It was on 21 May 2017 that I spoke to my father, as I did most evenings. He was in an anxious mood. "I don't like the number 22," he said. He'd spoken of his unusual superstition before - if there's a number people consider unlucky, it's usually 13. "Something bad will happen tomorrow," he told me.
The following day we spoke. "I was right," he said sombrely. "A 22-year old man murdered 22 people on the 22nd of May." The suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena.
Since then, I have become wary of the number 22. At the start of this year, that feeling of unease was upon me; then the rumours of war began to grow ever louder. After two years of pandemic, what could go wrong in 2022? As February began, that number 22 was creeping up on the calendar - then social media began circulating a clip of Zhirinovsky (from December 2021) speaking in the Duma that "on 22 February the world will witness Russia's might". 22.02.22.
It was not to be. The 22nd came and went; the morning of the 24th found me in Wrocław for a conference. Waking up that day (an early start, my hotel was a good walk from the conference venue) I opened my laptop and saw that the invasion had kicked off. Eating breakfast on a barge in the Odra river, by the Hotel Tumski in a state of high anxiety, I was glued to Twitter on my phone. The return of war to this part of Europe after 77 years. How would this scenario play out? Nuclear war was certainly one potential outcome.
Back in Jeziorki, the last days of February and into March would see each day would begin with me checking Twitter to see if Kyiv was still free. It was touch and go. The infamous 40km-long column of Russian vehicles parked alongside the highway south-west of Kyiv looked poised to roll into the Ukrainian capital.
In Jeziorki, just 4,400m from the end of Runway 33 of Warsaw's Okęcie airport, I was worried. Within days of the start of the invasion, I could see NATO transport aircraft landing regularly from my window; ADS-B Exchange would show military aircraft patrolling the skies over eastern Poland, with aerial tankers flying 'racetrack' patterns, refuelling fighter jets (not visible on the radar) on combat air patrols. If Putin were to fire a tactical nuclear missile anywhere outside of Ukrainian territory, a Polish airport such as Okęcie or Rzeszów serving as a transfer point for military materiel would make perfect sense. Months passed; no nuclear confrontation. Has the risk lessened? Russia was brewing up bullshit about a 'Ukrainian dirty bomb', but the world wasn't buying it. The nuclear power stations in Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia were used as hostages by Russia, cynical as ever.
For nine days in March, I hosted three guests from Ukraine on my działka - Maxim (18 months old), with his mother and grandmother, while they waited for visas to the UK - something that happened very quickly and smoothly, despite all the negative media coverage.
It was around this time that it became increasingly clear that Putin would not seize Kyiv, that the invasion was badly planned, based on faulty intelligence assessment, and poorly supported with inadequate logistics. Above all, Ukrainians themselves were determined that their country should not fall. The Polish labour market, which for years had depended on Ukrainians to plug skills shortages, suddenly saw 200,000 Ukrainian men downing tools to return home and fight for their country. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian women, children and older men were pouring into Poland. At the time of writing, there are around 1,800,000 more Ukrainian citizens present in Poland than on 23 February. What surprises me is the large number of Ukrainians crossing back into Ukraine from the safety of Poland into the uncertainty of their homeland; shells, rockets and guided missiles are falling on civilian targets, on energy infrastructure; life is fractured, anxious, cold and dark. Yet every day, some 15,000 to 20,000 cross back home.
The horrors of war unfolded swiftly - Russia, unable to conquer Ukraine swiftly, turned to doing what it was used to doing - bombarding civilian targets, raping, looting and murdering. Bucha and Mariupol have become bywords for Russian inhumanity. Meanwhile, the rest of the world have become more inured to Russian lies. For the Russian government, telling the truth is like sending a tank into combat painted day-glo pink. Putin's lies about a 'special military operation' aimed at 'liberating' Russia's Ukrainian 'brothers' from their 'Nazi' government fell flat almost immediately among all but far-left and far-right fantasists.
NATO, and in particular the US, the UK and Poland, have provided Ukraine with much of the weaponry it needs to push back against the Russian army. But the West has stopped short of supplying modern fighter jets and main-battle tanks. Britain, despite its political woes (see tomorrow's post), has steadfastly backed President Zelensky's government, providing weapons and much-needed infantry training. Visits by Western leaders to Kyiv, despite the continuous threat of missile attacks, has kept the war rightfully at the forefront of minds around the world.
Every passing month during which Russia hasn't used nuclear weapons makes the threat less likely. An outcome in which Ukrainian troops drive the Russian invader out of their country now looks far more certain than it did even back in summer. The successful thrusts at Kharkiv and Kherson and Russia's inability to capture the small town of Bakhmut after five months suggest that 2023 will see more Ukrainian than Russian victories.
American made Javelin anti-tank missiles (which rise up from their flat trajectory to strike their targets from the top) and HIMARS rocket artillery have given Ukraine the edge against a foe that has failed to progress technologically since the 1980s. By Ukrainian measures, over 100,000 Russian soldiers had been liquidated by mid-December. The September mobilisation of Russian men resulted in more of them fleeing to Turkey, Georgia or Kazakhstan than going into the army.
And Russia - which had been poisoning the well of social discourse in the West for years - is badly losing the online war for hearts and minds. This is important in the context of the Global South - in time, India, China, Africa, South America and South-East Asia are beginning to see Russia for what it is - a brutal, stupid, corrupt imperialist coloniser.
An optimal outcome will be a Russia that falls apart, leaving a core of Muscovy surrounded by newly independent states that have been under the Russian heel for centuries - Yakutia, Buryatia, Komi, Chechnya and many others. And a strong Ukraine, an EU and NATO member.
How it will all end is now looking a little clearer than it did in spring. We can but hope and watch - and support Ukraine through any number of civilian or military charities. And join the NAFO fellas online to bonk the vatniks.
My father warned me about 2022. He would have been right.
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