Havering must lend support to determined Eastern Europeans.

Autistic Conservative Charlie Keeble gives us his views on the Ukraine-Russia conflict and how his Polish ancestry makes him supportive of the self-determination of the Ukrainian people. 

I am a the grandson of a Polish soldier called Zenon Gajbutowicz. He fled Nazi occupied Poland first as a prisoner of the Soviet Union in 1939 and was interned with his family in a gulag. Later in 1942 he signed up as soldier to push Hitler back and reclaim it’s sovereignty. When Russia started attacking Ukraine I realised that there was going to be another threat to the freedom of Eastern Europe.

Most of the media covering the Ukraine-Russia conflict are focusing on the refugees fleeing the war. The people of my grandfather’s home nation are opening up and providing sanctuary to them. That is a great humanitarian value they have to their fellow Eastern European citizens. They have also got an advantage in taking those refugees. By that I don’t mean greater compassion and resources than other nations,they have an allied base against Putin’s forces right on his doorstep, where these people can be taught to defy Putin and win back their country. 

Havering’s Polish community has some very friendly and well made people who have also extended their solidarity to Ukraine from here. What I am following most closely about the conflict is the defiance and self-determination of the Ukrainian people led by their president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. For a nation to show it’s nationalist agenda against tyranny is a heroic act that will mean that they will not be enslaved by Putin’s forces or become a Russian vassal state.This is what Havering should be doing to show it’s solidarity with the Ukrainian people, including those and other Eastern Europeans here. 

My grandfather left Poland first as a prisoner of Stalin’s annexation of Poland in 1939, then he found himself in the army of the Polish government in exile in 1941. Eventually he made his way to British territory in the Middle East when his unit was evacuated along with Polish civilians. After that he then went onto fight alongside his Polish brothers to liberate Europe. He didn’t dwell on his situation, he got himself together and went to drive out and force Hitler’s army back and made sure that Poland was not lost forever. What the foreign invaders took from his country, he returned with valour and guns to retrieve it. 

Sadly a short time after Poland, Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe was absorbed into the Soviet Union and they all became communist states. My grandfather Zenon couldn’t go back at all because his home town of Wilno had switched over into Lithuania, under an agreement brokered by the Soviets and the Lithuanian government. Rather than live helplessly under another brutal oppressive government my grandfather decided to stay in Britain, and start a new life herewhere he married my grandmother. He longed to write his memoirs sometime but he never got to. So with this story I am making it seen that some of it is heard. 

Now there is new threat to the peace and stability in Europe from Russia. This time it’s in the form of a federal nationalist-oligarchy of power hungry thugs looking to rebuild the Russian Empire in Eastern Europe. This must be stopped. I want Eastern European nations to keep their identity, community and sovereignty intact. They have come a long way since abandoning communism and they are now just as excellent in human dignity and equality as Britain is. There is no good reason to justify the rule of a superstate dominating Europe under one collective political body. I campaigned for Brexit and I am determined to see Britain thrive as a sovereign state in itself. 

For those Eastern Europeans living in Havering there is hope that their homelands can be defended with the same hope that my grandfather had. I don’t have much faith in the humanitarian endorsements of the virtue signalling left, but I do have faith in the resilience of the of the Ukrainian people. It’s not good if we pity them outright, we need to beat the tyrants back before they take the Ukrainian people’s homes away for good. Ukraine is just a first step towards the loss of Eastern European citizen’s freedom. 

As I write this Russian bombing has hit close to the Polish border. This could mean that Poland is next. My grandfather Zenon died two years before I was born, and six years before Poland reclaimed it’s independence from the Soviet bloc. I may never have known him but I know I have the same level of pride and determination as he had for Poland. I apply it to my autistic conservative objective and I extend it to my support of the Ukrainian armed forces against Putin. So let’s not just support refugees, let’s lend out support to Zelenskyy and beat Putin’s forces back.