Maidan

You and I are long-standing friends, of course, based on our shared compassion and concern for fellow human beings in venues where we can find an honest opportunity to make a positive difference in as many lives as possible. However, my view is largely from ground-level in Russia and Ukraine, and you know as well as anyone the difficulties I've encountered from this end while you've held down the fort in London.

From what I see and FEEL in Ukraine, Ukrainians are mostly very kind, gentle, and truly decent people who are still stunned from such as the sadistic abuses of the Soviet era, not least the Holodomor during Stalin's heyday. Few families in Ukraine were unaffected by Stalin's terror. It's very difficult to relate this to Westerners, even to a close friend such as you are. It's not something that can be expressed so much in words as in just living here and FEELING the culture in Ukraine day-to-day. The only way I can describe it is a lingering feeling of shock, pain, fear, but now with a real, genuine sense of new hope.

President Yushchenko's own father, for example, was a prisoner of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau. In his statement to joint session of US Congress on April 6, he said "I am a son of a nation that survived the most terrible tragedies of the 20th century, the Holodomor famine that took away 20 million lives of Ukrainians and the Holocaust." ( http://eng.maidanua.org/node/249 )

Given the worst of the worst that our countries -- UK and US -- have had to endure even given 9/11 in the US and Nazi V-1 and V-2 bombings of London and the UK during WW2, our national experiences pale in comparison to the relative percentage of lives lost to terrorism in the Ukrainian Holodomor alone. Thus, neither of us can really feel and fully understand the spiritual weariness of Ukrainians.

Consequently, it comes as little surprise to me that Ukrainians might seem a bit slow on the uptake and understanding of what people like you and I are trying to do solely for the sake of humanity with the borders of Ukraine. Ukrainians have been abused and terrorized for so long, by their own government, such that I think it is inevitable that it will take time, patience, and things as simple as love and commitment -- even though from "foreign" friends -- before Ukrainians can recover from abuses, horrors, and tragedies that you and I cannot truly understand.

I see very, very good people day in and day out who are now hopeful, but the previous pain and struggles from so many years persist in attitude and spirit. By default, that puts people like you and me as leaders in offering hope and direction to Ukrainians at the grassroots level while at the same time lobbying for support at the national level in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. That latter task is now nearing successful completion, due to massive lobbying efforts by many on the US side who have finally come to understand who Ukrainians really are and what the nation of Ukraine is really about.

Suspicion and skepticism about trying to improve life, via foreigners of any nationality, are the norm I see, and which surprises me not at all. Given the ignorance of our own countries' oversight and ignorance of a horror as great as the Ukrainian Holodomor, I can well understand why Ukrainians in their heart and soul are slow on the uptake of anything we might have to offer to improve lives in Ukraine.

What we are attempting will take time, and the greatest of patience before we have any right to hope or expect that we are, or might be, truly friends to Ukrainians. In the end, love will overcome, and I believe that my US compatriots from the US Peace Corps continue to lobby behind-the-scenes for the best interests of Ukrainians whom they have learned to love and respect exactly as I have.

Our efforts are just beginning. Earning respect, trust, and above all genuine love, takes time, patience, and commitment. I am here in Ukraine as long as it takes, and at this point as far as I can see, for the remainder of my life. That's all I can offer on my end, and I hope it might be enough to at least begin to make some real progress towards what I know you and I are both committed to.

Terry
Kharkiv