Zakarpattia, 19th October, evening
It's a lovely autumn evening in Zakarpattia, I came to check on house build, finally, after nearly 2.5 years we are nearing completion. Furniture coming in now, final landscaping and what was to be our Winter mountain getaway is nearly done. Who knows, it may be our home.
The drive west saw very little military traffic, a couple convoys, but nowhere near what it used to be.
Less blockpost too interestingly, and although I know nearly everyone on each of them given my trips west every other week for evac or supply runs, I was surprised at how uninterested they all were. More women on them now, but the men mostly uninterested.
Dnipro is under attack pretty much from 3am to 11pm every day, constant drone and rocket alarms. I won't allow my wife or kids to go to shops or service stations now, mostly a precaution but the risks are real. People continue to exist as close to normal as they can, but it's not living.
In the old days pre war, we would jump on a plane in Dnipro, fly to Kiev around lunchtime which was a 45 minute flight, transit to London and be in west end for the theatre by evening, back the next day or day after if we felt like a nice dinner. Or down to Barcelona which was a 3.5 hour flight, for a Saturday lunch at Ibiza Club at Porta Olympica....
Instead, I lay in bed listening to the whine of drones, the pointless machine gun fire of retarded pvo groups, just waiting for the explosion to figure what was hit. And for what???
Rains have started in the east, not the full on rains of the rasputitsa, but they are coming. Evenings are cold. I hate the cold.
I listen every day to the war and geopolitical commentators, principly here on the Duran, and it feels like ground hog day.
I was just thinking today, I personally don't know anyone who has died in the past 6 months, I have seen plenty of injured and deaths during evacs, but they were not people I knew. Yet as I drive through villages on the way west, the flags in the cemeteries multiply in every village.
I hardly drink these days, but am on my second bottle of wine tonight, feeling a bit melancholy, touched with frustrated, a fair bit of anger blended in and a growing hatred of the western leaders who allow this. None are ignorant, it is not possible they could not realise what is happening to this country.
This conflict is entertainment for many in the world, a distraction, for others a massive source of wealth, but for the people of Ukraine, it is not. It is their reality, one very few of them asked for, and which very few today want. Children in Donetsk for 13 years have no other reality than this. How disgraceful.
Families without fathers, brothers, sons and for those who have lost limbs, without a future in a country that has no capacity to care for the elderly or infirm. Families broken up as wives and children forced to flee to Europe, where they are not wanted, and their husband's in peril.
End the war. End the carnage and let people live. Or, take the war to Europe and fuck up every single city and let people pay for the actions of their leaders. I don't care which, either one saves Ukrainian lives, and they have paid enough.
