“It’s a feeling of permanent shock,” answered Anton Savidi when Neos Kosmos asked him how he was coping with events in his country, Ukraine where he and his pregnant wife are now refugees in the western part of the country having fled the fighting in Kyiv last week.
News had just reached him and the rest of the world on Wednesday evening that Russian aircraft had bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol, the coastal city in the south of Ukraine that is home to 150,000 ethnic Greek Ukrainians and which is under siege from Russian forces who invaded his country on 20 February.
“I am thinking about Mariupol all this evening after the maternity hospital was bombed. I found some old photos of my trips there, I really love this city. I now just cannot imagine and believe what the Russians did to it and its residents.
“There is almost no connection with the city, but I try to stay in touch with our fellow Greeks there. The head of the federation of Greek organisations of Ukraine contacted us to say she is alive. We had not heard from her for a few days and she is a lady of respected age,” Mr Savidi wrote.
In peace time, Mr Savidi is the deputy president of the Greek community organisation Enotita that is based in Kyiv the city he had to flee with his pregnant wife last week after days of fighting around the Ukraine capital. He is now based in western Ukraine where he serving as a volunteer in his country’s war effort.
Before the invasion he worked as the manager of a cultural organisation House of Europe that fostered cultural links between Ukraine and European Union countries. This year he visited Mariupol to shoot a documentary.
“You know I have been to Mariupol three times this year. We made a documentary there filmed entirely in the Rumei (Ukrainian Greek) dialect. It was the first movie of its kind. It is ready but still not released. We made it with state television funds as the state was eager to support ethnic minorities.
“I now understand that we filmed some things and, I am very afraid also people who may not exist any more,” said Mr Savidi who is a Russian speaking Ukrainian-Greek from the east of the country.
“My feelings are that we will win but who knows at what price. I actually want to go back to Kyiv but I don’t know how I can be useful there at the moment, they are not recruiting people who do not have a military background because of a lack of ammunition for all. So, I now work a lot to supply all the things from abroad that are needed for defence.”
A Ukrainian-Greek psychologist who came to live in Australia three years ago, Maria Chrysafogeorgou, told writer and director Billy Cotsis that since February in 2014, when the popular Orange Revolution that overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych took place, the people of the Ukraine had merely sought a better life that was not under the shadow of neighbouring Russia.
“I am Greek Ukrainian. I moved to Australia three years ago. I lived in Ukraine, more specifically in the city of Lviv. In my years living in this beautiful country, I loved the culture, history, traditions, and people even more. In my heart I am equally Greek and Ukrainian,” Ms Chrysafogeorgou said.
“In 2014, when the revolution started I was part of it, we demanded a better future for our country away from the pressure of our neighbour, Russia.
“Unfortunately, in these protests that millions of people were part of in the streets of Kyiv, 106 people were killed due to snippers shouting at the protestors.
“The Russian-backed government collapsed; we had elections but the trouble for my people didn’t stop there. Russia invaded Crimea shortly after and it was a shock to everyone at the time. Then not long after that, a Russian invasion started in the eastern parts of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, a war began.
“People suffered a lot at that time from the atrocities that were happening. Ukrainian people had to leave their houses, their towns and they became refugees. It was at that time that me and my friend decided to go in the war zone to help as volunteers. I saw soldiers, children, old people, women, being severely wounded, that needed psychological support, and we as students of psychology had a practise that I will never forget.
“I saw so much pain and sorrow in those people’s eyes, nothing can overcome that. This war ended up with those regions being captured by the occupants for eight years now.”
“Everyone has the right to live in peace, so I am doing everything that I can to help,” Ms Chrysafogeorgou concluded.
