We rolled into Western Ukraine in a white minivan at 1.30 pm exactly on a grey day in December, 1991.

The time was important, as in those grey days Ukraine issued visas not only for alloted days but exact times as well. It was the only thing about Ukraine that was not grey and unclear. The economy certainly was.

To ward off the superstitious cold in our sleeping quarters, we decided to invest in radiators, but we could not buy them until we bribed the radiator shop salesman to sell them to us. The fact that he was the town vice-mayor just seemed to fit into the scenario, by that point.

Being the town vice-mayor enabled him to embark on small scale town planning, and his first project was to build a house on the street next to the one we were on. Except that he was literally on the street. What had preciously been a right turning was now a right turning into his driveway. The road continued behind the back yard. You could do things like that as vice-mayor of Beregovo, in Western Ukraine, in 1991.

Most countries win a few and lose a few during their history. Ukraine has tended towards the latter, but then many East European countries would claim that of their neighbours.

“I’ve been to three countries but I never left my village,” my Hungarian neighbour was fond of saying; “I was born in Slovakia, lived in Ukraine and now live in Hungary.”

But border changes are frequent, as the world witnessed with Crimea, but also absurdly when the U.S. and some of its allies unilaterally decided to rip a part of Serbia away and call it the new state of Kosovo, next to nascient Albania, thus setting most of the preconditions for another war in the Balkans in a decade or two.

As for the Ukraine, it may not have finished its reshaping excercise. Victor Orban’s government in Hungary would dearly like to carve off a slice of Western Ukraine, and Orban may yet attempt to do so — already any citizen of Western Ukraine who can prove some kind of Hungarian ancestry is given a Hungarian passport on request. Orban, of course, greatly and publicly admires Putin’s authoritarianism, which has been a steadfast trait among a few East European leaders since the break up of the Soviet Union, along with breathtaking corruption. Perhaps the worst of the bunch was Leonard Kuchma, who ran Ukraine into the ground, considerable enriching himself in the process, between 1994 and 2005 —not without the massive Ukraine without Kuchma protest campaign that took place in 2000–2001, causing thousands to face imprisonment and worst in the ensuing years.

The gangsters have been in charge in the Ukraine for a while. They are still in charge. The future of the Ukraine lies in its wonderful women. No-one else has proved capable of taking the mantle, and Ukraine’s women certainly can.

relight the candle
mother Ukraine
no more storms