Dear CCI Readers,
Mike Metz shares his experience in Crimea. Enjoy!
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
We’re in Yalta, Crimea, today, made famous by “the big three,” Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, at the end of WWII. Here’s the view those old boys would have had when they awoke:
Speaking of that war, in this small country the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians and put as many more in concentration camps in some of the worst fighting on the eastern front. These folks know war intimately, the survivors are still around.
We arrived yesterday to a warm and friendly welcome from the local Rotary Club. Below, in the middle, is Yuri, current club president, and two past presidents, Irena, left, Anatoly, right. Yuri was a chip engineer until the 90s when the country fell apart, had some tough times, and now is a manager in an energy plant. Irena runs her own interior design business. Anatoly is a winemaker. Delightful people. Took us to a special needs school that the club supports, where we planted a tree (in the rain) and met some very dedicated staff.
Then we’re off to meet with a dozen members of the Crimean parliament (I am not making this up), including the chairman of the parliament, the second in command of the country. The room was as big as a gymnasium with a conference table to match—flags, lights, cameras, the whole deal—and we met the folks now running the place, and proud of it.
The Crimean point of view goes like this:
– the U.S. ran a right-wing “regime change” in Ukraine,
– the regime-changers then moved on Crimea,
– the Crimeans called in the Russians for help,
– then voted to go back with Russia,
– then they (not Russia) got slammed with sanctions.
Kathy says, “Wait a minute, Crimea’s the victim here—they get sanctions? How’s that?” Hey it’s a tough world out here.
Last stop was a news conference, where we give our citizen-to-citizen pitch, (“here to listen and learn”), have reporters and cameras in our faces for awhile, and make it into the Crimean news stream. RT was there, maybe you can catch it on Comcast.
Michael Metz
Citizen Diplomat
September, 2018