It’s Friday December 29th and the air raid sirens in Kyiv blared at 06:30 this morning once again. Over the past 18 months, sirens are an almost daily occurrence in the capital. Those of you who may have downloaded the Kyiv Digital app I mentioned several blogs ago, would’ve heard the same alert that woke me up so early. 

I’ve been living at Hotel Bursa in the Podil district for over a year and have experienced many early mornings thanks to the sirens, anti-aircraft and Patriot battery fire, plus the occasional explosions. I’ve named this ‘Putin’s alarm clock’. Podil is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Kyiv and has very few government buildings or infrastructure like power and water treatment plants. Those are located up the hill in the heart of the city, so we’ve been relatively safe from Putin’s killer missiles and drones.

But this morning was different. A huge explosion so startled me, I ran downstairs to be greeted by the smell of burning electrical wires and a dark cloud of smoke less than 500 metres down the road. 

Wake up call

This morning's ‘alarm’ was another reminder of why I’ve been working with my colleagues at The Peace Coalition to help bring an end to this war as soon as possible and start rebuilding the country. One way to end it is with a Ukrainian military victory and believe me, they are doing their absolute best. Another way is to choke the Russian economy through ever-increasing sanctions and isolate the rogue state from the democratic world. The West and its politicians, most of whom have never fought a war, are becoming impatient with the stalemate along the 1000 km front line. No politician currently sitting in the American House of Representatives or the EU Parliament served during WWI or II, but many of their parents and grandparents certainly did. Most of Europe was destroyed after both world wars, yet fascist politicians like recently elected Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Donald Trump in America are ascending. 

Do we have any hope to end the wars in Ukraine or Gaza when our politicians have forgotten or choosen to ignore the lessons learned by their forebears?

Old school, old fool

Trench warfare and the indiscriminate levelling of entire cities with no regard for civilians were terrible lessons that were supposed to have been learned 75 years ago with the destruction of Coventry, Dresden and Tokyo. Yet, here we are in 2023 scrolling by images from Aleppo, Mariupol and Gaza in our social media feeds without even blinking. Nobody remembers the horrors of trench warfare in the Somme during WWI when one million artillery shells were fired in one day and 300,000 soldiers died, yet anachronistic trench warfare in Kherson barely makes the news anymore.

What’s happened to cauterize the collective memory of people and politicians in Canada, U.S., the UK and Europe? How can we surround ourselves with Holocaust memorials and monuments to unknown soldiers, yet still be equivocating when it comes to supporting Ukraine as it’s being destroyed by Russia? How can we call ourselves civilized and bathe in the righteousness of ‘freedom’, as we watch innocent children die from bullets and bombs in Gaza every day?

Just because the horrors of WWI & II took place a hundred years ago doesn't mean the lessons learned aren’t valuable. Just because black & white photos don't look very exciting on Instagram, and war documentaries longer than fifteen-second TikTokvideos aren’t captivating, doesn’t mean they’re not worth watching. If we don’t remember all the evil and death we inflicted by consuming Europe in flames twice within two decades, Ukraine is doomed to fight the third world war, and that will be the end of us all.

Slava Ukraini!  Heroaim Slava!