Ukraine and its Jews hunker down under threat of invasion
Long historical ties bind the two nations together, and when Russian leader Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Donbas region in 2014, there were many in the country who supported him. But if the Russians are expecting this time that they will be welcomed with flowers — even in the traditionally pro-Moscow half of the country, east of the Dnieper River, they might be in for a surprise.
“Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, things have fundamentally changed for many Ukrainians,” says Tzvi Arieli, a former Israeli who has lived in Ukraine since 2013.
A native of Latvia, Arieli lived in Israel for 20 years and served in the IDF. He trained Kiev Jews in self-defense when they came under attack in 2014, and he later advised the Ukrainian army.
“Before 2014, there many [pro-Russian] nationalists here,” says Arieli, “But seeing what happened then changed people’s worldviews. Till then, they viewed the Russians as their older brothers in the Orthodox Christian faith. None of them expected that their brothers would attack them. After seeing what happened in Donbas, 80 percent of Ukrainians are united against Russian rule. They see how people in Donbas lost any kind of freedom, they cannot leave, they don’t have a bank account or a credit card.
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