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www.jewishnews.co.uk
Jewish News 3 March 2022
PUTIN’S WAR ON UKRAINE
‘Only way to win this is to unite By Jeremy Last in Tel Aviv
Dozens of Ukrainians and Russians put on a display of unity in Tel Aviv on Tuesday as they prepared packages for families in Ukraine. Jewish News spoke to volunteers at the city’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre as they worked into the night, in an emotionally-charged atmosphere, packing boxes of toiletries, clothes and medicine donated by local Israelis. The boxes were being loaded on to a lorry headed for a warehouse in central Israel where they were to be sent directly to Ukraine by air. Valeria Ivashkina, a 31-year-old journalist who moved to Israel from Odessa, Ukraine, 10 months ago and lives in Ramat Gan with her husband, had been at the cultural centre for most of the day. “It’s hard to not cry, because my relatives – my parents, my sister and my grandparents – are in Ukraine,” she said, as she took a break from filling boxes with sanitary products and clothes. “This is my country. When I see what the Russian army is doing with our cities, I feel like I was hit in the solar plexus and I can’t breathe. “My stepfather is fighting in the military and my mother is a dentist who has volunteered since 2014. I’m helping from Israel: finding contacts and speakers from Ukraine for international journalists, co-ordinating translators, gathering humanitarian aid, but I feel that it’s not enough. I should be there.”
Expressing a sentiment echoed among the group of volunteers, Ivashkina said she has nothing against regular Russians. “I can tell the difference between Russians who support Putin and those who are against him. I am not against Russian culture or language. I am okay with it, but I am not okay with aggression and with chauvinism.,” she said. “We will fight for peace. “I have Russian friends in Israel and in Russia. They feel ashamed because they don’t want the war.” Ivana Mereulova, 32, from Magadan in north-eastern Russia, said she felt obliged to take a stance against the invasion of Ukraine. Holding a sign stating, “I am ashamed to be Russian,” she said: “I wanted to support Ukrainians because I love them so much. I have friends there who don’t want to leave the country because they want to volunteer. And their brothers are at war – it’s just awful. “Right now I feel like I want to die because my friends are at war. It’s an awful feeling. I am shaking all the time. I can’t sleep – I’ve slept two and a half hours each night since this started. “I am ashamed that the Russian army are killing my friends in our brother country.” Another Russian, Tanya Reznikov, 45, from
Russian Ivana Mereulova and, inset, Ukrainian Michelle Levina at Tel Aviv’s Ukrainian Cultural Centre
Moscow, has lived in Israel for 22 years. “I feel terrible about what’s going on now,” she said. “It is painful for me to know that two countries that I think are brothers are at war now. “I am here to help the people. It doesn’t
Zelensky’s faith is ‘irrelevant’
Russia’s ambassador to the UN has said the Ukrainian president’s Jewish heritage is irrelevant because his government is under the control of “radicals and neo-Nazis” who defy him. Vasily Nebenzya made the remark on Monday, when asked how Ukraine could be controlled by Nazis when Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew. Russia has repeatedly said, without offering evidence, that its invasion was needed in order to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
£7.5m for Jews of Ukraine
An emergency fund has been created to help Ukrainian Jews affected by Russia’s invasion. Genesis Philanthropy Group (GPG), co-founded by Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, has allocated $10 million (£7.45m) to assist Jewish communities caught in the conflict. GPG, which supports Russian-speaking Jewish communities across the world, will use the funds to distribute emergency supplies, evacuation efforts, homes for the elderly, and other communal necessities, for those unable or unwilling to leave the country.
matter who is here; Ukrainian, Russian, it doesn’t matter. Israel is my country now and I think it is terrible, horrible what is going on.” The volunteers, young and old, come from all parts of Ukraine and Russia.
‘IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO BE APPALLED’ When Refael Kruskal said last week that he was preparing for looting and anarchy on the streets, it sounded almost implausible, writes Michael Daventry. His bleak assessment, which Jewish News reported on its front page last week, came before war had broken out. But just hours after he spoke to this newspaper, Kruskal found himself leading 400 children and young people – all connected to the Tikva children’s home he leads in Odessa – on a convoy of buses out of town to escape the fighting. On Wednesday, Kruskal was in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine, where the convoy made camp after their bus drivers demanded a vastly inflated sum to continue their journey. “We stopped at a petrol station where we had Kiddush and it was very, very overwhelming. People [were] crying,” he said. “It reminds us of evacuations and times gone by, times which we would never have to repeat.” This week, vast swathes of Ukraine simply fled. Nearly 900,000 people have left the country and a similar number are internally displaced, the UN’s refugee agency estimates. Many of those who stayed behind did so because they have no choice. “Our main target audience are elderly, Jewish elderly, mostly lonely elderly, and elderly with disabilities, chronic illnesses,” said Volodymyr Vysotskyi, who runs a programme to help them in and around Kyiv. He described a grim situation in Boyarka, south-west of Kyiv, where there has been street warfare and blocked roads. Many towns are physically isolated after bridges were blown up by Ukrainian forces to halt the Russian advance. Vysotskyi, whose programme is supported by World Jewish Relief (WJR), says help is being crippled by logistical problems. “For some people in Boyarka who are, for example, diabetic, they are looking for medicine, insulin. Every person who has any sort of health problem is under huge risk because the supply chains have been broken and the pharmacies were open until two days ago.” Jewish charities around the world have launched fundraising
