Looking on at a surreal war from his home in Bishopstown
For Vadym Horobets and his family the war in his home country of Ukraine is a constant source of stress and worry.
Vadym Horobets grew up in Odessa, a port city in Ukraine on the Black Sea and moved to Ireland when he was 17. He’s lived here in Cork for more than 19 years and returns with his wife and two daughters every summer to the coastal city.
“It’s a very beautiful city, especially in the summer.”
As he told me, tourists from across Ukraine and neighbouring countries pour in for the “sun and sea”.
“My Dad is in Odessa now and I was chatting with him a half an hour ago,” Vadym said on the phone from his home in Bishopstown. His grandmother lives there as well as many of his friends from high school who are living in the city of nearly one million people.
“Where they are right now they’re just getting sirens every so often. Any planes in the air trigger the sirens and they all run down to underground shelters in the car park.”
Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not yet a week old, Vadym says they’re getting used to the routine of taking shelter every time the sirens ring out.
Leaving Ukraine
“It’s not an easy decision,” Vadym says, referring to the decision to leave Ukraine or stay put.
“Everyone is living in hope that this is going to stop. They’re not really considering that yet. It’s a thought in the back of every one’s mind.”
His father, who used to live in Ireland and returned to Ukraine about 10 years ago, is, for the time being not planning on leaving.
“You’ve got to remember the world we’re living in and that these are neighbouring countries for hundreds and hundreds of years and everything is mixed,” Vadym said referring to Ukraine and Russia.
“I mean language, culture. There are relatives, families formed over years. The connections were good.”
“We always lived together and we travelled back and forth right up until the last day (before war broke out)”.
“From that perspective nobody thought - and I’m including myself - that war would happen until I woke up and I was in complete shock.”
When the war broke out on February 24, Vadym took time off work as he couldn’t really concentrate. His phone has not left his hand since.
Vadym’s wife is from Vinnytsia, to the southwest of the capital Kyiv. The days since the war broke out have been an endless cycle of checking in with family and friends in Ukraine, scrolling through feeds on social media and following the news.
For Vadym, following the war and being connected to it even at a distance of thousands of kilometres, there’s a surrealness to it. As he told me, so much information is relayed via mobile phones and social media channels “it’s just constant and there’s hundreds and hundreds of videos everyday.”
Some of the videos he has been sent have shown bombed-out houses, tanks destroyed and soldiers lying dead on the street. It’s an impossible task to verify the mass of content on social media, and it keeps on coming, but Vadym says he can’t watch it anymore.
“I’ve seen so many videos every day, it’s beyond me to capture it all.”
“It’s all about the peace”
Vadym’s son is eight and his daughter is four and together with his wife he’s trying to shield his son from what’s going “as much as possible”.
“But we’re having constant conversations on the phone and it’s getting into his head. He’s asking questions and we’re trying to give him as little as possible and educate him about the peace. It’s hard for them to observe everything that’s happening in reality.
“But what I want to stress is that we’re here thousands of kilometres away. We’re fine, we have food, beds to sleep in, electricity, but the important thing is that on the fifth day many, many people in those cities are spending their lives in basements or the metro stations and the stuff that you see is mothers giving birth in that kind of circumstance.”
“When you imagine that happening, how much stress it is…I don’t know what other words to use.”
Vadym said he worries about the psychological stress the war is having on people. “I just wonder how much more they can take if the war drags on.”
Vadym speaks Ukrainian and Russian and thinks Russia’s invasion has pushed Ukrainians closer together than they’ve ever been.
Not having the information
Vadym is keeping a close eye on how the war in Ukraine is being reported in the Russian media, and also in Ukraine’s media. Hackers have taken to targeting Russian state-media and displaying messages with the number of Russian casualties, which according to Ukrainian media is more than 5,000. As is oft repeated though, truth is one of the first casualties of war.
“Most Russians believe what they’ve been fed over decades,” Vadym said, referring to the propaganda and censorship in Russia’s mainstream media.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, outlining the reasons for invading Ukraine said Russia must "defend itself" and "denazify" Ukraine.
“It’s hard to blame them,” Vadym said referring to the Russian public, adding that it’s hard to go against mainstream views if you’re going to be labelled a traitor.
The raft of economic sanctions that are intended to isolate Russia are already having an effect on the country as interest rates have shot up as the value of the ruble has plummeted.
“They (Russians) can definitely feel the effects of the sanctions. Is it something they deserve? I don’t think so. It’s just down to one man’s decision in a way.
“My opinion is that (the war) is driven by one person, or maybe five people next to him and that’s it. Russia has a population of 150 million. I don’t think that all 150 million share the same view. In fact, I think 99% don't really, but do they have a choice? They don’t.”
Both Vadym and his wife work at Apple in Cork and they have Russian colleagues. At the demonstrations that were held over the past weekend on Grand Parade in Cork city to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine, Russians came up to Vadym to show their support for Ukrainians.
“They said ‘we are so sorry for all this, we’re just not really understanding what’s going on’”.
The support from Apple and his colleagues there as well as friends has been overwhelming. Both he and his wife have returned to work as he says they need the distraction.
A call to arms
Over the past weekend, a small band of Ukrainians in Ireland returned to Ukraine to join the resistance. When I asked Vadym if he had thought about returning to fight, he said the thought had crossed his mind.
“The first thing you think is about your family. I don’t really know how I could leave my kids here. It’s just scary really and I have zero understanding or experience of fighting in a war.”
“It’s just tears in everyone's eyes when you see things like this happening. It’s surreal that these are the choices you have to make in the modern world. It’s just crazy.”
The Irish Red Cross has advised that people not send emergency goods for the war in Ukraine as it may be difficult to transport and distribute them. You can make financial donations via their home page here.