On March 2, Naive Wang (王楠穎), a long-term Taiwanese resident of Ukraine, boarded a bus and said goodbye to the life he had spent eight years building in the city of Kharkiv.
His Chinese employers in Ukraine had left almost immediately after Russia’s commencement of military operations on Feb. 24, and had encouraged Wang to do likewise.
Nine days into the war, he finally took the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs up on its offer to evacuate, leaving his material possessions behind and heading for the Polish capital, Warsaw.
Photo courtesy of Naive Wang via CNA
Yet in Poland ,Wang still found himself in a tight spot.
Not only was the Ukrainian hryvnia in his pockets near worthless due to depreciation, his Taiwanese passport only afforded him a 90-day visa-free stay in the Schengen Area.
“Leaving so abruptly lost me everything,” Wang said. “I was penniless, without a place to stay and without a job.”
In the end, he decided to pass on four job offers in Poland and return to Ukraine to enlist with the International Legion of Territorial Defense.
Unlike Wang Jui-ti (王芮緹), a Taiwanese man who had been rejected by the international legion, Naive Wang’s application — written in fluent Ukrainian — was approved in just one week.
Born in 1982, Naive Wang, who is also fluent in Russian, hopes he can play a valuable role as a translator with the international legion, a majority of whose 20,000 or so volunteers speak neither Ukrainian nor Russian.
Having spent the best part of a decade putting down roots in Ukraine following his graduation from the Ukraine National Aerospace University, Naive Wang is unsure what to expect when he makes it back to Kharkiv.
“I don’t know if my home is still there. When I escaped, I didn’t bring anything. My clothes and books are still there,” he said.
While volunteering in the Polish town of Medyka, where he helped the large number of Ukrainian refugees pouring into the country, Wang became aware of the toll that heavy fighting had taken on his adopted home city.
“Several older ladies upon hearing that I came from Kharkiv embraced me and cried,” he said. “So many pent-up emotions from life and death situations and hate that couldn’t be put into words could only be expressed through tears.”
Despite his previous employment with a Chinese firm, Wang recognizes that Beijing’s siding with Moscow has changed public opinion in Ukraine.
“Now, most Ukrainians think that China provided Russia with funds to start a war,” Naive Wang said.
However, he also said that Ukrainians are aware of Taiwan’s support for Kyiv, something he hoped his service with the international legion could further underline.
As he prepared to take up arms in the ongoing conflict, Naive Wang said he hoped that Taipei’s support for Kyiv would extend to post-war rebuilding efforts.
“I hope Taiwan’s concern for Ukraine is not temporary,” he said.
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