A Sri Lankan Ukrainian talks about the ongoing war in Ukraine

 

I am a Sri Lankan Ukrainian, living in Kyiv for many years. My father is Sri Lankan and my mother is Ukrainian. 

When the war started, I was sleeping, it was around 5 am on 24th February 2022. My wife's mother woke us up and said that Russian rockets were falling on Kyiv. We took everything we needed and went to a dacha 30 km from Kyiv. Then it turned out that there was a small airport near our dacha, and rockets were also falling there. Therefore, we went to western Ukraine, away from Kyiv, to the border with Poland.  I did not witness the events, only once I saw how a Russian plane was shot down near our dacha. But the constant explosions around us scared us very much. Also, our relatives live not far from Kyiv, they told terrible stories when Russian soldiers killed civilians in their village. 

People are very disappointed that so few people help us. It turns out that we ourselves must fight with the Russians and Belarus since the war started. Russian troops are also coming from their territory and rockets are flying out. The citizens of Ukraine are very surprised by the meanness of the Russian army, they are not bombing military facilities, but residential buildings, hospitals, bomb shelters where civilians are hiding. Sometimes Russian troops shoot at Ukrainians who are just queuing for bread. The end result of the war is that Putin will lose, the Russian economy will fall, but Putin will show his population as if they had won, propaganda works very effectively there. People believe everything Putin says on TV. In 3-5 years, Ukraine will turn into a developing European country, which in terms of the pace of development will be very far from Russia.  

I want to convey the following to Russian civilians: 1. Do not believe what they say to you on television channels. 2. Ukraine is not Russia. 3. The Russian military is fighting very vilely, killing many civilians, they are launching cruise missiles at civilians targets. 4. Take away your children who are fighting for Russia in Ukraine, they all will die and you won’t even know about it.