Bergen Hjelper Ukraina - Day 2-3
On the Sea through Denmark and Germany
So! We set out at the crack of 11 am from Bergen. A quick drive down to the ferry terminal and a long wait in the unreasonably hot weather (thanks, climate change) before we boarded the overnight ferry.
I had the pleasure of interviewing the director of the Fyllingsdalen theatre, who founded Bergen Hjelper Ukraina: Jorn Kvist who, by a coincidence of fate, happened to be on the same ferry as us. The interview will be up in the film I’m making for BHU.
The ferry was a time to relax, have a couple of beers and a surprisingly tasty kebab pizza (I apologised to my Italian partner already!) My friend Freddie got a Hawaiian, he has not been forgiven. We got into Denmark early and disembarked, got some road snacks (Monster White and Pringles) before getting customs sorted and getting on the road.
Denmark is very flat and has a lot of windmills. We got through to Germany at about 13:00. The weather changed drastically from incredibly sunny to a very grey drizzle. It basically continued for the trip across Germany. I’m sure chunks of this country are absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, most of what we saw on the road bore a close resemblance to the approach to Luton.
The mood was good and, so far, there have not been any enormous issues. Although we had one very near miss with an errant campervan that yoinked into our lane, cue a lot of very angry swearing in Norwegian and English. A multi-national road rage.
We’re staying just across the German border in Poland tonight before getting into Ukraine tomorrow. It’s being reported that the Germans are due to send Patriot systems to Ukraine in the next few days, to be backfilled by the Americans. Although the reports around this are pretty confused at the moment.
It is also being reported that the Russians are massing around 150,000 men for another big push in the East. The kind of aid this convoy is sending is growing more and more urgent as the Russians step up their summer attacks. This year so far has been the bloodiest of the war for the Russians. Their way of war is enormously costly in Russian lives and if this offensive goes ahead, more blood will spill.
How much of it will be Russian and not Tatar, Buryat, Nenet or any other of the captured nationalities held in Russia’s empire is unknown, but it is likely to be typically disproportionate. I’m reminded of a video from a Russian dugout, the soldiers there joked that there wasn’t a single Russian among them.
This is what many outside of Russia and the nations once imprisoned by Russian imperialism fail to grasp: Russia is Europe’s last great empire, its colonies are not across the sea, they are across the steppe and over the Urals. This doesn’t make them any less imperialist.
Empires fall.
When they do, it is because normal people stand up. The Ukrainians are right now, as the Prime Minister of Ichkeria (Chechnya) told me the other day: the best way we in the West have to support the colonised peoples in the Russian Empire is to support Ukraine.
Today is Ukraine’s fight, tomorrow may be Ichkeria’s, or Tatarstan’s, or Siberia’s.