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Sad to be leaving Ukraine after nearly one month. I also met some of the men defending freedom against barbarism. Men I am proud to have met and look forward to meeting again.

Written in Odessa, 1 December. Sad to be leaving Ukraine after nearly one month, & not to be staying longer in Odessa. 3 weeks in Zaporizhzhia, two days in Odessa & in some other towns. The Ukrainian border guards & security services were polite, professional & very attentive. No imposters will pass here. I met in Odessa election observer mission colleagues & friends from 2015. And new friends, Ukrainian and foreign volunteers fighting for Ukraine, freedom & democracy. From America, Britain, Germany, Poland. A great bunch of men, highly professional, modest and fun. A privilege to be invited to spend time with such good people. I will be happy to tell families in Grimsby and Middlesbrough that their guys are ok (& Chicago, Kansas & Texas). For Ukraine’s victory.



Reposted here, from Bucharest, 3 December.

Postscript. Leaving Ukraine and Moldova turned out to be a lot harder than entering had been. Very thorough checks and long delays at each point. Having crossed so many borders in the last year I think I am quite an expert on border traffic management now. I will write more opinion on that anon. I remain very sorry for the lorry drivers stuck in a 8km queue to get from Moldova to Romania. As I crossed from Moldova into Romania, so the boundary of the old Soviet Union / Russian Empire the border policeman asked “You were in Ukraine. Did you have business in Ukraine?” I said, no I am a volunteer University professor and I was visiting friends. He said “I understand”. Finally, after a month, with the exception of my friends in Zaporizhzia and the volunteer soldiers who thought wanting to go to and being in Ukraine was normal, the first person who seemed to understand me was a Romanian border police officer :-).

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Resignation from the OSCE – entry into Ukraine.

I have resigned from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Serbia so that I can speak & act freely against Putin Russia’s war in Ukraine, without the constraints of working in an international diplomatic organisation

And my friends, family & colleagues know that I am not very good at speaking diplomatically anyway. Russia is destroying the values of peace, stability, security, democracy & economic progress on which the OSCE is based.

I have this morning [today] crossed into Ukraine to go and see my friends. I won’t see all of my friends this trip but delayed birthday drinks (from the Summer) with some of them. And as usual if anyone wants to practice English I’m happy to talk. I’m the British guy from Liverpool with an Irish name driving a Serbian car

My visit is for solidarity. I have no time for anyone’s nationalism or national myths or ideology (or God/s given ethnic land) but I do care that people should be able to freely choose how to live their lives without being invaded by a brutal tinpot dictator.

Stopping the war, defeating Russia and its allies, is the most important thing in Europe now. It is necessary so that the democratic & whole World can face the giant challenges of environmental problems, food security and livelihoods for all that we must solve

So F*ck Putin I’m going to have a beer with my friends


Posted on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Monday 7 November, Posted here, Wednesday 16 November from Zaporizhzhia, where I arrived on Tuesday 8 November.

I am posting impressions from my visit to Ukraine on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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The election of President Zelenskyy in 2019.

Small British Liberal political magazine Liberator republished the article I wrote in 2019 about President Zelenskyy’s victory that I had forgotten that I wrote. The pdf of the magazine, Liberator issue 412 can be downloaded here
https://liberatormagazine.org.uk/back-issues/

The blurb says
Liberator 412 can be downloaded here . This is the April 2022 online-only edition of Liberator and we hope you enjoy reading it.
What’s inside this issue?
Alongside Radical Bulletin, Commentary and Letters, Liberator 412 includes:
UKRAINE’S COMEDIAN PRESIDENT IS NO COMIC.
Kiron Reid saw great hope on democracy’s eastern border in Ukraine when this article was published in Liberator 398 in November 2019 after the election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we reprint it here, followed by some necessarily anonymous reflections on Ukraine now and the path to war from an observer who knows the country well

Reviewing this in 2022 I think that nearly every point is still valid. I could have made more critical comment on Volodymyr Zelenskyy (and in the last year too), and on his predecessor, who I like, Petro Poroshenko (I always buy his Roshen brand chocolates), and I could then & would now explain more problems with the inflexible EU trade policy towards Ukraine’s links with Russia (especially in the east) and a misguided nationalist language policy (which is getting to be quite a national myth now – ignoring that most people Russia is killing are Russian speakers). None of those points undermine the fundamental issue – that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked in 2014 and is carrying on unprovoked a barbaric war in 2022. In 2022. In Europe.

 

Note the original post of a text of this article, including photographs, is here: My article on the Ukraine elections, and new President, Zelenskyi. – Kiron Reid 

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Birmingham and Zaporizhia, Ukraine. Twin cities, back in the USSR?

Thanks to the library catalogue prompt at the Library of Birmingham, & the helpful staff of the Archives section, after 4 years of enquiries I’ve found the evidence that Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine is or was twinned with Birmingham in Great Britain. People in Zaporizhia remember this but no one in Birmingham seemed to. The sixth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 750,000 people.

I hadn’t thought to look for the spelling Zaporozhe – but the library catalogue software prompted me, “did I mean …” and up came one sole result. A record from 1980 of a typed document with no length and no author. ‘Zaporozhe : Birmingham’s twin city in the USSR’.
Typescript (photocopy), [1980]

And a helpful member of the Archives & Collections team volunteered to look if there were any other items at the same class number. She came back with three slim card folders with A4 photocopied documents.

These included ‘Programme for the visit to Birmingham of a civic delegation from Zaporozhye U.S.S.R, 24th Sept.-1st October 1973’

And

‘Communique of the first meeting of the twin cities of the USSR and UK’
Typescript (photocopy), 1987.

The twin cities met in Donetsk in July 1987.

I hope that these Birmingham – Zaporizhzhia links can be rekindled. I first was told about them by Assistant Professor Marina Vorybyova at Zaporizhzhya National University in October 2014. That was my second visit to the city and Ukraine, and first visit as a volunteer honorary Professor. I’ve been back four more times since (including volunteering and a lengthy work trip to Ukraine) and will be there again in the Spring.

The 1980 twin city pamphlet is a fascinating 7 page read, by the Birmingham Branch of the Great Britain USSR Association with the help of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies of the University of Birmingham. Contact M. J. Berry.

Of course the full, lavish & wide ranging programme for the 1973 delegation from the Soviet city included a tour of Shakespeare’s birthplace & performance of Romeo & Juliet in Stratford upon Avon. This is fitting as Zaporizhzhya is home of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre. You can read more about that on the Shakespeare Magazine website. http://shakespearemagazine.com

Thanks to Wikipedia for explaining the naming (and statistics):, though there are more different transliterations in English that you can see.
Zaporizhia (Ukrainian: Запорі́жжя [zɑpoˈriʒʒɑ] Zaporizhzhya) or Zaporozhye (Russian: Запоро́жье [zəpɐˈroʐjɪ]), formerly Alexandrovsk (Russian: Алекса́ндровск[ɐlʲɪˈksandrəfsk]; Ukrainian: Олександрівськ [ɔlɛksɑndriu̯sʲk])
(Viewed 29/01/2019).

These are the transliterated into Latin letters name variants that I have come across (I may have missed some)
Zaporizhia / Zaporozhe / Zaporizhzhia / Zaporizhzhya / Zaporozhye / Zaporizia

The third record the archivist found doesn’t even appear on the catalogue when searched under that Call Number LP 31.8. (It was mistyped as P 31.8). A great bit of old fashioned library research.

With thanks to Bob Deed of Birmingham, friend of Ukraine and expert SE Europe traveller, for his continued support in finding out about these links between two major European industrial powerhouses.

Zaporozhe Birmingham s twin city in the USSR scan

Birmingham civic delegation ex Zaporozhye USSR

First meeting twin cities USSR and UK 1987

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12 things you may not know about Ukraine – 5 minute talk to Ignite Liverpool.

Thanks to Ignite Liverpool for uploading my five minute talk from 17 May on Twelve things that you may not know about Ukraine. And thanks for inviting me to be one of the contributors that day. Here is a link to the video on YouTube. It is also available on their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

The introductory blurb says “I’ve spent much time in Ukraine over the last nearly three years and have become quite a fan. Not many people in Britain know much about Ukraine and I try to tell them what it is really like – the good and the bad, the unusual stuff and the normal stuff.”

With many thanks to Adrian, Neil, Lydia, Dan, Will and all the Ignite Liverpool team, to everyone who came along, who watched or listened in and to the other inspiring speakers. This talk was based on a talk to Liverpool UNA in April last year.

I attach a copy of the short script. Ignite talk Twelve things about Ukraine K Reid 2

Ignite Liverpool website: http://igniteliverpool.com/

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Postcard: Observing the election in Ukraine.

A short piece on my election observation in Ukraine, on the University of Liverpool website.

Postcard: Kiron Reid observing the election in Ukraine

https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2014/06/09/postcard-kiron-reid-observing-the-election-in-ukraine/

Published 9 June 2014.

Thanks to Jamie Brown of the Press Office @livuninews for the editing. More analysis in next issue of Liberator magazine.

 

Published 14 June 2014;

Post edited 6 May 2022 to insert up to date link.