David McWilliams in Ukraine: One of the things not fully appreciated about displaced people is all the waiting they have to do: waiting for buses; waiting for trains; waiting for visas; waiting for passport stamps; waiting for it all to be over
There is no sense of panic; in fact, the opposite is the case. Quite how the trains keep running, the electricity and heating stay on and society ticks over is hard to fathom. But it does. The defiance of people under attack is truly phenomenal to observe. Call it spirit, courage, character, it’s hard to put your finger on exactly what it is but it’s not rage. Resilience for sure. And maybe a certain cheekiness.
The sun is now fading in the west, with the temperature dropping fast. These people, well used to queuing, steel themselves for a long wait at Przemysl train station. Many years ago in Moscow, I recall one of my earliest memories of the then Soviet Union wasn’t the ideology, the KGB or the oppression, but the little dancing-on-the-spot manoeuvres of the women trying to keep their feet warm while waiting in the queues for bread. I’m seeing the same jigs now.
The British welfare state was born on the beaches of D-Day. Similarly, the new Ukraine is being born in the killing fields of Bakhmut and Soledar, or at least that is the hope in liberal circles of Kyiv and Soledar, or at least that is the hope in liberal circles of Kyiv. The alternative could be Serbia and to a lesser extent Croatia, where some of the returning soldiers, frustrated at the lack of economic progress, turned to a diet of nationalism and atavism that has blighted both countries for two decades, and from which Croatia is only just emerging, while Serbia languishes.
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