Ukrainians in Taiwan say they are concerned for the safety of their family and friends in Ukraine after Russia invaded the eastern European country on Thursday.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday morning in a televised addressed said that Moscow would launch a “special military operation,” the military attacked several cities in Ukraine and media reports indicated soldiers had entered the capital, Kyiv.
Daria Zheng, who is from Vinnytsia in west-central Ukraine and has lived in Taiwan for more than five years, said she cried when she saw the news and immediately tried to contact her family and friends.
Photo: Lee Hui-chou, Taipei Times
“I feel quite desperate right now, because I don’t know what I can do,” said Zheng, who wished to be identified by her Chinese name.
“All those cities being hit by bombs, and my friends and my family are just terrified because they don’t have a place to hide and they don’t know where they can go or what they can do,” she said.
According to news reports from Ukraine, Russian forces have carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian cities and military bases, sending in troops and tanks from three sides.
Photo: Annabelle Chih, Reuters
Thousands of civilians are reported to be sheltering underground, including in the capital’s subway stations.
Zheng said that she does not understand why there are still wars in the world.
“I want to know why the people have to fight,” she said. “Why [do] we [not] put the presidents in the boxing ring and ask them to fight, and see who is going to win? Why do our families and friends need to suffer?”
She said that Russia’s latest aggression is just an escalation of a conflict that started in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, then a Ukrainian territory.
“It is just because Ukraine is not doing what Russia wants, but the question [is] why does Ukraine need to listen to Russia,” she said.
Po Tai-li (寶戴麗), a Ukrainian postgraduate student at National Tsing Hua University who also wished to be identified by her Chinese name, said that she is worried for her family, but is not panicking.
Regarding how the conflict would affect her studies, she said that it has not yet, because even though Ukraine has passed a law to recruit women conscripts, it is new and the government does not have the resources to draft all women across the country, let alone students overseas.
Oleksandr Yurkov, who has lived in Taiwan for five years and is originally from Kryvyi Rih, the second-biggest city in Ukraine, said that he is worried as he was unable to contact his father on Thursday morning.
He said that the conflict does not just threaten Ukraine, but also the world because Russia has nuclear weapons.
Living in Taiwan for three years, Anton Mykytenko, who was born in Kherson, but migrated to Canada when he was six years old, said that his father is of Ukrainian and Belarusian descent, while his mother is of Ukrainian and Russian heritage.
Mykytenko said that there are similarities in the cultures of the countries in the region, which should be celebrated and not used to go to war.
“It would be more valuable if those were points of unity ... unity in terms of our culture being similar and there is no denying that,” Mykytenko said.
There are an estimated 210 Ukrainians living in Taiwan for work or study, according to National Immigration Agency data from Dec. 31 last year.
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