I've just had a long letter from my friend Olga in Kyiv. In fact, she's ethnically Russian, but is a Ukrainian citizen, and is whole-heartedly against Putin's politics. It's interesting to have a personal account. She writes, among other things:

'...Going back to Putin means constrained or absent freedom of speech, whispering in the kitchchens rather than open criticism of the government, lack of tolerance to others and loads of paternalism instead of self reliance and individual freedom.'

And

'...Since Dec last year, I think we all here have lived several lives.... This revolution has nothing to do with a cheerful Maidan of 2004. The struggle this year took enormous efforts and for so many, really courageous and decisive people, their lives. The ashy Maidan with burnt out buildings and roads stripped of cobble stone, used as weapon, is now drowned in flowers.

The greatest thing is that ex-president, an insult to any rational thinking person in Ukraine, has gone away! The last weeks of his rule were absolutely unbearable - the "new" laws labelled civil society organisations (with whom I work a lot) as "foreign agents", they had to register in a specific register, and refer in every activity to their funds as coming from abroad and suspicious.

Some civic leaders had to leave Ukraine, some were summoned to the Police and secret service for interrogations, the criminal cases were started for "laundering the funds acquired by illegal activities"!!!. It was like we moved back to Stalin's times of the 1930s.

Activists were "stolen", subject to tortures, intimidated and killed or left in the freezing cold and died... Like many, I also packed my backpack ready with the documents and the essentials, prepared to leave, if need be... '

And

'...All this saga is now behind, but the Russian threat/war is looming large, and Crimea, I think, as of yesterday, lost to RF.

The cracks between the zombied Russian population and us, in Ukraine, (aka 'nazis', 'fascists', 'terrorists', 'radicals', 'extremists') are now running across the family entities and long-term friends. We are traumatised by incessant anxiety awaiting any time that the Russian army starts its open offensive in the eastern regions of Ukraine.

In Crimea there are some 30 000 Russian troops and a lot of criminals and marginalised thugs working on a paid basis and intimidating the Crimean Tartars and pro-Ukrainian population. ...'

None of this bodes well.

Donna

Honour the Earth. Without it, we'd be nowhere.

Life is too important to take seriously.