The powers that blunder and their victims in Ukraine

It’s agonising to watch the suffering of Ukraine today. And I feel it all the more strongly because of the work I was doing only fifteen months ago, with a group of Ukrainians who impressed me as much for their competence as colleagues, as for their warmth as friends.

At the time I worked for an American company whose founder and his seriously ill son, had undergone the pain of finding a way through the maze of the healthcare world. He emerged appalled at how little information is available about hospitals.

He decided to launch a software system to tackle the problem, and assigned the work of building one of the first modules to two Ukrainian students at Berkeley, near San Francisco. They amazed him by turning it around in a few day. He gave them a second much bigger task, and again they’d completed it in astonishingly quick time. There was more to them, he decided, than met the eye.

“You’re not doing this alone, are you?” he asked.

“No,” they admitted, “we’re getting help from a bunch of friends back home.”

“Well, why don’t you form yourselves into a company and I’ll give you an exclusive contract to develop the system for me?”

By the time I joined the American company, the arrangement had been working well for seven or eight years, and a pretty remarkable system had emerged from their collaboration. They were two separate companies, but they worked as though they were one. The people I met when I travelled out there didn’t behave as though they were in a partner company, but like colleagues. Skilled and dedicated colleagues. I was proud to work with them.

Where in Ukraine was this happening? That’s a question one can’t answer without making a political statement. It’s like that city in Northern Ireland: call it Londonderry, and you sound like a Unionist who regards it as part of the United Kingdom; call it Derry, and you sound like a Nationalist who feels the place is Irish.

I knew next to nothing about Ukraine at the time, and had barely heard of the city, which I called “Kharkov”. That’s a Russian name, and arguably it makes sense to use it, the population being overwhelmingly Russian (it’s only twenty miles from the border).

On the other hand, it is in Ukraine, and many of my colleagues used the Ukrainian name “Kharkiv”, which was probably more politically correct. I didn’t meet any Russian speakers from there that objected to the name, and so made an effort to use it too.

Kharkov/Kharkiv illustrates the problem of that whole region. Russian speakers belong to the same community as the people half an hour’s drive away, the other side of the international border. Many of my colleagues had close family in nearby Russia.

The problem is particularly acute in one area of Ukraine that most Britons have actually heard of: the Crimean peninsula. British and French troops fought Russians there in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1854, at the battle of Balaclava, the British plumbed the depths of military incompetence at the same time as they scaled the heights of glory (glorious incompetence being one of the great characteristics of armies in combat). Tennyson summed it up for us:

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” 
Was there a man dismay'd? 
Not tho' the soldier knew 
Someone had blunder'd: 
Theirs not to make reply, 
Theirs not to reason why, 
Theirs but to do and die: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred.

A British blunder,
where the Russians are blundering around today

The Brigade captured the Russian guns, couldn’t hold them, and had to retreat to their starting point. Of the 600 who started out, just 195 were still unhurt and on horseback at the end. 

“C’est magnifique,” French Marshal Pierre Bosquet observed, “mais ce n’est pas la guerre.”

In truth, it wasn’t magnificent, it was carnage, and it was very much what war’s about.

That was in October 1854. A century later, in 1954, Crimea was the subject of another historical blunder. In a fifteen-minute interlude in a meeting of the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, its General Secretary Nikita Kruschev told his colleagues that Crimea was being given to Ukraine.

He liked Urkaine, where he’d spent some time, and his wife was Ukrainian. At the time it probably didn’t seem to make a lot of difference: no one imagined the Soviet Union was going to unravel, so transferring a territory from one administrative unit wholly dominated by Moscow to another, was an empty gesture.

But then the Soviet Union fell apart, Ukraine became a sovereign state, and found itself in possession of Crimea. The Russians hastily agreed a lease to allow their Black Sea fleet to keep using the port at Sevastopol, but otherwise they were out.

Although not really. Ukraine remained heavily dependent on Russia, particularly for energy, as Russia showed by turning off gas supplies when it felt the need to exert some pressure. And it was glad to be able to work through a friendly President, in the form of Viktor Yanukovych.

But now Yanukovych has gone, to be replaced by people far less under Moscow’s thumb, far more inclined to look westward. We’ve seen the results: explicit military threats from Russia, and open army action in the Crimea, where “self-defence” groups, looking suspiciously like Russian forces without identifying insignia, have seized key locations.

It’s deeply depressing.

But I’m particularly distressed for my former colleagues. Because just as the international political atmosphere around them deteriorates, the international commercial world has turned toxic for them too.

It was announced on Friday that the Ukrainian arm of the operation I worked with is suing the American company for $30 million. Why’s that? Because the Americans, under entirely new management, have unilaterally decided not to extend the contract after it expired on 28 February. After ten years outstanding work, my friends in Kharkov/Kharkiv now have to go the Californian courts to try to protect their position.

I don’t know whether those friends in Kharkiv/Kharkov will still be Ukrainian in a few months, or will have been made Russians by force of arms. I don’t know whether they would welcome such a change or resent it. Equally, I don’t know whether they’ll still be delivering services to their old American partners or whether they’ll be struggling to find new sources of work.

What I do know is that in both instances they have been the victims of international forces beyond their control.

All I can do is wish them well. These are tough times. I hope you and your compatriots emerge from them quickly, and unscathed. 

Unlike the Light Brigade.

A tale of two cities. And two meals. And two friends. And two remarkable women

The last two days have provided me with a couple of good meals out in London.

One was with an old friend from college days and it was great to catch up. He told me about the new exhibition soon to open at the British Museum, which takes as its theme the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. It’s apparently going to be based principally on personal recollections – you know, ‘what I did on Hajj last year’. I’m not sure that the compulsion to go will prove irresistible.

It was London in July, so we ate outdoors and had finished – well practically finished – our main course before being forced indoors by the returning rain.

And yesterday evening I had dinner with a  Ukrainian friend and colleague, on his first visit to Britain.

‘The people seem, I think, more friendly and more relaxed,’ he told me.

Friendly and relaxed? In London?

Once I'd dropped him off at the end of the evening, after a pleasant stroll through the rain in Regent’s Park, I hopped on a bus where I had one of those experiences that are absolutely characteristic of our majestic city.

I was in the presence of a woman who had clearly not always been blonde. She was in her forties, overweight with an air of not being happy about it – or much else either. In one hand, she was clutching a cigarette from which she had clearly squeezed the burning tip before clambering onto the bus, intending to light it again at the earliest opportunity, and she was, as we like to say, well lubricated.

In lesser countries than England, accent tells you little more than where someone comes from. But in this great nation it gives you a pretty good indication of their social class, or at least social pretensions, as well as their education. When it came to this woman, perhaps I’ll just say that in this country you can leave school voluntarily at 16 and if she didn’t, I would rather suspect that she was pushed out by way of recognition of her achievements to that point.

Nothing she was saying undermined that assessment. Next to me was a tall young man I’d have said came from sub-Saharan Africa. He had one of those white caps that Moslem men wear there. He was talking quietly into a mobile phone.

No doubt reinforced by the liberality with which she'd applied her dose of alcoholic protection against the bitterness of everyday life, the pseudo-blonde had decided to make a contribution to the on-going and vital debate between the West and the world of Islam.

‘Why don’t you fuck off back to Afghanistan?’ she was saying, repeatedly, and with only minor variations in the words. I assume that geography hadn’t been one of the subjects that might have persuaded her teachers to keep her on at school. Or history either. The target of her advice simply kept talking into his phone.

Friendly? Relaxed? Oh well, perhaps an exception only proves the rule. In any case, my Ukrainian friend was no doubt comparing London with the US cities he knows, where life is indeed a tad more frenetic, and with his own Kharkov where anxiety perhaps takes the edge off even the sunniest disposition (though I’m not sure we have much less to worry about in this country).

In any case, at dinner we didn’t just speak about England.

‘How’s Yulia Tymoshenko’s trial going?’ I asked at one point.

‘I don’t really follow it,’ he said. I must have looked surprised - a former president on trial, one feels, might be a tale worth following. ‘There are so many lies,’ he explained.

‘She’s accused of corruption?’

‘Abuse of power,’ he told me, ‘well, it is perfectly true.’

‘But she denies it?’

‘She says it is political.’ He paused. ‘Well, it is also perfectly true.’

‘So both sides are telling the truth?’

‘Yes, but they use so many lies no-one believes them and they do not prove anything.’

I could understand why he didn’t feel inclined to follow the case.

Of course, over here we’re still absorbed by the exciting turns and twists of our own corruption saga. I’m particularly delighted by the  revelation in the Murdoch case, detailed by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian and denied by no-one, that David Cameron, then leader of the opposition, had come close to appointing Guto Harri as his director of communications in 2007. Harri is a former BBC correspondent and enjoys a high reputation for honesty.

Before Cameron finalised the appointment, he was approached by Rebekah Brooks, then Chief Executive of News International, and told to appoint Andy Coulson, her successor as editor of the News of the World, instead. It seems she felt that giving Coulson the job would strengthen the links between News International and the Conservative Party. And Cameron did what he was told.

Coulson later had to resign because of the current phone hacking scandal and has recently been arrested in connection with it.

Isn’t it wonderful that the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition and Prime Minister in waiting felt obliged to follow the instructions of the Chief Executive of News International? And isn’t it splendid that Rebekah Brooks knew she could dictate the actions of a political leader in this way?

Especially as she’s been arrested herself now?

The hairstyles may clash, but in many other ways,
their Yulia has so much in common with our Rebekah

Eat your heart out, Ukrainians. An intelligent and acute countryman of yours finds my London friendlier and more relaxed than his own Kharkov. Meanwhile, I can affirm from personal experience that the standard of public debate here remains as high and edifying as ever. And when it comes to corruption and abuse of power – we’re at least the equals of anything that Ukraine can do.

It makes me proud to be English.

Putting words in their place

In these posts, I return with regularity, some might say monotonous regularity, to the theme of words. It’s a subject that constantly attracts my attention, because I feel that communication through words is a key element of what it means to be human.

So it was an edifying to find myself in one of those situations this week when they are completely unnecessary.

It was during my stay in Kharkov. It often happens to me when I’m travelling that I feel an overwhelming desire to eat some fruit. I’d put it down to a sharpened need for vitamins while I’m away from home, except that exactly the same thing happens at home too.

In a country where you don’t speak the language – I have perhaps 20 words of Russian, the main language in Kharkov (even though it’s a Ukrainian city) – buying fruit isn’t as simple as it sounds. This isn’t like Western Europe: maybe after the European Cup brings thousands of foreigners to Kharkov next year there’ll be a bigger incentive to learn the lingua franca of football and of tourism generally, but for the moment English isn’t much spoken in the streets, cafés or shops.

My first problem was to find a shop that sold fruit. I tried a couple of shops, including one marke

‘Producty’, an interesting name in itself – common, I’m told, in the Russian-speaking world, presumably to distinguish those shops from others that sell non-products. At least it means that if ever I want a non-product, I’ll know not to go to one of them.

My particular ‘Producty’ shop didn’t sell fruit.

I was beginning to get a little desperate, to be honest, when I suddenly saw just what I needed, in the form of a non-verbal announcement of the availability of fruit for sale: a shop front plastered with pictures of fruit and, indeed, vegetables.

No words but no uncertainty

There was a delightfully friendly and helpful middle-aged woman behind the counter. She kept up a steady flow of words throughout the ten minutes I was there, not one of which I understood. But the tone was unmistakeable and it was obvious she was being kind and obliging, so why would I complain?

I took things off shelves and handed them to her – a few bananas (she was kind enough to split three of a bigger bunch for me) – some peaches, some cherries. At one point, she waved a plastic bag at me and I was able to place on of my few Russian words, pozhalusta (please). The one-sided conversation (not entirely one-sided: I did a lot of smiling) continued, and then she looked at me slightly more intensely and pronounced a stream of more pointed syllables in my direction.

‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘the price.’

I smiled again and shook my head. She turned to a calculator, typed in the numbers and showed me the result. I gave her a note and she gave me my change. I collected my bag and placed another of my previous stock of words – ‘spasibo’ (thanks) to which she replied ‘pozhalusta’ – the courteous Russian response to ‘thanks’ is ‘please’.

The shopkeeper had made a little money, I had my fruit. The whole transaction had taken place in an atmosphere of goodwill and politeness. But apart from ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, there had been absolutely no verbal communication.

Words really aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Not all I tend to crack them up to be. In fact, there are occasions when they’re completely superfluous.

A chastening experience which will no doubt be good for my soul.

Friendly city where Lenin still leads in little things

There are things that are obvious when I come to think about them, but I only come to think about them when I actually experience them.

For instance, in my mind Asia is the East and Europe is the West. For the most part that’s true. But there are bits of Europe quite a long way East of bits of Asia – most of Turkey, say, and even a sliver of Syria and Lebanon – and I’m in one of them right now.

Kharkov is the usual English name for this place, which is revealing since it’s the Russian name for a city called Kharkiv in Ukrainian, and though it's right up against the border with Russia, the city’s in Ukraine.

Note that I wrote ‘Ukraine’ not ‘the Ukraine’. I’m told that it’s now viewed as faintly offensive to use the definite article with names of countries like Sudan or Ukraine. Odd, given that the last such country I visited, the Gambia, is terribly keen on its article, insisting that it always be used.

In Europe but east of bits of Asia

It’s a bit like the pronoun ‘she’. In England you can still be ticked off for referring to someone present as ‘she’. Now I’m sure none of us like being talked about extensively in the third person when we’re actually there, but only in English do we regard using the feminine form as particularly reprehensible. Or is it only the English?

Of course, the Japanese don’t like pronouns at all. Someone wanting to ask me directly whether I wanted tea would say ‘Does David San want tea?’ My inclination would be to say ‘you’d better ask him’ but they’d be unlikely to appreciate the joke and would simply reply ‘I just have.’

Anyway, what of Kharkov? I’ve just been out running along tree lined boulevards and through parks beginning to fill with warm June sun, so I approve. Whether I would have felt the same if I had been here in January, when the temperature was down to -20, is difficult to say.

Why was I out running? Because I've been met by some of the kindest and friendliest people you could hope to have welcome you to a new city. And they’ve taken me to some remarkable restaurants. I’ve run about as far as I can manage but I’m still left with the feeling that I could have gone twice as far without making much of a dent in the effects of their hospitality.

Photographer photographed, in the courtyard of a Jewish Institute.
It also contained the first fine restaurant I enjoyed.

The most curious aspect of the run was the statue dominating one of the squares I crossed: none other than Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, not a stone’s throw from a boulevard full of shops offering 30% – even in one case 70% – sales discounts on luxury goods and designer clothes. A salutary reminder that contradictions from the still recent past have yet to be resolved in the former territories of the Soviet Union.

Lenin shows the way to relief in Kharkov

Lenin as always bestrides the scene, showing the way forward. Or at least, if you follow the direction of his right hand, the way to the toilets in the park.

He always wanted to be the champion of the masses. It may be appropriate that he continues to serve the convenience of the public by guiding them towards the nearest public conveniences.