Another full day has gone by with hyper anxiety levels and a splitting headache. The curfew has ended and people have been able to get out of their shelters to go shopping.
Aid is coming to Ukraine from Poland, my parents tell me that Malta too has been putting together donations of clothes and other supplies to go to the Polish / Ukrainian border.
I also saw a bus full of Israeli doctors on their way to Ukraine.
With Russia’s nuclear weapons pointed at Ukraine from Belarus we try again to convince the in laws to find a way out but they are adamant they don’t want to leave. Keeping in mind today is quiet with the talks going on so perhaps this kind of sense of false security has some bearing on this decision.
I offer to go to Poland and pick up the children if they can make it to the border, they do not want to send the children either. On the one hand I understand their decision not to be separated from their children and on the other I am absolutely horrified at the prospect on children dying in this war.
Twitter promptly reminds me that yes, children die in wars and a child that looks very much like Anton’s niece stares at me from the screen. My stomach is in my throat. Insisting doesn’t help, their parents have to decide for them what they think is best.
Helplessness swims in my upper body, I feel like I am drunk, another day not concentrating and barely doing the basics, eat, drink, doing small tasks. I desperately try to think of ways I can make a difference and so we open our house to refugees and Russian and Belarusian dissidents.
We will need local community support so we go to the community for help, our house is in no state to receive guests with no glass in the windows and no running hot water but we will do our best to make them feel safe.
In the meantime the talks are over and missiles fall once more on Kiev. More sanctions and something I have been pushing for with many other on social media, the start of the divestment from Russian oil and gas. It is slow but it is coming and this will hurt.
The threat of nuclear attack has prompted Germany out of it sleeping state and have moved troops to Lithuania in preparation to defend the border.
