Bhanu Sahni: 'Ukraine is my second homeland'

'We feel betrayed by the West.'

Bhanu Sahni flew into New Delhi on Thursday, February 24, hours ahead of the shower of missiles that flew into Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mariupol, Lviv, Kherson and other unlucky towns in Ukraine.

A resident of Kyiv, Sahni, who runs a corporate gifting business, has resided in Ukraine for nearly 35 years. He first arrived there in 1987 to study engineering at Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.

He stayed on in Ukraine because he fell headlong in love with the country and its "lovely" people. "I've assimilated. I've learned a lot of the culture. I appreciate it. And the love is reciprocated by my Ukrainian friends."

But family is still in Delhi. And his elderly father suffers Alzheimer's. Sahni visits every few months to check on his dad and this trip was overdue.

Hardly had he touched down at the Indira Gandhi international airport and he received the heart-clutching news of the invasion and a slew of sad messages on what was happening in his "second homeland" of Ukraine.

He's single but considers his friends in Ukraine his "second family" and is racked with anxiety; "it's like leaving your family back."

Sahni came to Delhi for a week, but is stuck indefinitely because obviously there aren't any flights back. If flights, by some miracle, do start up, he might return soon, even if the situation is uncertain there because "I can be a kamikaze at times."

He offers his account of the Ukraine situation to Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel. Sahni feels so many in India do not know the real picture there and he would like to rectify that:

I arrived in India a few hours after (the invasion began). I probably was on the last flight out.

Air India had stopped flights. I flew Ukraine International.

The prices of tickets skyrocketed in the few days before, because the invasion was anticipated and there weren't enough flights. Airlines like Lufthansa, Swiss, KLM, Air France had stopped flights -- not just because of safety reasons but because they had to pay extra for getting insurance for their planes. I had to pay probably four times the price.

We were still hopeful that this (invasion) wouldn't happen. My dad has Alzheimer's. I hadn't visited him in four months. I didn't want to delay visiting him because he is unwell. He does recognise me -- I'm on video call with him every day, twice a day, so that he doesn't forget me.

When I arrived in Delhi, my phone was full of messages from my friends back in Ukraine and my staff.

They said a full-fledged invasion is on.

I'm getting, of course, lots of messages, clips, first-hand information. It's a full-out invasion, with the idea of a regime change in the country. The capital Kyiv is being encircled. The forces are coming in from all three sides. It's nothing like what the Kremlin has been claiming all this while.

My friends are very concerned. There is just so much psychological pressure on everyone. They have to go often to the bomb shelters, because air sirens are happening.

Even though the Russians say that they want to just destroy the military capabilities, they're also targeting civilian residences. There have been blasts and casualties there. Yes, (the people I am speaking to know of people who have died).

To say the invasion was to save the Russians, who are being exploited there, is such a primitive narrative coming from the Kremlin for so many years. It makes me sick!

(There are some Russians living in Ukraine who don't go home to Russia but are unhappy with their lot in Ukraine and he further explains) that these Russians want the cherry on the cake and the cake too. They love Russia. They hate everyone else. But they will not live in Russia.

We say: 'Chemodan. Vokzal. Rossiya (чемодан. ВокзалРоссия)'.

Or: Pack your bags. Go to the station. And get to Russia!

It's three words and it's like: Bags. Train station. Russia.

I would like to share my voice about this crisis -- and yesterday (February 25) I was on television with (journalist) Barkha Dutt and with a few other channels -- because I find the Indian media very biased, pro-Russia, and the information floating around is (revolting) and this is my country.

Ukraine is my second homeland. I don't want my second homeland to be on a back burner.

We've been having this war for not just the last two days. It's been happening for eight years, since Vladmir Putin illegally annexed Crimea.

They've been funding and backing the separatists in the Donbas (southeastern) region of Ukraine. So, war is nothing new for Ukraine. But a full-fledged war all over the territory of Ukraine, with the full might of the Russian army, that was not really anticipated, even if there was so much of warning from the Western intelligence. No one actually believed it would be on this scale.

There are Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine. There are Russian citizens also in Ukraine.

Putin claims to be defending the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. But there was no animosity between Russian-speaking Ukrainians or Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians in Ukraine before, when this entire conflict was cooked, up and formulated by the Kremlin.

People were living peacefully since 1945-1946, when the Soviet Ukraine was formed. After the breakup of the Soviet Union (between 1988 and 1991) there were also no skirmishes. People were living in peace. There was there was no animosity between people on ethnic or language lines. Ukrainians are mostly bilingual.

I've studied in Kharkiv -- that's a Russian-speaking city (on the border). I have friends there. I don't speak much Ukrainian (he speaks Russian). Now what has actually happened -- because of all this bull**** propaganda coming out of the Kremlin since 2014 -- is that my Russian-speaking friends switched over from speaking Russian to Ukrainian. They refuse to speak Russian. They do speak Russian, but they are more and more are inclined to speak Ukrainian.

Russia has turned the Ukrainian people against Russia. Instead of getting the two nations closer, everything which has been happening from the Kremlin has just made Ukrainians more Western-looking, looking to the free market. They do not want to be a part of the Russian sphere of influence. They don't want to have anything to do with the Soviet culture system etc, which was defunct in any case.

They have been working hard. We've had two revolutions in Ukraine -- one was the Orange Revolution into 2004, that was basically an anti-corruption, again pro-West revolution.

Then you know, about the Maidan (Maidan Nezalezhnosti uprising in 2014), right? (Pro-Russia president) Viktor Yanukovych, was thrown out -- the funny thing is, when Kremlin says Ukraine had NATO ambitions 2014, the Maidan was not about the NATO alignment. It was about getting a free trade deal with the European Union. Putin was against that, because he wanted Ukraine to have a free trade deal with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

When they talk about being encircled by NATO -- no, that's not it; they just do not want Ukraine, a free sovereign State, to have its own will. And its own say, and its own ambitions make no difference (are of no consequence) to Russia.

It's like having a toxic relationship. You want to move out of it. But the stronger partner won't let you go. He will bully, coerce and do everything possible to keep you there. That doesn't go a long way.

It was very difficult for me to say (what is the percentage of 'ethnic' Russians or what percent has more Russian heritage or blood) because there's so much intermixing. I have so many friends with mixed heritage but I still call them Ukrainians and they call themselves Ukrainian also. They say: 'Fine, we have a grandma who was Russian', but they're not calling themselves Russian.

The mix of ethnicity is not just between Ukrainians and Russians. There's also the Hungarians, the Romanians, the Tartars. There are many ethnic groups.

So why just focus on the ethnic Russians?

That is the biggest minority, yes, in Ukraine. But there are other minorities. There are other ethnic groups also, who don't claim persecution and who don't claim any animosity.

Yes, everybody is standing together. The people will fight back. The Ukrainian army is not what it was in 2014. It will fight back.

But the issue is that the Ukrainian army is outnumbered.

The Russians have infantry and their air superiority is massive. Having said that, the Ukrainian army is going to give them a good resistance.

My worry is about the cost of life for the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian civilians. That is absolutely of no importance to the Kremlin, because they don't give a s--- about their own army guys.

There were skirmishes earlier (during the Donbas conflict). There were battles, when they were sending the regular Russian army to support the separatists in Donbas and Russian soldier coffins were going back to Russia.

It wasn't in the news. They were very quietly buried. There were no State funerals happening. They (the Russians) were supporting a position, when they claimed they were not directly involved.

Yes (there is not enough support coming from the West)

Sanctions have been taken -- to give them their due -- and, at least, sanctions happened faster this time than they did during the Crimean annexation and the Donbas conflict. That time there was so much of wrangling between the EU all the member states. It took them months to come to an agreement.

Four countries in the EU -- Cyprus, Germany, Italy, and another -- were resisting the Swift ban and cutting out Russia from the banking system. That's shameful.

Ukraine right now is the buffer between the West and Russia. It would have been easy for Ukraine a few years ago to have said: 'Fine, Russia let's be friends with you'. But Ukraine chose the Western way.

We feel betrayed by the West. They do a lot of lip service. They say 'We've done this' and 'We've done that'. They haven't done enough. These kinds of sanctions should have been taken prior to the invasion. They had the intelligence.

Ukraine is facing the might of the Russian army, which is so well equipped, and so ruthless.

The country has received defensive weaponry from the from the US, from the UK, from The Netherlands and even, thankfully, from the small, brave Baltic states like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.

But a country like Germany, who has some crazy notions about having guilt about World War II, they offered helmets to Ukraine. That was a joke. It's like someone is spitting on your face?

You'd be surprised to know that a lot of the men in Russian army don't know that they are going into Ukraine, that they are fighting against the Ukrainians.

They captured two soldiers and when they were interviewed, they didn't know they were in the Ukraine. They were just following orders.

The Russians citizens are protesting in Russia. It's still too few. There have been 1,700 arrests in just one single day of protests all over Russia (Saturday, February 26).

I would really want my Russian friends -- I've lived in Moscow -- who understand what actually is happening and are not buying the Kremlin lies, to wake up and be more vocal. 'Go out and protest'.

It's equally important for them to be protesting against their own government's policies.

Putin is very loose with his words and he is aggressive when he calls for the denazification of Ukraine. He should get his facts together. Because Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a Jew (hailing from eastern Ukraine).

It's all Putin's view, the venom that's coming out. And it's so incorrect.

I was talking yesterday with a panel of Indian diplomats (on television) and another expert. One of the diplomats use the word like 'denazification'. I said: 'Listen, you have to be careful about what words you use and what words you repeat. Because for your information Zelenskyy is a Jew -- the president of Ukraine is Jewish.'

Also, Ukraine lost more people in World War II defeating Nazi Germany than Russia, if you take percentage of the population.

It's high time the media, politicians and diplomats, fact check whenever Vladimir Putin speaks, or the Russian foreign minister speaks. There's the term: Gaslighting. If you put so much untruth in the media, by the time people realise that it's untrue, there are so many more lies already in the media.

What's in Putin's mind? What's his ambitions? No one has a clue, when a person is so deranged. His last few interviews have been so contradictory. And it's like a gutter language being used. It's not befitting for any head of State.

He's been surrounded by sycophants, and for the last one-and-a-half year of COVID-19, he's been bunkered down. He has very little access to people, who could really advise him. The people who advise him would probably not speak out because he wants to hear what he wants to hear.

Why did he invade Ukraine now? I think after he invaded Georgia in 2008, he understood that the Russian army could be made stronger. They've been investing a lot of money. Now he probably feels that the Russian army can take this kind of action. That's my gut feeling.

Yes, he waited till he was ready. Because he can do (capable of doing) it now.

But again, I don't think he's getting the advice from the right corners within his own country. If the biggest pet peeve in your life is that the Soviet Union fell, you have (Putin has) to realise that the Soviet Union fell because it was defunct and it wasn't a functional system.

You (he) can't have a grudge against the entire world that the Soviet Union fell, and the West is to blame for that, and everyone else is to blame for that, not taking into account what were your country's faults.

Instead of modernising your country, giving them good health care, good education, good jobs, a good economy, you are more focused on thumping your chest and making the Russian Empire great again.

So, it's not just that Putin was ready to invade Ukraine. These thoughts which are in his mind, have been brewing for so long, they've probably came to a boiling point.

• Russia Attacks Ukraine

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com