CONTINUE
Of the importance of the Alliance protecting neighboring Poland with the Ukraine, he gives a good account of the fact that it has ordered the North American unit that evacuated Afghanistan in its most critical end, the 82nd Airborne Division, to reinforce the border, and that its front is the last hero to suffer the ramp of the last plane to leave Kabul airport, two-star general Chris Donahue. As if you don't feel safe.
“We are the border of NATO”, proudly sums up benefactor Szymon, a Pole, who left Radom, a city south of Warsaw, early Friday morning to drive four to the Khrebenno pass and bring Mrs. Kotelu, a Ukrainian, to meet with
his granddaughter Anastasia, 24, and his great-granddaughter Kristine, just three, leaving the war zone. The wait at the edge of the barrier becomes anguished and in Mrs. Kotelu irreproducible curses to Vladimir Putin and tears run over, come one cigarette after another, although she endures what is necessary with the poise that comes from knowing she is safe. The one she's falling for, that's priceless.
If it feels that diplomacy has no remedy, Poland is preparing to receive up to a million Ukrainians in this crisis, according to calculations by the ultra-conservative government of Andrzej Duda, which has already set up nine reception centers in front-line municipalities, in which it is Beds, food, medical assistance and information are offered for those who need it. This Friday, at some intersections, Medyka and at times in Dorohus, traffic jams of a hundred kilometers of vehicles accumulate. Not bad so much goodwill for authorities that last fall shook the seams of the West by returning the Syrian and Iraqi refugees that, yes, the uncomfortable Belarusian neighbor had artificially pushed to try to cause a European short circuit that, in some way, was the prelude to this. The Kremlin, it was already said then, was always behind that onslaught.
Exodus of the Ukrainian population
exodus from
the ukrainian population
black and white time
In Poland what are arriving since yesterday are broken families. Women and children, without their husbands and without their fathers, due to the order of Kiev, from its president Volodimir Zelenski, that all men of fighting age remain in the country, exactly those between 18 and 60 years old. An instruction that instinctively brings back the black and white of World War II and that is at the bottom of the slightly embarrassed crying – not yet torn, the shock does not allow letting go of the emotions – of the wives who are fleeing loaded with suitcases and one of the few toys they have been able to grab.
Upon their arrival on Polish soil, which was also yesterday on regular line buses, that's the way things are, family members are waiting for them directly. Like Anastasia, her grandmother, Mrs. Kotelu, who settled there many years ago and sheltered a massage establishment. She is one of the millions of Ukrainian, white, Christian, welcome immigrants who, it must be said, largely occupy domestic and unskilled jobs in the country, and who have opted for this exit especially since 2014, when they Russia voluntarily annexes the Crimean peninsula. There I already heard many that the imperialist ambitions of Moscow could only go further and that it was beginning to be convenient to guarantee the freedom, so appreciated, that Warsaw facilitated by exempting them from then on visas to travel. On the sidelines, it did not stop drawing attention yesterday that cars with license plates from Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic or even southern Germany would have landed at this Khrebenno pass. So big is the Ukrainian diaspora. Whatever it takes to keep them off the battlefield.
This neighborly relationship was not like this all the time, the massacre of Poles at the hands of the Ukrainians in the 40s is far behind, but a common adversary of the magnitude of Putin dilutes differences from the past. As an example, Szymon, who has accompanied Mrs. Kotelu in such a difficult situation, ditches that he almost feels like another Ukrainian and that, if he is on that side, he has no doubt about defending the territory. “But they can come here, security and welcome – he reiterates – that we are the last frontier of NATO”.
