Back In Ukraine

Back in Ukraine (finally) and still trying to figure out to navigate this site and post pics and stories .. just outside of Kyiv in the suburbs and the war is still raging on but the mood has really changed here..when I left in April, 90% of the businesses were closed and now that number is hovering around 20%. Still far away from celebrating as they were able to get about 75% of the crop planted and in the last few days the Russians have intentionally set fire to at least half of that. There is no doubt that their intentions are to create wide spread famine in this country as they’ve already seized all the ports sans Odessa and estimates range it would take 6 months to a year to clear the mines. Not only has this bottleneck stranded the 20 million tonnes of grain stored from last year, don’t know that there is a plan in place to where to put the expected 60 million tonnes from this years harvest. The grain that was at the shipyard was mostly stolen illegally sold to Turkey. 

We can expect a serious food shortage this winter so we’re attempting to set up a drop off for dry goods to ship into Warsaw and then by train here to Kyiv thanks to my Warsaw goddesses (Alicja and Mirka)..

Katia (my Ukrainian goddess) and I will be heading to Kharkiv on Saturday to deliver much needed medical supplies and we’ll be picking up some produce and other perishables to deliver and theoretically returning with pets eager to get out of there as the Russian army deemed it wasn’t quite flat enough. Trying to raise about 350. Bucks for pet food, transport cages, vaccines for these animals before transport but I doubt that will be difficult..  as usual, I don’t have much of a plane and don’t really know what doing but I just do it anyway.. reminds of last spring….  Hmm?