Ukrainians are living through a hell on earth

‘Live long enough and you watch everyone go mad,’ the man said to me gloomily. It was around 2009, and I was listening to a former senior civil servant tell me what he had learned from a life spent in diplomacy.

I'm not sure even he envisioned seeing proper madness in a world leader until Putin’s televised hour-long pantomime earlier this week. Putin over those 60 minutes was a man marinating in rage and possessed of a worldview built on paranoia and ego.

The performance culminated in him recognising the ‘republics’ of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. The moment he did this he smashed the Minsk peace process designed – theoretically at least – to bring about resolution to the Russia-Ukraine crisis. From there, the next steps were obvious. The ‘leaders’ of the bogus republic then asked Russia to send in troops to help ‘keep the peace.’ Putin obliged, he was, he said, sending forces in help ‘de-nazify’ Ukraine – whose President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is of course Jewish. Never forget: as well as being a tyrant and a murderer, Putin also a world class troll.

Since then, too much of the debate has been all about Putin and Russia and Nato and us and the Americans. What has often been lost are the voices of those who matter the most in all this: the Ukrainians who are right now living through the hell on earth that is an invasion of their country.

I first went to Ukraine in March 2014, shortly after Russia seized Crimea, and just before the outbreak of war. I was one of the first western journalists into the occupied territories and spent many months in the country over 2014 and 2015. The friends I made there in Ukraine I know to this day. And every one them is now, in one way or another, dealing with the prospect of flight and death.

When it became clear yesterday that Putin was indeed invading, my friend ‘Viktor’, like so many others, set off – with his cat and possessions – toward western Ukraine. It was a fraught journey. ‘They promise another air attack in Kyiv at 12’ he told me. ‘My friends and I are in a traffic jam trying to leave Kyiv.’

‘Natilya’ is staying put to be with her mother. ‘I stay home for nearest days. Heard planes (I think ours) and sirens, so we hid in bathroom. People are fleeing, my neighbours stuck in traffic on the way to Lviv and think of coming back. My sister watched two missiles flying over her house, they hit Brovary, six dead there.’

On Friday morning I spoke to Anna, one of the bravest people I have ever met. An everyday Ukrainian mother, when the war began, she travelled over 50 times to the East to provide supplies to the badly under-equipped Ukrainian army. Anna is from Kyiv and has been leaving me voice messages about the evolving situation on the ground. Things are now getting really bad.

‘Some friends spent all night underground in the metro station underground. It was hell. I was in the ATO [Ukrainian army Anti-Terror Operation zone in the east] maybe 50 times – but I never saw such terrible things,’ she struggles to continue. ‘As far as I know the Russians are very close and my brother, who is fighting, is somewhere close, too. A lot of my friends are trying to leave the city, but that is becoming impossible because there is no fuel and huge traffic on the roads.’

‘Children practically live in the bomb shelters over the last few days. I think this is what world war two must have been like. This is unbelievable – it’s unbelievable what they are doing to us.’

We switched to normal messages after that. She told me that she was returning to Kyiv – which the Russian army is currently storming. She wanted, she told me, to help. ‘I can’t shoot I know’ she lamented, ‘if I could...’ ‘This is my land’ she continued. She would go back to Kyiv with her son, Ivan. ‘You’ll take Ivan?’ I asked, shocked. ‘Yes’ she replied. ‘He’s 18.’

I have always said this conflict is about more than just Ukraine. It’s about the former Soviet Union and Europe and the broader West, but it’s also about us.

Who, in the end, are we? When you strip away all the punditry and all the rhetoric and all the nonsense what faces us is a simple choice: Russian Kleptocrats or Ukrainians kids? It’s time to decide. And make no mistake: our answer will define the future for decades to come.