town, the buildings are like ageing actresses, still classically beautiful, but with softening features. In this particular town, the older buildings are set around a large park and a lake that is magnificent in summer. I make myself speed march around it a few times almost every morning and as I can’t get out of the habit, you really get to know the ‘patterns of life’

As I set out at around 06:30, it’s still dark at this time of the year. The temperature commonly hovers between -1 and +4 degrees Celsius most mornings. There’s occasionally a frost and the dirty puddles crunch underfoot on the way to the park. Everyone is rugged up and has their heads down. Occasionally someone will make eye contact, but that’s unusual. This is another hangover from when the Russians were in charge. Anyone who was overtly friendly was deemed suspect and a potential spy, to be avoided at all costs.

On my route, I see the same people, almost every day and now that I am almost part of their pattern of life, some of them will acknowledge me with a ‘Dobry den’ the universal ‘good day’ greeting that can be used at any time of day. As dawn starts to break, the first people I see are usually the homeless. Some of them live rough, in a makeshift camp on the edge of the lake. The council don’t like this and they have pulled their shelters down. Like a lot of homeless people everywhere, they live with substance abuse habits combined with mental illness and since I have been walking here, I have seen two suicides and heard of a couple more. They rarely make eye contact but the exception is one very small grimy but attractive looking lady who does the rounds of the rubbish bins first thing in the morning. She will look you directly in the eye, probably deciding whether you are a threat, part of the furniture or a mark. I said a loud ‘Dobry den’ to her one day and each time she sees me now, she always returns the greeting, but in English with her gap toothed smile. There’s no real blending in here clearly.

The next human I usually see is someone who reminds me of the Russian President in his ‘shirt off, most masculine’ pose. ‘Vlad’ as I call him, works out by the lake edge to the beat of fast paced techno music shirtless even in this weather, with an automated bell ringing out to signal to him the time to change from the barbell to the dumbbell. He always has two or three dogs lying nearby with flashing collars, so he can see where they are in the dark. There are two not unattractive, middle aged ladies, with full faces of makeup at seven in the morning, watching everyone with a slightly predatory side eye as they smoke their morning cigarette by the coffee stand. They already smell of peroxide, cheap perfume and hairspray and so I call them the beauticians. I wonder if they are coming back from work or about to go to it?

A very large Mastiff dog ambles along the the path, dragging a very short, ruddy faced man with a body shaped like the dwarf known as Gimli in the Lord of the Rings. He has no beard, but is as confidently aggressive as his namesake and he always waves and says ‘Dobry’ to me. I call him the Mayor as everyone who passes always stops to talk to him and shakes his hand.

The park has a lot of water birds and both red and black squirrels. I haven’t seen any other mammals, other than the stray dogs, but I do regularly see a distinctive white pigeon with a grey blaze on his left shoulder. I always look out for him in the one place and Jack, (my colleague mentioned in UKR6), dubbed the bird my ‘spirit animal’ Occasionally days will go by when I don’t see him and I feel strangely sad.

There is a lovely older couple (actually, probably my age…) who always walk together. She is small, he is tall and I see she holds his hand tightly, has her forearm wrapped around his and she tucks her head into the hollow near his armpit. The first time I saw them she smiled broadly at me and unbidden wished me a ‘good morning’ in perfect English. It was probably the pasty white legs in shorts that gave me away. I like to imagine that they were two people who got together later in life and are now absolutely devoted to each other and can’t bear to be apart. Apropos of nothing, I am unaccountably reminded of the park bench in the movie ‘Notting Hill’ that is inscribed “For June who loved this garden, from Joseph who always sat beside her”

There is a park admin building with a very well looked after loo half way round and the park workers gather here in the morning before fanning out to clean the place up. It was in this area where Jack and I came across a body half in and half out of the lake. I thought I recognised him as one of the rough sleepers whose shelter had been torn down a few days previously and his sightless eyes were staring accusingly towards the park building. One cold morning I saw a man in an old ski jacket standing oddly by the water. I had wondered if he was fishing, or perhaps peeing. It wasn’t until my second lap when the light had improved, that I noticed he hadn’t moved and as I looked closer, I saw that he’d hung himself from a tree while standing upright. The park workers were moving grimly towards him, so I carried on. He had gone by the time I passed the spot again.

There is an old derelict hotel close to the water that looks slightly sinister when there’s mist on the surface of the lake. Recently, I saw that it obviously still had power going to it as there were lightbulbs burning where you wouldn’t expect them to be. There is also a small dilapidated jetty by the waters edge and there are usually a couple of hardy individuals who like to dive in off it and swim the width of the lake, competing with each other not to pant loudly because of the cold, instead nonchalantly exchanging pleasantries as they pass each other. Non swimming men surrounded by last nights empty beer cans smoke and talk quietly to each other and I am pretty sure that at least some of them are the rough sleepers who have moved from the lake shore to the derelict hotel. Hopefully, the building offers more shelter than a tarpaulin.

Despite the cold, there are fishermen and they are all men, sitting on upturned buckets by the edge as I lap the lake for the first time. I have never seen anyone pull anything large enough to eat out of the green soupy looking water but there must be something worth catching as they spend a lot of time trying. As I pass them, I am reminded of the old gag – a passer by calls out to the old fisherman hunched over his rod and asks “what is there to catch in there? “Weils disease” replies the man. Yep, I won’t be swimming.

Welcome Tovarishch (UKR6.5)

A rainy night in Ukraine

I am delighted to report that since my latest (last) post regarding my adventures in Ukraine and the surrounding countries, I have acquired a distinctly new demographic of readership and I’d like to thank and welcome the humans among them to “the bear and the bees”

Around ten days ago I became aware that the number of hits on this site were rocketing through the roof (pun intended) and that several thousand ‘people’ were viewing the page daily. I noted that a number of them were kindly leaving comments for me in either abusive English, (presumably abusive) Russian Cyrillic or what was obviously auto generated rubbish.

Never one to look a gift (reader) in the mouth and instead of cutting off the flow immediately, I watched the influx of messages and determined that a small number of readers were probably genuine but that the rest were more likely creatures who live under bridges. I have to say that the ones who had interesting or amusing insults to offer, I didn’t block them out of hand, but nor did I think that I’d allow them out onto the page. To those who don’t like what I write and not just because it’s rubbish, but because it contradicts your ‘truth’ – welcome anyway. I realise that you’d prefer to get more exposure for your employers/handlers/feeders and I apologise for now blocking you from commenting, but do please keep reading anyway.

For those genuine readers, I have few posts almost ready to go, but the events out here are keeping me so busy, it’s hard to finish something when you’re always out the door and sleep/food/gin are also a priority.

All the best,

Jerry.

In praise of the UAZ (UKR6)

I have been passing a number of unusual looking vehicles on the road in Ukraine. They literally looked like a bread bin perched high up on wheels and I guessed that they must be old Soviet stock. After all, no one else could have built something that strange surely?

This strange looking vehicle is called a Uaz pronounced ‘Waz’ or more properly ‘Uaz Bukhanka 452’, they are solid Russian 4WD vans with absolutely no notion of comfort whatsoever. Buhanka actually means ‘loaf’ so the makers knew what it looked like! When I first saw one, it actually reminded me of the old snub nosed Bedford vans that trundled around the UK in the 70’s. I also learned to drive in the classic British Leyland Sherpa van, so ‘unusual’ looking vans are kind of in my blood.

This very smart version has been done up as a camper van (not my picture)

In Moldova and the Ukraine, most of the vans are driven as either government or farmers vehicles or occasionally community ambulances. Either way, they don’t attract much attention locally, except from foreigners like me. There is a small problem with attracting attention from foreigners in the Ukraine as they seem to have been pressed into use as field ambulances, troop carriers and even field kitchens and understandably the military types driving them don’t much like pictures being taken of them for fear that fifth columnists (spies) might be plotting their locations for Russian saboteurs. This is a real concern as spies are sneaking around from time to time and no-one has any risk tolerance. That’s why I have pulled a few of these pictures from the internet, as I didn’t much fancy getting a kicking by the roadside for a picture!

This ones a Russian troop carrier. Comfort not required….

My paranoia related to the situation manifested a couple of days ago when I headed down to the border with my colleague Udar. Udar was previously Head of the Moldovan Presidential Bodyguard. He is a really low key good guy, with loads of contacts, which is absolutely what we need when we have to pull rabbits out of hats. And we do pull many rabbits out of a range of hats sometimes.

Udar is also licensed, as a retired Colonel, to carry a firearm. This is totally unnecessary in Moldova as its currently one of the safest places I have ever been to, but I think it makes him feel ‘complete’ so I keep quiet, even when he tucks it in my seat back for ‘safekeeping’ He does occasionally reach over the back of my seat to check that it’s still there, which is a little worrying, but again, he’s a professional so…

I seem to have spent a lot of time in the car recently getting from A to B ‘fixing’ things and sourcing more accomodation for the poor buggers who have been displaced, but it’s also a very good way to see the country. The countryside is stunningly beautiful and so I asked Udar to pull over by the side of the road by a particularly spectacular sunflower field, so I could take pictures.

It’s no coincidence that the Ukranian flag is blue on top and yellow at the bottom – although that was originally based on the wheat fields.

We hadn’t stopped for a while and so after taking some pictures, I decided to wander over to the edge of the field and water the flowers, so to speak. I had no sooner contemplated the scene than I was stunned to hear two quick shots behind me and I dived to the ground. Expecting to see a Spetsnaz snatch squad team pounce and bundle me into their own covert Uaz van. I made like a mole and tried to burrow into the now wet undergrowth. Udar, who by now had picked up the two pheasants that he’d shot through their chests with his 9mm, quite seriously asked me what I was doing? I of course, claimed that I had dropped my phone and was just looking for it. He shrugged and didn’t seem to mind that the birds were almost turned inside out by the large rounds and after stuffing them into a plastic bag, he put them in the boot of the car, presumably for dinner.

Udar later recounted a story to me about just how basic the “Uaz’ was. He told me that the van didn’t even have an interior light, let alone heating or a radio. Here’s a couple of pictures;

*The still basic interior of a later model.*

Perfect for moving your potatoes around…

Obviously, not having an interior light meant that you couldn’t do things like read a map inside the vehicle and that was recognised eventually as a bit of a drawback and so rather than solve what was obviously for them a costly engineering challenge, they published an addendum to what was the ‘owners manual’

Translated, this paragraph says

“Position the vehicle perpendicular (90° ± 4.5°) to a white or light colored flat wall at a distance of 2.4 to 6 meters. Set the parking brake lever to the activated position. Set the light switch 29 (Fig. 2) to position III. Set the high beam switch 31a (fig. 2) to the ON position. The headlights reflected from the wall will illuminate the interior”

Well, that was one way of getting around the lack of interior light…

Heading into western Ukraine with still ringing ears, Udar told me a story of when he was a young boy and his father was in charge of a ‘Kolkhoz’ – one of the old Soviet collective farms. He had an ex military Uaz, still in its drab green colouring. They both went out with a couple of uncles mushroom hunting in a thick forest, some way from their home. He recalled that the Uaz needed to be repaired every 15kms or so, as it would either overheat or the transmission would ‘stick’ The Uaz also has a very high centre of gravity and the uneven roads, plus an unspecified amount of vodka, conspired to cause the Uaz to slowly topple over to rest on its side. The occupants, including the 8 year old Udar scrambled out and luckily they were none the worse for the experience. They could not push the van back onto its wheels and Udar’s father explained to him that the Uaz was very tired and that it needed a good rest. They eventually trudged out of the forest and got a lift back to their village on the back of a tractor. The Uaz reportedly was undamaged, or at least not as much as their pride.

On another trip, I met up with one of my colleagues at a town just south of Lviv. ‘Jack’ is a former American Green Beret and has an extensive military history in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like most special forces soldiers, Jack doesn’t talk much, but when I mentioned the Uaz, his eyes lit up and he told me that he’d been driving around Diyala province in Iraq, picking up human sources of information and having them share their intelligence in the back – i.e. paying them for it, before dropping them off again. He knew that the white Toyota land cruiser he’d been issued attracted too much attention and he’d long been on the look out for a lower key vehicle that would blend in better with its surroundings.

One day, he heard of an Iraqi Colonel who was in charge of a transportation depot. He was told that the Colonel had dozens of Uaz trucks, some jeeps and even a couple of tanks under his very loose control. Jack met the Colonel, who turned out to be a disturbingly shifty, unkempt individual who might have made Benny Hill look like a pillar of the community and opened a conversation with him. By the second meeting, the Colonel had already signalled his desire for some pornographic magazines, which as you might imagine, weren’t exactly hard to find in your average Coalition barracks.

By the next meeting, Jack had mentioned he was interested in a new ride and after an initial bargaining period he chose the nastiest looking but most mechanically sound Uaz (sound is a relative term). The cost of this prize turned out to be a small pile of porno magazines, two half empty whiskey bottles and a carton of cigarettes. The van was, as Jack recalled, the easiest vehicle to maintain he’d ever had and with only a ball of string, gum and some masking tape, it ran for several months and never let him down. What a bargain!

Arriving in Kyiv a couple of days later, we checked into a small but very swanky hotel in the city centre. It was owned by a very rich local sporting identity and was the height of chic, with its dark decor and sensual artwork on the walls. After checking in, I noticed that it had some interesting items in the mini bar. Modesty prevents me from describing the contents of the ‘love box’ but suffice it to say that if I hadn’t been alone and the TV was broken, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Although I was weary, our meetings weren’t until the next day and so I asked the front desk staff to find out what was on at the Opera house, which was very close by. It turned out the show for that night was ‘Natalka Poltavka’ a well known Ukrainian tale that according to the plot summary ‘reveals the best features of the Ukranian national character – nobility, moral purity, spiritual strength and courage’. I didn’t get all of the nuances, what with it being in Ukranian, but it was fun, more of a comic opera and the lead character, ‘Natalka’ was fantastic, beautiful as well as having a great voice.

This was Jacks first Opera and coming from Illinois, I don’t think he knew exactly what to expect, but the 121 years old Opera house was lovely, with an amazing ornate ceiling and the most beautiful painted silk curtains and drapes. I was very impressed, even after having been to some really lovely theatres over the years. I couldn’t help but sneak glance at Jack when the band started up and the curtain raised. I was hoping for something like a Julia Roberts/La Traviata ‘face lights up’ moment in Pretty woman, but his usual stoic expression continued… Like myself, Jack has a habit of falling asleep in the cinema but both of us stayed awake for the whole show and we really enjoyed the experience.

What a ceiling!

All in all, it was a great series of trips and interesting conversations and I am reminded that everyday, I learn something new.

Bringing in the refugees (UKR3)

Very early in the morning, I dashed downstairs for a short notice trip out to the border. The day before I had been feeling a little deskbound until I received the word that seven Seamen were being extracted from Odessa and that they were now on the way to the border with Moldova. The vessel was Russian owned but aside from the three most senior officers onboard, the seven crew members were Filipino and Indian. It was the ‘Odessa 7’ that I had to meet at the border.

I set off from the hotel in a brand-new Mercedes Sprinter nine-seater van. My driver, who I am calling Alexei Sale, because of his stunning resemblance in every way to the UK comedian (google him if you don’t know who he is) and he seemed like a decent guy. Not only did Alexei look like him, but he also sounded like him and had the dead pan delivery of his namesake. I was to test his sense of humour in the hours to follow with my numerous requests for quick comfort breaks – in my defence I’d had a few nervous cups of tea whilst waiting to leave.

Leaving Bucharest, I was quite impressed with the Centro district of the city, which had the usual unbelievably expensive luxury shops, opened for 000.01% of the population and I saw a number of busy restaurants and bars that if I ever had the time, I wouldn’t mind checking out. It’s minus three degrees now and everything is covered in a layer of fine snow. I loved the twinkly lights in the trees evoking a mini Champs Elysees feel and it really did look lovely. The local boy racers were making the most of the icy roads and they’re drifting around the central roundabout at ridiculous speeds with the Police looking admiringly on.

Alexei and I were sniffing each other out like two dogs circling each other to see how we are going to work together and I’m pleased to note that he grins and nods to my first (of many) “Eeeesss Naiiiice” Borat references. He then feels comfortable enough to start blaming Gypsies for all the countries current woes and I know he’s going full on Romanian Gypsy hater on me. Hopefully, there’s no sneaky mankeeni wearing or manly wrestling contests going on at any stage of the trip.

I had taken the opportunity to hurriedly empty the mini bar of snacks before I left and we munched along in a companionable silence for a while. It’s going to be a 24-hour round trip at least and I’m beginning to feel like it might be an interesting trip.

I had brought one of the fantastic Marriott pillows with me and acquired a blanket from housekeeping and so it didn’t take too long for me to sneak down to the back of the van and stretch out. By the time I had woken it was dawn, minus seven degrees and we were hurtling through the countryside towards the border with Moldova. Alexei claimed that I snored (I probably did) throughout my recent eyelid inspection and I tried to make it up to him with a few more Borat gags. He gave me such an Alexei Sayle side eye, that I had to ask him if he knew who he was. He nodded, said ‘the young ones’ and that he’d lived in London for a couple of years.

We arrived at the Romanian/Moldova border in the very early hours and I reached for my outsized Australian passport stuffed with numerous visas and handed it over. Alexei rolled his eyes at the look on the border guards face as he grimly thumbed through each page rotating the various stamps 180 degrees, all whilst making us stand outside in the biting wind. Once through that checkpoint, we were at the Moldova side. I whipped out my skinny and rarely used UK passport and we breezed through formalities with a shouted ‘look out for the gypsies’ warning ringing in our ears.

Moldova is a small agricultural country and I’d like to say that it’s beautiful, but I cannot, but only because we were head down barreling towards the border and everything was a blur. We passed through many quiet farming hamlets with people trudging towards their places of work down the frozen muddy roads. Eventually, we arrived at a field with several parked buses, half a dozen cars and people feverishly erecting tents. We knew that our team across the border were four hours away at least, so we decided to get some shuteye. This time Alexei snored. A lot.

*The reception area was just opening and within an hour there were several hundred people right here*

We awoke to a woman screaming just outside the bus and I could see one middle aged lady flailing her arms and clearly in extremis. I asked Alexei what was going on and he listened for a moment before telling me that she’d lost her husband in the fighting two days before. She had brought her two ‘boys’ 18 and 19 years old with her to the border in the hope that she could get them out. He also told me that she would have known that the authorities would stop them and turn them back to fight, but that she had tried to get them out anyway.

Sure enough, they had taken her boys off to fight and she was understandably beside herself. She had plenty of kind people wanting to help her and the ICRC (Red Cross) people quickly put her into an ambulance and drove off. Before we collected our people, we saw another two similar incidents, with small, confused children standing around whilst their Mums completely lost their minds. Thankfully for all, they were quickly helped and led away.

In the three hours we had been napping, a small, tented city had been erected behind us. It had a proper field hospital, canteen, showers and toilets, as well as rows of very smart looking inflatable tents. The inflatable tents were especially impressive as they are double walled and therefore easier to keep warm, but I still wouldn’t want to have to sleep in them for any length of time.

Alexei had just begun an ‘I was stabbed by Gypsy’ story when my bladder forced me to get out from under my blanket. I’d been hydrating myself in the previous days to make up for my dehydration during the flights to get here and that was severely testing my bladder control. By this time, things were becoming critical and so I excused myself and trotted over to the row of original primitive thunderboxes that had been put there in the early hours. They were predictably horrific, but needs must and the poor buggers arriving needed the new clean facilities more than I did.

We got a call that our people were just approaching the border point some 4km down the road and even though the refugees were being bused from the border, it wasn’t cut and dried that they’d be able to get through in short order, so we talked our way past the Police barricades, we parked up and closed in on the relatively clear crossing point. I say relatively clear, because there was quite a queue on the other side, just not on ours. As ‘cash is king’ during these situations, I had a large amount of money to hand over to a contact who brought the group to us, but they had to turn around and drop the evacuees in order to get back to Odessa before the curfew forced them to sleep in their van by the side of the road in questionable safety. I ended up bringing the cash back to much ribbing from my colleagues but it went down successfully the next day.

Our people walked across the border with their bags and we were able to load them in the van. I’m still trying not to show faces, but this hopefully gives you an idea of our pick up.

They were tired and compliant in the way that people who know they have no control over their destiny are, but after a good meal in a warm restaurant nearby, we hightailed it back to Bucharest.

This was only one of the constant 24 hour runs to and from various border crossing points, but this one was mine, it was 27 hours long and it’s going to stay with me for a while.

The Ukraine evacuations (UKR2)

(Not in Ukraine – they are actually just down the road from our house, but the sunflower is Ukraine’s national flower and I like the picture)

Well, things are certainly happening here in the Balkans. I mentioned that I am down here to help evacuate and relocate the families of our clients staff. but it’s not just one client, there are many and of course, there are many, many families.

To be clear here, I am not in the Ukraine, I am currently in Bucharest, very safe and in a nice hotel. As I was reminded recently (thanks Jan), I am not as young or as fast as I once was, so the running around is best left to those who can. That fact was made clear by the recently banged up finger (previous post). It’s almost healed now but I don’t have full movement yet. Twenty years ago of course, I would have stupidly shrugged it off, slapped a band aid on it and picked up my suitcase. Hang on, that’s exactly what I did…

The Russians have opened a huge can of worms here by invading the Ukraine and whilst the likely outcome of all this is sadly obvious, it’s not preordained and I suspect that they have been surprised about the level of resistance they are meeting. All men between 18 and 60 (Military Aged Males or MAM’s) have been called up and many of their families have refused to leave their men. I can totally understand that, but like anyone who watches the news, we are seeing shocked and dazed kids with haunted looking mothers. It’s cold here, very cold at night and snowing intermittently throughout and all this is such a tragedy. The Mums have the pinched hyper vigilant look of people who just don’t know what is going to become of them, their kids and the menfolk they leave behind. I have a number of photographs that would show you what its like, but to post them feels obscene.

My company has people in most of the surrounding countries and we have set up safehouses close to the Ukrainian border. Our teams are collecting people from inside the Ukraine and plucking the families away and getting them to the reception teams either side of the border as soon as they can. As I mentioned, some people refuse to leave the country, which is their choice and we’re running an invacuation program for them. Yes, invacuation is a real word and it’s pretty much what it says on the tin – we get them out of immediate danger to a safer part of their country and put them up in temporary accommodation.

The temporary accommodation is usually not what you’d book yourself and we’re using a church in one city.

*It might not look much but it’s a temporary home for many*

We, or another agency sets them up and they have basic life support (food, water and beds) and not much else. Obviously, their employers will help in the medium term to long term and they do, but there’s a fair bit of expectation management that needs to be done when evacuating affluent individuals as opposed to real people.

The folks I have just been working with are a case in point. They are a luxury goods company and as you can imagine, there’s a lot of money in luxury goods and a lot of the people in that game are aristocratic, rich or influential, or just think they are. Think of the snotty shop assistants in the movie ‘Pretty Woman’ who are mean to Julia Roberts character. They are used to certain standard of living and level of deference from people they deem to be less than themselves.

The clients had been advised to begin evacuations three weeks ago, when tensions were mounting and the intelligence services noted the mobilization of the Russians. They hadn’t really done anything to prepare, other than talk to us, which actually is a pretty good start. Ivan of course, had no shortage of time to plan for their invasion and he’s an expert proponent of their military doctrine called Maskirovka. This literally means ‘masking’ and what they did is mask their intentions with military exercises near the border, large troop movements coupled with denials from the very top that anything untoward was going on -‘nothing to see here’….

The West was not fooled, but they didn’t mobilise for fear that they’d escalate the situation. It’s a bit like sleight of hand, with the magician distracting your attention with what they are saying and doing with one hand and the opposite hand performs the trick. Of course, when the sun is shining and no one’s shooting at you, no one wants to leave their nice warm apartment and it’s easy to become complacent.

When you evacuate a group, you always try to ‘stage’ people at a central location to make the lift easier but obviously, if you have groups with children, as we did, you try having those with kids get together the day before so as to avoid curfews and fighting on the streets. There was no way that the families (remember, Mums, kids and elderly relations, no MAM’s) could get themselves out on the streets under these conditions so we’d make arrangements to pick them up from their homes. Single females, we’d try to get them to co locate, if the conditions were safe enough and at that stage, moving around was tense, but relatively safe. This lot refused to co locate, probably thinking that the others home was not fancy enough.

We’d arranged for 8 seater mini buses to make the lift, but the word went around that all mini buses and vans were being stopped and searched, for fear that men would be trying to escape their call up. Our service provider substituted cars for the mini buses and one wasn’t up to scratch for one of our princesses. She refused to get in the car (a repurposed taxi), demanded a Mercedes, with more room for her luggage and guess what, she got left behind.

As with any war, there are profiteers and in this one, a lift with security costs at least USD100, 000. Our client has probably spent the best part of a Million dollars getting its people to safety, but they can well afford it.

Another poor lady, who we were expecting bring a small dog with her got in the car with her dog, but also a baby. It wasn’t her baby, but her sister had begged her to take the child out with her as she decided to stay with her husband.

Imagine that goodbye.

We got them out to the Slovakian border.

We had managed to get one of the three groups to a city called Lviv, almost 600 kms to the West of Kyiv where we thought that we had accommodation confirmed for a overnight break in the journey to the border, but with 200, 000 refugees coming in, someone had gazumped us and a fistful of cash beat our promise to pay… Some quick thinking resulted in sharing a hostel room with another group, but as I explained earlier, if you’re expecting anything more than basic life support, you’re out of luck.

*My basic life support – no mate left behind!* *Note: it has its own survival bag.*

One of our Princesses took one look at the room, with 15 beds in it and refused to stay there. She insisted on a “five star hotel” which of course, existed in that city, but they were all booked several times over. She slept in the car.

Of course, there are exceptions to all of my awful generalisations and we got a Mother (Olga*), son and their small dog Sam, out of Odessa in southern Ukraine. Clearly, her husband/partner had been called up and she’d sensibly decided to get to a safe country – in this case, Poland. We knew she was traveling as a small family unit so we were doubly careful to try and make a frightening experience as calm as possible. We were also concerned about the dog, in terms of how big it was, but we needn’t have worried.

*not her real name

Sam was clearly a handbag dog.

Olga and her little family were brought to the Romanian border by our team and handed over to another driver. The girls in our office were so excited after seeing the picture of Sam, that they were waiting in the hotel lobby when they arrived at our hotel. Olga was clearly bewildered at the sight of three very excited foreigners jumping up and down at the sight of them, but she quickly smiled and we even managed to momentarily distract her ten year old from his screen. (a word to the wise, if you are ever evacuated, bring screens and batteries for any and all children).

We settled her into a very nice room and promised to come back in the morning so that we could all play with Sam. We did and had a mini photoshoot with the family before we sent her on her way to Poland with a representative of her company.

Things are changing almost by the hour out here and sadly it’s probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Back soon.