Our twin town

Just people, wanting the best for their kids, to play football and live a peaceful life. Russian speaking or Ukrainian speaking there's no difference.

 

The people of Gorlovka and Donetsk are miners and steel workers, just like many in South Yorkshire. They feel abandoned by central government in Kyiv in much the same way as we did by the Thatcher administration. Much of the old industry was left to crumble, and added to that there's a liguistic divide, whereby Ukrainian was forced upon a population who'd never really used it in their lives. Obviously Putin saw this discontent and used it to his advantage to turn the people's very legitimate grievances against Kyiv into something far more dangerous.

We still have people we know in Donbas, and they confirmed that shelling was coming from the Ukrainian side last week. However, this does not neccesarily mean that it was the Ukrainian army. There are some powerful oligarchs in Ukraine who have private armies, some of which have quite disturbing far-right views. Very often their interests directly contradict those of central goverment in Kyiv. While Putin's narrative about the Ukrainian government being full of fascists is quite clearly nonsense, there are still some very unsavoury characters who wield influence behind the scenes. While I wouldn't for a minute even begin to justify what Putin is doing, the Western media picture has whitewashed over a lot of things, and not given as balanced a picture as they probably should have done. I'm pretty sure that if you spoke to anyone in Gorlovka, their opinion on the situation would be rather different to the narrative we're getting in the Western press.

 

You’re correct in that before the war started this wasn’t black and white. Putin’s problem is that after he sent in the tanks it became black and white.

 

It's certainly been clarified in the eyes of most of the world now.

 

For anyone who is able and willing to offer up a room to anyone fleeing Ukraine, phase one of the scheme has now gone live.
https://homesforukraine.campaign.gov.uk/

 

The balls already rolling for me. This government is still making it very difficult and this scheme is a joke if I’m honest. How do they expect people fleeing war to apply for a visa? They’ve no paperwork, no bills, no nothing! Scandalous. We’re not doing enough for these people.

 

It really is ridiculous! I always think I can’t hate this Government any more than I do already but they always make me manage it.

 

I notice it's Gove sugar coating it; even the Tories can now see how toxic Patel is.