When Polish author Leszek Jażdżewski heard about the invasion of Ukraine, he felt sick with helplessness. While many of his compatriots were renewing their passports to leave the country in case of emergency, he met Ukrainian refugees at the train station, talking Russian he recalled from school days. “A broken language for a broken country”, he says with bitter irony.
Viktor Orbán’s response to the war in Ukraine has been to try to stay out of the conflict, to the annoyance of both the Hungarian opposition and the EU. It remains to be seen, however, how long a small, resource-poor country like Hungary can afford to go on sitting on the fence, writes Hungarian author György Dalos in this new article in our Archipelago Ukraine series.
Relative to population, Moldova has taken in the most Ukrainian refugees. Since the war, there is fear of the Transnistrian conflict breaking out again. Memories of famine and deportations from Soviet times are also resurfacing, says Moldovan author Emanuela Iurkin.
The Ukrainians managed to thwart the blitzkrieg of the "second strongest army in the world". The key figure of the new generation of the Ukrainian military is General Valery Zaluzhny. He is the first Ukrainian commander-in-chief who did not serve in the Soviet army. Who is this general who modernised Ukraine’s army?
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