A year on, Crawley’s response to the War in Ukraine

It’s hard to believe that a year has now passed since Russian tanks crossed the border and began their approach on Kyiv. Whatever people may say now, I suspect that very few of us believed that Ukraine had a chance against a country of Russia’s size and military might, let alone that a year on the possibility of pushing the Russians out of the Donbas.

The stories which followed of the extreme bravery of soldiers and civilians alike, made it hard not to fall in love with this country with an unconquerable resolve to survive.

In the weeks and months which followed I know that many in the town worked to raise funds and supplies to send to Ukraine, others opened their homes to those looking for refuge from the conflict, and Crawley pulled-together to support those arriving. The blur of activity was a testament to our community’s ability to act as one in the face of adversity.

Yet, for all the efforts then, the risk now is that we forget about the conflict as time goes on. We cannot afford to forget that this war is far from over and that worse days may well lie ahead, it is only with continued international support and a willingness to bear economic sacrifices that Ukraine can prevail. If Russian aggression cannot be brought to heel in Ukraine, then the next country to fall will be a NATO member state and that will mean all-out war, if the price of supporting Ukraine is high the price for failing to do so is impossible to calculate.

We cannot afford to forget those members of our town, be they new or recent, as they continue to worry about their family back home and work to find a place within our community. We must continue to provide the same warm welcome we first offered a year ago.

And when this war is over, we cannot afford to forget the price Ukraine has paid and that without helping them to rebuild and take the place they have been fighting for within the international community, all the pain and all the sacrifice will have been for nothing. This cannot just be about war, it must be about forging a better world for all of us. Slava Ukraini!