Russland vs. Ukraine

[Schneemann]

Nach Wochen des Gezerres um diesen, meiner Meinung nach sehr brisanten, aber zugleich verkannten Brennpunkt, zeichnet sich nun eine Entspannung ab:

Kaliningrad row: Lithuania lifts rail restrictions for Russian exclave

Lithuania has lifted a ban on the rail transport of sanctioned goods in and out of the Russian area of Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad is on the Baltic Sea and uses a rail link to Russia via Lithuania for passengers and freight.

Russia was enraged when Lithuania banned the transit of steel and other ferrous metals under EU sanctions last month, and threatened to respond. But now Lithuanian Railways says it will resume transporting goods to the exclave. [...] Russia's Tass news agency cited a Kaliningrad government official as saying 60 wagons of cement would soon be shipped into the territory.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62274474

Im Zusammenhang mit der durch den Krieg bedingten allgemeinen Flüchtlingsbewegung aus der Ukraine (gegenwärtig etwa 6,1 Mio. Menschen, davon rund 5 Mio. innerhalb Europas, wovon knapp 900.000 in Deutschland und 75.000 in Österreich angekommen sind) noch ein anderes, weniger beachtetes Thema: Die Situation der jüdischen Ukrainer...

How Russia’s war is undoing 30 years of Jewish community building in Ukraine

While the post-Soviet era has seen a gradual reawakening of communal life for the tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews, the once-bustling synagogues and centers are now eerily quiet. [...]

VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (JTA) — At this city’s only regularly functioning synagogue, nine men and five women cheer a visitor on as he enters the building.

“Terrific! We have a 10th! Let’s begin!” one of the men, David Goldish, exclaimed during this interaction on a recent Shabbat. The struggle to gather 10 Jewish men to form a prayer quorum known as a minyan is part of life for many small Jewish communities in Europe.

But it used to be a distant memory in Vinnytsia, one of multiple Ukrainian cities where decades of community-building had restored Jewish communal life after communism. Dozens of Jews would gather for Shabbat services at each of the three synagogues of this city, which had about 3,000 Jews when war broke out.

Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February has compelled many thousands of Jews, and especially young Jewish families and singles, to join the millions of non-Jewish Ukrainians who have fled at-risk areas, and the country altogether. [...] Rabbi Shaul Horowitz, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s emissary to Vinnytsia, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The wheel rolled back. We need to rebuild it all. Back to square one.”

Horowitz was referring to what happened in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine became independent. Jews from across the former Soviet Union who had been prevented from leaving fled out of the region — 1.6 million in total over more than a decade, mostly to Israel. Since Jewish education had been prohibited, few who remained had fluency in Jewish prayers or practice. But over the last three decades, a range of efforts, many fueled by Chabad, have introduced Ukrainian Jews to Judaism and built thriving communities in cities across the country. [...] Now, the conflict seems to have undone some of the revival enjoyed by Ukrainian Jewry, a minority whose prewar size was estimated to be at least 47,000. [...]

“Most of the people who could leave — have already left,” said Mikhail Krilyuk, a 35-year-old single man who owns a local exporting business. “Those who had money, a passport, an SUV to travel to the border, they packed up and left. That’s the kind of people who held this community together,” said Krilyuk, who decided to stay, in keeping with rules prohibiting men under 60 from leaving the country in case they are needed to fight. [...]

But many thousands likely won’t be returning — especially among the approximately 12,000 who had left for Israel under its Law of Return for Jews and their relatives in the first half of 2022 alone. (The figure for the whole of 2021 was 3,129.) Ukrainian Jewry has managed to flourish despite multiple crises, including the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and the 2005 Orange Revolution along with the political and financial instability it brought.

In addition to dozens of synagogues, mikvahs, Jewish schools and kindergartens that have all been opened in the past 30 years, Ukrainian Jewry boasts institutions so large and conspicuous that they have become symbols of its presumed robustness. [...] But many of those who left were not actively engaged in Jewish life in Ukraine, according to Vyacheslav Likhachev, a spokesperson for the Vaad Ukrainian-Jewish group and a historian who has researched social issues relevant to Ukrainian Jewry.

“Most Ukrainian Jews are secular. Their attachment to the community, to the degree that it exists, is cultural or through receiving aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, not through Chabad and the rabbis who engage with a small percent of the Jewish minority,” said Likhachev.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-russia...n-ukraine/

Schneemann