NEIGHBOUR'S CRYSIS

POLAND HAS GONE ALL OUT TO SUPPORT UKRAINE, BUT A CAUTIOUS NATO IS MAKING WARSAW’S MISSION DIFFICULT

- JOMY THOMAS

Valentina Quinn has spent more than a week at the Warsaw West train station, distributing food and clothes to thousands of fellow Ukrainians arriving from across the border. She thanks her stars for having moved to Poland much before the war started.

When asked about her parents and siblings, she said they were trapped in Ukraine. “My father is disabled, he cannot walk,” she said. “He cannot even go to the shelter. My mother is with him in their fourth-floor apartment in Poltava, a town in Ukraine’s east-central region. They have sent my sister to the shelter.”

Safely away from Russian shells and bullets, Valentina has no time to cry. “I am here to support my people to fight the war. People are running away; some have lost their homes.”

She has stopped watching the news, fearing that it cannot be good. She knows that the Russians have not made much progress even after two weeks. She knows that Kyiv is still holding on, with the Ukrainian army and citizens putting up a brave fight, led by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In a defiant address to the British parliament on March 8, Zelenskyy invoked World War II hero Winston Churchill, saying, “We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets. We will fight to the end.”

Valentina’s hosts, the Poles, should know. For it was Hitler’s invasion of Poland that was the last straw for Churchill’s predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, who issued the ultimatum (to Germany) that started the war. But today, Europe does not have a leader to send such an ultimatum. Zelenskyy’s desperate pleas for NATO to get involved have invoked little response. The European Union and many of its members, including Germany, have offered arms; Poland has offered its old Russian-made MiG-29s.