There have been multiple cases of looting all over the country. Quite often perpetrators get caught red-handed either by passers-by or by territorial defense. After gentle “lecturing” they get taped to street light poles as a punishment.
In other cases Ukrainians work to prevent looting. A businessman was contacted via a hotline by his store’s neighbor in Kharkiv who wanted to let him know that he needed to move his goods, since the store windows were broken during the latest shelling of the city. The businessman’s team had already evacuated the city, so he asked for help through a city chat. In the matter of hours people showed up with two vans to help move the goods to the safe place. Before they showed up, a couple of neighbors, all civilians, guarded the store. While the goods were loaded, the police showed up three times, because other concerned neighbors kept reporting suspicious behavior))
Other than being helpful, Ukrainians are coping with the current nightmare with the help of humor. If we stop joking, it will be a really bad omen. Here are a couple of examples.
putin was so afraid of NATO destroying Russia that he did it himself.
The Head of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption of Ukraine thanked the russian defense minister for “an invaluable input in making sure that russian military means for attacking Ukraine got plundered” before the invasion started.
If you ask a Ukrainian volunteer to bring a living and breathing dinosaur, they will get it done in 10 minutes.
If you hear about brotherhood, common history and one nation, shoot in the direction of the sound!
Right now Europe is like a man that is ready to do anything for you just not today.
putin fired 8 generals over the failed invasion of Ukraine. That’s not true, at least 2 of them were “fired” by Ukraine!
Hot offer! A tour See Ukraine and Die! Cocktails included
russian TV these days: The enemy is cunningly attacking our fighter jets that are peacefully bombing its cities.
I hope no one will ever think or say that Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same.
Their wives and girlfriends send them here telling them to steal fur coats, gold, silver, and even mixers!
Their mothers encourage them to bomb civilians.
Their government sends them in unprepared, without proper clothing, ammo and food. It also has no interest in collecting their bodies littering our land.
Even after seeing that their target coordinates are in residential areas, they still carry out their orders.
They harass pregnant women who were lucky enough to survive the shelling of the Mariupol maternity ward on social media.
2/3 of them reportedly support putin’s ‘military operation’ and don’t bother learning the truth about it.
They forgot what freedom is, and wouldn’t be able to recognize it even if it smacked them in the face.
We elect our government, and question its every single move.
If we disagree with our gorvernment on minor things we discuss them, and try to persuade it. If it is something of importance, we explore other ways of influencing it. If our differences are civilizational, we tell it to go in the direction of the russian warship.
No one is making us fight, and we aren’t on drugs. We are fighting for our country, our freedom, our future, and for our right not to be russian, even if some of us speak the same language as them, or go to the same church.
And as soon as we win and start rebuilding, we will go back to openly questioning our government and keeping it in check. Because this is what free people do.
Lavrov admitted today that they bombed the maternity ward in Mariupol on purpose, because that is where the Azov battalion is based. It must be very difficult to tell heavily armed men and heavily pregnant women apart.
“We are not planning to attack any other countries. We didn’t attack Ukraine”. If this is not a direct threat, I don’t know what is.
While millions of Russians are ignoring the truth, living in their “there-is-nothing-we-can-do” bubbles or blaming everything on the West, Ukrainians are losing children, siblings, parents and loved ones. 100 a day in Mariupol alone.
We will never forget and I don’t think that we will ever be able to forgive.
These days the simplest “How are you?” is the most loaded question.
None of us are okay. Hate, anger, pain, guilt, determination, faith, hope – these are just some of the main emotions we have been feeling since February 24th. Right now the negative ones are winning.
My country is on fire right now, has been for the past 13 days.
Today Russian terrorists did not provide the green corridor that was agreed on for Bucha, a town close to Kyiv, where people are starving and freezing to death.
They targeted a hospital and a maternity ward in Mariupol, we are still waiting to find out how many people were killed. Again, a hospital and a maternity ward!!!
Follow up to my previous post. Maternity ward in Mariupol after shelling. Those who give such orders and carry them out are not humans, for there is nothing humane left in them..
(No, an unnamed UN department, this is not a conflict)
Russian soldiers committing atrocities in my homeland are not unknowing naive people, they are monsters.
They are holding 300 000 civilians hostage without gas, water, electricity and heating in Mariupol without an opportunity to evacuate by refusing to uphold ceasefire. As a result, a child died of dehydration yesterday.
The ICRC also reported that Russians placed mines along the planned green corridor.
The situation is similar in many villages/towns/cities in the South, East and North of Ukraine.
They are shooting at evacuation and humanitarian aid vehicles, even the ones with Red Cross markings.
They are burying civilians in the rubble of their own homes.
They demolished a hospital with patients inside in Izyum.
They shot at a bus taking women to their shift at an orphanage, killing at least 3, near Mykolayiv.
They killed a 24 year old Ukrainian defender of the day his daughter was born.
They killed entire families trying to flee the war by cars or on foot.
Because of them 600 000 people had to leave Kharkiv alone. And that’s only by train. The city is still being shelled heavily.
Because of them more than 2 million people crossed our western border, leaving their homes and loved ones behind.
They have destroyed 211 schools. And tens of millions of lives.
We don’t need to be saved, what we need is a chance to save ourselves. Close the sky or provide us with means to do it ourselves. This is not a Ukraine problem!
Yesterday I had to do something that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to – say good bye to my beautiful Kyiv and my life there. But I ran out of excuses not to do it. And I need to give all those worried about me a break, they must be exhausted from daily check-ins)
(I am still in Ukraine, just in a safer location.)
Today our brave defenders shot down 2 Russian military jets and a couple of rockets over or near Kyiv…
I’ll see you very soon and we will have a ton more happy moments together. Love you and miss you already!
Putin is talking about not targeting civilians, while limiting his people’s access to the social media and effectively banning coverage of this “military operation” to hide the truth from them. Which most of them won’t even believe, or care about, since they are too upset with IKEA stores closing.
At the same time his soldiers are shooting up a green corridor in Mariupol, created to evacuate civilians, and staging a warm welcome for themselves in Kherson, where is reality people are refusing to even accept humanitarian aid, because they don’t want anything to do with occupants.
And cries for help from families stuck in basements, freezing to death under the rubble of their destroyed homes or starving in towns close to Kyiv must all be a bad dream. Which we will wake up from any minute now. And this feeling of total helplessness will go away with it.
Look at this picture very attentively. This is a map that a little Ukrainian girl drew while she and her family were fleeing Ukraine. The map of their route across Europe leading all the way back to her home, because “they need to remember how to get back there”.
We will come back home, rebuild, and make them pay for every single life lost or destroyed. Because we are Ukraine.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you what date or day it is today. Only that 9 days ago we were awoken a little after 5 am by explosions all around the country.
Each day Russia and Belarus bring us more destruction, death and immeasurable grief. Yesterday they purposefully bombed the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe. Who knows what they are going to do tomorrow. Yesterday 78 orphans from Kharkiv arrived in Kyiv, a city that is slightly safer but still the main enemy target.
Today is another day of us asking for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. But that is not going to happen. Then we will close our sky ourselves, but in order to do that we need more air defense means and the jets we were promised.
Today is another day of us looking for some sense of the old normalcy, be it the sound of a trash collector’s truck approaching, the smell of perfume in an elevator or favorite ice cream at the store.
10 days ago I was thinking about going to Milan at some point in March. Now in between air strike alerts I dream about this nightmare ending so that we can start rebuilding. And so that I can have a pizza at my favorite place.
Nataliya Melnik is a longstanding partner of the Free Market Road Show. She lives in Kyiv and is sharing her Facebook diary.
We wish her all the best!
If you want to support the Ukrainian people, have a look at http://helpukraine.center/en
The views expressed on austriancenter.com are not necessarily those of the Austrian Economics Center.
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Kyiv Update