In 2023, I was in Ukraine: the trip timed to coincide with the first anniversary of Russia’s attempt to launch a full-scale invasion of that country. Not the first anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian war, by the way: as any Ukrainian will tell you, the conflict began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Ukrainians have been living with this for a decade.
And one of the many remarkable aspects of that trip was that, out of the dozens of people I spoke to, not one countenanced the idea of Ukraine losing.
For them, it was unthinkable. Defeat would fling them back to an era Ukrainians have lived through before, with the country carved up, or large parts of it subjected to a process of intense Russification. Defeat would mean that Ukraine would no longer exist.
Although that trip was less than two years ago, it feels like it could have been 20. The world has since become distracted with other horrors, and the initial flowering of goodwill in this country – when Irish families welcomed refugees into their homes – has wilted. Understandably, we’ve grown more concerned with internal problems. Housing. The health service. Migration. The 100,000 Ukrainians in Ireland are viewed by some as a burden the State can no longer afford.
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There was, perhaps, an initial naive hope that they wouldn’t be here for too long; that the Russian forces would be driven back. That’s become less likely as the war has dragged on, and the election of Donald Trump may have rendered it close to impossible.
The president elect has been pretty up front about his feelings on Ukraine, calling Volodymyr Zelenskiy “the greatest salesman of all time” (an odd criticism, coming from Trump), and claiming that when he assumes office, he’ll end the war within 24 hours.
He hasn’t outlined how he will do this, other than it will be within the framework of a “deal” – one aimed at saving the US taxpayer billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. And that word – deal – is one that’s probably making Ukrainians in Ireland and around Europe extremely nervous. Deal means that Russia gets something. And Russia wants a lot. It will want to hang on to Crimea and the Ukrainian territory it already holds. It wants Ukraine to give up on hoping to join Nato and put a ban on the country receiving any foreign military aid.
Thanks to the veto power of Moscow-friendly European countries, Ukraine may never get to join the European Union either: leaving it carved up, isolated, poor and even more vulnerable to Russia, either through another “special military operation” or more insidious means, where Zelenskiy is replaced by a more biddable leader. For many Ukrainians, especially younger ones, that won’t be a “deal”, but the defeat they didn’t want to think about two years ago. The Ukraine they grew up in, for all its flaws, will have become a Russian province.
In such a scenario, it’s doubtful that many Ukrainians in Ireland will be mad keen to go back. It’s far more likely that many more will want to leave Ukraine and seek refuge in a Europe that would rather they didn’t come.
Since his election, there’s been a lot of media head-scratching about why so many Americans voted for Donald Trump. And one possible answer is simple cynicism: a cohort of voters have finally seen through the American dream nonsense and opted to vote only out of self-interest. It’s all they have.
With a week to go before voting, you can see that cynicism has crept into our politics too. It’s been there for a while. The mé-féinism. The EU, and Ireland, might close the door to fleeing Ukrainians. Our next government might consider what to do with the Ukrainians already here. Of course, it is their business to make tough decisions. But there’s a difference between a tough decision and a cruel one.