Common Ground In Ukraine

 what all people who share what is in common, than what sets us apart. We all want safety, security, opportunity and a semblance of a healthy life style.

I am perhaps an outlier, I made many random , apparently non advantageous visits to Ukraine, had bad situations incur upon myself , yet also had amazing, stupendous situations unravel that outweighed the disadvantageous situations. Many losses and few wins, yet the situations that seemed inadvertent became a sub narrative that was irreplaceable. Nadia Savchenko relating her personal experience perspective about Ukraine's participation in Iraq amongst the "Coalition of the Willing" And herself as a soldier of a Nation that surrendered the world's third largest Nuclear Arsenal in History , and she asked me who I was, an American who speaks basic Russian in Ukraine and who doesn't speak basic Ukrainian much at all. I am just me. I have , had been to Crimea, have, had been to Donetsk , Zaporizhia, Eastern Ukraine, Dnipro region.

Because I have more than a few friends who lived, grew up in Donetsk Ukraine. I knew them before the conflict. I understand things about their family, their viewpoints, what they like, dislike. There is one thing they and I share in common is that of a dislike for warfare, destruction, hassle, disruptions.

Do I know people connected to the Russian Nuclear arsenal weapons system? Yes I do know such people, and I can call them friends, within the public domain. DO I know people associated with the USA's Nuclear weapon deterrence infrastructure that I can honestly discern as friends and family, yes. 

Do I know people in the French, British security apparatus who also control Nuclear deterrent systems, that can vouch for me? Probably not

. Do  I know diplomats, yes. Have I been surveilled tagged and followed by the KGB/ FSB/ SBU, yes.

 Did I know Pavel Sheremet, yes, he befriended me in that springtime period in 2015. He was quickly pushing me for answers if I had knowledge of Donald Trump, or any association with his organization. I said to him that no, I did not have any knowledge of the Trump organization\. Was I investigated by the Government of Ukraine, by the Government of the United States of America, yes I was. Mostly I passed scrutiny. There is a narrow arc of believability of my activities that pass as some variant of casual civilian activity within the spectrum of Ukraine's recent history. And I actually got some passing mention in the National History of Ukraine for the minor acts and deeds. My feet made the phone calls, time and time again. It is all about the places that my feet walked and the face to face conversations.

A trifecta of favorite memories of Ukraine. Getting off on the wrong train stop in Central Ukraine, then grabbing a ride on a service train , that diverted it's route to get you where you are going, riding in the caboose of the Conductor's service car with the Soviet Era Controls. Having the people that you helped and trusted and threw your weight behind take you to an abandoned grave yard and threaten you with Death or unmentionably bad things. going down into the below ground restaurant named Misha Blahera in Dnipro to eat frog's legs dinner with a friend . It is like that great restaurant with no signage or online advertising, just some steps that you go down, a lot of older books tucked away in the seating areas. 

Kyiv is not the real Ukraine, one has to visit Poltava, Dnipro , Cherkassy, Lviv, Odessa,, Chernihiv, Sumy , Khirovograd and other places along the way to know Ukraine in total. 

Like France, Paris is not France. And perhaps, maybe it is a stretch of imagination, but Ukraine cannot disconnect with it's fascination of Russia , while now,  it is highly alienated from Russian Foreign policy, there is an extensively intermingled history .

Having met the current president of Ukraine and the First Lady of Ukraine in person before their ascension, I do recognize this, that she is more of the Nationalist and He is more of the pragmatist, and I think that one who is curious has to delve deeply into their personal histories to understand the bifurcation of stance between them. Proving my assumption is something vastly above my own amateurish abilities. Yet Ukraine has issued fairly relevant messaging about being proactive in matters relating to the potential of an enlarging of the conflict upon their border. That messaging is thoughtful, not reactionary, pragmatic in the context of Peaceful emergence from this moment of uncertain scenarios.

The United States of America is still sitting on the Permian Basin, the last time that I checked. 

Russia is still comprised of 6 time zones, with a lot of petroleum and gas reserves therein.

 China , Asia still needs gas and oil/ minerals  to produce consumer products that their manufacturing economy depends upon. Third world markets in Africa, the Caribbean , South America are hungry for products that they pay too much for,  because of tariffs, distance from manufacturing centers. The news today is mostly about lose/ lose, not about win/ win. In my humble opinion, the news cycle needs to reinvent itself to something more even keeled. We are, in my opinion living in a world where everyone needs to give up a little to win a bit more, not lose a little to keep what we already have.

As for Ukraine, I miss the sharp tongued train conductors, the ladies who serve the tea and sugar, who give you your overnight laundered bed sheets and pillow cover, those many conversations on the train going South from Kyiv to Crimea, I especially miss the really long overnight train from Sumy to Crimea. It is really unfortunate that such relationships of travel and communal discourse are disrupted indefinitely in Ukraine, and also now, that sense of wondering if the old Ukraine that we knew will ever be the same, or will it wind up like TransNistria in Moldova. And where is Moldova's wisdom going to emerge herein?

I think of my friends who forged their youthful identity in Donetsk, I try to think what they must think in totality about the situation in their home town, yet I cannot truly do that. Only they can speak about what is in their minds. It is true that on the balance, the handful of people that I know, they are not wanting, yet I am in no position to actually say what their feelings are, about their hime town. And I have nothing to offer which is particularly about that. 

I do remember meeting one man who is accredited as a CYBORG, a defender of the Donetsk International airport. And I remember , no words, just the look in his eyes as we made some offer of assistance, he wanted nothing, wanted no words, just space to think. The main thing was that I remember the many birds that gathered about the ravens, the large black birds, throngs of them, more than I had ever seen there , gathering in the trees, the roofs of the buildings. The man who was the Cyborg and the gathering of the birds, no words, no stories, just the look in the eye , seeing the unusual throng of birds gathered and it was late fall, early winter. The birds did not beg for, or seem to ask for food. The man had no need to share or relate. he was simply there in a safe space.

Now I know my people, associates in Ukraine who were quick to trash Nadia Savchenko, yes of course she's high on the dissociative empathic navigational narrative. Who in all the entire world would go her own way like that? go back into the belly of the beast to speak 1:1 with Ukraine's POW's and give them care packets, let them know,  that work was underway to secure their freedom, after all that she went through ?  That she had the courage to enter the lair of the other, when the other had complete power tt re-imprison her again for an indefinite period of time to hold her as a prisoner for one other prisoner of war exchange. That is a true and utterly fearless courage from a woman, the likes of which the Western World has few fair examples

 And who is to judge her, that hey psyche profile was totally dissected, compromised, leveraged by circumstances she was highly involved in,  to make her diverge into some kind of crazy stuff.?

 A lot of people get pushed into doing crazy stuff, people who are living at the absolute margin of livability, and still their ideals get hijacked by clever manipulations created by geopolitical masterminds. Yes I have heard the trash talk within Ukraine's military about Nadia Savchenko, but I met her before she was captured, and so my opinion is that she is genuine, she thinks outside the outer box, she is vulnerable too, and she wants to be a movie star, like a lot of the rest of us! 

Fictional narratives are a part of the soft diplomacy that do generate a shell of public discourse that does mitigate the risks of Nuclear warfare and the like. If you don't think that Nadia Savchenko is a soldier of disarmament of Nuclear warfare, then you don't know her personally. And if you think that she really wanted to be a part of blowing up Ukraine's Parliament, then I think that you might have a juvenile predilection to believe unfounded propaganda that is shaped outside of contextual reality. She did get sucked in by a narrative, but only just so far. There's lots of hypothetical narratives that aren't connected to actual reality.