#my friend couldn't evacuate her parents even though by law they had a right to leave because her dad is of draftable age

[ohsalome]

your post reminded me how people on here tried to gotcha on the idea that ukrainians are inherently racist because of the issue with black ukrainian people fleeing and they tried to pin it on ukraine itself when it was literally just poland who didn't want to take them

Mhm, from what I remember, the problem came from the fact that during the first days the evacuation trains were prioritising women, children, elderly and disabled over men. + Not all foreign students are fluent in ukrainian, and not all ukrainian railroad workers are fluent in english. This created a miscommunication issue, where the railroad management failed to explain the students what to do and where to go.

If you've been here, you know what kind of chaos happened during those time period. The tension was fucking high. Everyone was in the survival mode. The infrastructure wasn't prepared to a full-scale war. A lot of mistakes happened on all levels of management.

The people who were in panic and jumping to the worse conclusions (based on their lifelong experience of racism) were given the platform by russian propaganda machine; and those who understood the language a bit better and were explained the priority of saving women and children first, didn't. If you have time and inspiration to bother with translation, here is an artice from March 2022 that includes quotes from both sides of the story.

We need to admit that this event was bad. A lot of people were hurt. But it wasn't a specific campaign targeted at black people. Yet russian propagandists and their lap dogs turned it into an anti-ukrainian smear campaign.

additional rant below

It's sad how easily westerners are ready to eat up anti-ukrainian propaganda, even when it comes from people who sent their mercenaries to commit war crimes in Africa. Y'all really think russia is a reliable source to learn about racism? Really? Ukraine has a black politician, we were represented by black artists in Eurovision twice - by popular vote! - and in russia, people bully brands who use black models in their advertisement into withdrowing the ad and apologising for hurting the feelings of consumers. I know this comparison sounds pathetic, especially if you're from a country with large black population, but keep in mind that we didn't partake in the transantlantic slave trade route, and yet we still do better than russia which has thrice the population we do.

People who don't speak russian don't have a clue about how racist their society is. If you know those fringe internet guys who scream about culture war and throw tantrums about black disney mermaids - this is literally the status quo of russian culture. And THESE are the people westerners have decided to trust on their word in questions of racism?? Really?

No matter how many times we disprove those "ukrainians are racist because we didn't allow black people to evacuate burr burr" claims with facts, they still come up. The rebuttals were there immediately. Yet 2 years later, I still get lectured by usamerican tweens about how all ukrainians are racist by birthright because "i googled ukraine racism and a russia today article told me it was so"