Train Ride Into A War Zone: Returning to Kyiv (Warning: A Political Rant)
One of the best memories I’ve had in my half year backpacking trip in Europe in 1996 was the wonderful train rides. The beautiful forest landscapes blurring in motion, the relaxing rhythmic clanking of the rails. Lots of time to think, relax and process your day. The communal feeling you get meeting random interesting people, either locals or fellow travelers. So much fun. It’s been decades since a train ride as my business schedule never allowed for this.
But I’m taking the train from Lviv to Kyiv in October 2023 as there are no flights now and I’m excited. Kyiv is a place I’ve come to love, full of great memories and lots of friends. It was my home for the latter part of 2020 and most of 2021. But now it’s also a war zone experiencing concerted drone and rocket attacks by barbaric Russians in a senseless war now going on for one and half years. This is how long it’s been since I’ve last gone there.
I’ve so many thoughts going through my head. At the Lviv train station, I saw so many young and old Ukrainian soldiers in uniform coming and going. Many of them being welcomed joyfully by family or being seen off to the front and the war. The faces of worry and sadness are hard to forget. I’m so heartbroken seeing this.
But as a Canadian Ukrainian friend told me, she recently had dinner with some childhood friends who recently came back from the front. 3 guy friends who grew up together and who had not seen each other since the war began. She showed me the picture and described the incredible joy they had meeting each other after so long. Knowing their friends were alive after the uncertainty of being at war. How can one not be affected by this?
It’s infuriating when I see blatant evil ignorance & lack of compassion from soulless people like Elon Musk, David Sacks, Tucker Carlson, Vivek Ramaswamy, the hard right and left of America and their efforts to mock the Ukrainians and withdraw support for this country.
It’s infuriating to see US & Western Europe slow drip advanced weapons in, giving UKraine enough not to lose but not enough weapons to win. All the while as the war grinds down the flower of the Ukrainian populace. If they had spent any time in this country they would know the Ukrainians will fight on with or without us.
Why? Because of the consequent genocide that would happen in Russian victory. If you want to know the evil things that would happen should Russia win just ask Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs and Slovaks. Or even Germany. There is a reason statues of the Red Army “unknown soldier” are also called the “Unknown Rapist.” And ask Ukrainians who experienced Holodomor, a man made famine that killed and estimated 3-5M Ukrainians.
I hope this war ends soon. But in the meantime, I’ll be doing everything I can to help UKraine. And we in the western world need to continue supporting this amazing country with everything they need.
Remember Ukrainians are the ones being attacked and invaded (Just like in Israel by the Hamas terrorists for the record). They are the victims. This is about right versus wrong. If we fail Ukraine, then we have failed the free world we supposedly represent. But sadly as we’ve learned especially in this decade, the Kissinger saying seems to be true: “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”