UKRAINIANS LIVING IN Ireland watched in disbelief last night as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced his decision to recognise two rebel regions as independent from Ukraine and claimed that the entire country had essentially never been a State.

“Putin made it explicit – he thinks Ukraine should not exist,” Igor Brigadir told The Journal. “He didn’t just rewind the clock back to the USSR where individual republics were recognised, he went back to the idea of a Russian Empire, where there are only colonies ruled by Russia.”

In his speech, Putin said it was necessary to take a long-overdue decision to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

He then went on to say Ukraine had never had a tradition of genuine Statehood.

Brigadir, who is from Ukraine, said for him this statement reaffirmed that Putin’s actions were never about the threat to Russia if Ukraine joined NATO.

“It was always about Russian imperialist goals and [how] the very idea and existence of Ukraine is an affront to Russia,” he said.

Brigadir, an adjunct research fellow at University College Dublin (UCD) moved to Ireland with his family almost 25 years ago, but like other Ukrainians in Ireland he has been keeping a close eye on recent events.

“The threat from Russia was always very real in Ukraine, that was a constant,” he said. “Until yesterday, when things took a turn for the worst, it was as calm as it would normally be, given the constant threat of war.”

He said that from what he hears from Ukraine people are “no more worried or frightened than before”, but the rapidly deteriorating situation has put them on edge.

“Ordinary people are still going to work and school – life does not stop,” he said.

“This was reflected by the president’s calls for calm that went contrary to the US intelligence warnings, which many misinterpreted – the goal was to maintain calm internally and not sow unnecessary panic.

Recently however, some people say they have taken extra precautions – taking first aid classes, making sure they have ID with their blood type etc. Among ordinary people, there is an awareness that when Russia attacks, they will have no qualms about bombing civilians – a trend that keeps repeating: [we saw it in] Grozny in the 90s, Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, Syria since 2016, and now the threat is on Ukraine again.

He said friends and family in Ukraine are “resolute” and have told him support for joining the EU and NATO has accelerated recently. 

“More and more people are making the effort to switch to speaking Ukrainian as opposed to Russian,” he said. “The issue of language is something Irish people may find familiar. Like Irish, Ukrainian language and culture was actively repressed and Russian was promoted, in the same way as the British did in Ireland.”

Yuliya Shilnikova, a music teacher who moved to Ireland 16 years ago, said she did not get much sleep last night.

“Who could sleep after that? It’s quite difficult,” she told The Journal. “President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy told people in Ukraine not to panic, he said they’ll try to keep peace as long as possible. Hopefully we can avoid war but we never know what will happen.”

Following Putin’s speech, she said Ukrainians both at home and abroad were “worried but at the same time very angry”.

“What’s happening is that someone just wants to get Ukraine’s territory and they want to say it never existed,” she said. “We have our own culture, we have our own language and our own traditions.”

Shilnikova said family she has spoken to in Ukraine are taking a pragmatic approach to the situation. 

They can’t panic, they have to live their lives. They haven’t anywhere to go anyway, people have settled, they have their homes. People already got used to Russia being in Ukraine for the last eight years, at least now everyone knows Russia is there, it’s clear.

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Irish and international support

Igor Brigadir said he would like to see Ireland open up more to Ukrainian citizens, particularly as the situation escalates and they face potential conflict in their country.

He said that when he arrived in Ireland as a child with his family, they experienced the “entire length and breadth of the Irish system, from asylum seeker to naturalised citizen; from primary school and surviving on child benefit, all the way to a PhD; working, happily paying my taxes, knowing that for us the system worked exactly as intended.”

He said Ukrainians with temporary residency permits can usually manage to get visas for friends and family to visit Ireland, but “unfortunately, Irish naturalised citizens find this impossible – they instantly get rejected”.

“The reason cited is that there’s a danger they’ll work here illegally,” he said. “This is why we couldn’t have our 80-year-old grandfather visit – because apparently there’s a risk he might work here illegally.”

Shilnikova said her ask from the Irish government would be that it pushes the diplomatic route.

“We just want to try to keep peace as much as possible,” she said.

She is concerned about the direction the international response may take in the coming weeks and months as she does not want people in her country to be harmed.

“Even if America supports Ukraine, it could be war and we want to avoid that because it would be on the territory of Ukraine and there could be a lot of deaths. With all of these weapons, it would be a terrible and if we have war in Ukraine it would bring everything backwards, the economy – everything.”