Tronca (Italian-Ukrainian Christian association): “From today a state of emergency, fierce people”

“From this morning to 8 a state of emergency is in force in Ukraine, between curfews and soldiers on the street who do a police service, ask for documents, control the entire territory. Strong people, the Ukrainians, go to work breathing this fatal air , they send their children to school. And the women, very strong by nature, cry only when no one sees them “. Mario Tronca, president of the Italian-Ukrainian Christian association, tells the Adnkronos about a people that for over 20 years has become an integral part of his life, personally committed – not surprisingly named honorary citizen – to assisting them in reunions, in supplies of basic necessities, on tourist buses that leave from Tiburtina, in bureaucratic procedures that are difficult to deal with in a country that defies itself, for at least a hundred years, from the aims of others, famines, genocides, without missing the pandemic. “The Ukrainians are certainly not watching, they are rather aggressive and, from what I have learned informally, 15% have already armed themselves. If Russia invades Ukraine, for Putin and his followers it will be a second Afghanistan, as it is. the United States was Vietnam. They are very determined not to give in, to maintain their independence. There are, of course, those who call me, those who are afraid, ask how to come to Italy, where they may have relatives. Most Ukrainians However, he reacts. And he does so with a strength that gives me optimism, I who are in mourning in this dramatic situation. A man told me, who was a digger in Chernobyl and there he took an illness that has not yet healed: ‘ we first passed the Austrians, then the Poles, then the Russians arrived, then the holodomor, then Chernobyl, then Covid. Don’t worry, he told me, that the Russians won’t make it “. (by Silvia Mancinelli)