Struggle

It has been distressing to see the pictures of violence on the streets of Kiev. My father never returned to his homeland: did not live to see Ukraine gain independence from the Soviet Union. Two decades later, the fledging democracy has been shaken to its roots, with the prospect of the nation being torn apart by bitter political divisions growing by the day.

I have never visited Ukraine. I should make the effort to go: to look for my father's village and see what remnants of our family are left. But I suspect I never will: partly because I don't know what I might find; whether there is anything left to find. It seems so far away: in time, in culture, more than in distance: so that even my father would probably not recognise it or appreciate the ravages that the last seventy years have wrought.

The history of the country during the twentieth century seems too painful to contemplate: you hoped that independence was the start of a new chapter, that even with all the economic and social problems, a more robust and successful democracy might have emerged over time. Which is probably why those Ukrainians who looked toward the West have become so frustrated over recent events. But what happens now?

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.