2022
March
30
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

March 30, 2022
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Linda Feldmann
Washington Bureau Chief

Three weeks ago, Ali Willis got a phone call, and knew she had to go. Russian-speaking friends had gone to a Polish border town to help humanitarian workers with refugees, and more help was needed. Ukrainians, who generally know Russian but not Polish, were pouring in. Soon Ms. Willis, a communications professional in London who speaks Russian, was at the border. 

That’s where she spotted a woman and her toddler son – Alina Serbinenko and Emmanuel – and immediately took them under her wing. Ms. Willis had already seen how young women and children in such circumstances can “fall into the wrong hands,” as she says. Ms. Serbinenko and Emmanuel, both weak from illness, seemed especially vulnerable.

Ms. Willis managed to connect mother and child with a host family in Germany via ukrainetakeshelter.com, and three days later was on a plane with them to Munich. She marvels at the leaps of faith required in the massive undertaking of finding temporary homes for Ukrainian refugees.

“Who were we to those we met?” Ms. Willis writes on Facebook. “How did Alina’s parents near Kyiv know their daughter and grandson would be safe with me? How did I know Alina would be safe with the German family found on a website? We all just had to put our faith in our fellow man.”

Ms. Serbinenko’s mother and teenage brother have now joined them in Germany, and soon the Ukrainians will move into their own temporary housing. Ms. Willis has left, but remains in touch with her new friends.

To me, none of this story is surprising. I’ve known Ms. Willis and her wonderful family since she was a little girl, when her father, David Willis, was the Monitor’s correspondent in Moscow. I was there as a student.

Ms. Willis went on to study Russian at university, and has used her linguistic skill over the years in her work. And sometimes, she has shown, knowing a foreign language can be a lifeline for a family in peril.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Marton Monus/Reuters
Activists create an X with white canvas to encourage Hungarians to invalidate their ballots as a form of protest against the April 3 referendum on LGBTQ issues, in Budapest, Hungary, March 27, 2022.

If you’ve followed Florida’s new law banning sexual orientation instruction in schools, this story from Hungary may sound familiar. Our reporter finds political rhetoric about family values and parental rights at odds with the values of inclusivity and tolerance.

Patterns

Tracing global connections

Western media has largely focused on the outpouring of support for Ukraine. But our London columnist looks at why many nations – including Israel, India, and Brazil – are not openly backing pro-democracy Ukraine.

As young Russian professionals flee their country for Tbilisi, Georgia, they tell our reporter their exit isn’t just about fear of being drafted or of economic sanctions. There’s another motive: a taste of freedom.

Commentary

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are often difficult tests of character and poise. But our commentator watched  Ketanji Brown Jackson last week through a lens of love.

© Kevin Berne/The Press Room
Sidney DuPont (left), portraying a formerly enslaved man, and A.J. Shively, as an Irish immigrant, compete in a dance-off.

Sometimes it takes a musical to show us our humanity. “Paradise Square” offers a brief but inspiring glimpse of racial harmony in Civil War-era New York City.


The Monitor's View

AP
A small child, who is part of a family who fled from Ukraine and has been taken in by a local family, shows a drawing she made in Chisinau, Moldova, March 7.

 

For many countries, Russia’s war on Ukraine has been an eye-opener about the need to correct their ways – none more so than the country of Moldova, Ukraine’s smallest neighbor. The landlocked nation of 4 million – one of Europe’s poorest – is now on a race to reform.

A week after the invasion, Moldova officially applied for European Union membership. “We want to ... be part of the free world,” said President Maia Sandu, who has since been invited to give a commencement speech at Harvard University in May.

Her reformist Party of Action and Solidarity has sped up yearlong efforts at curbing corruption and ensuring equality in public life. In mid-March, for example, the president sacked the head of the National Integrity Authority, an agency set up to fight corruption. Just four years ago, the EU declared Moldova a state captured by oligarchs. That designation helped lead to Ms. Sandu’s election in 2020 over a pro-Moscow opponent.

Most of all, knowing that Moldova might be next in Russia’s design to take former Soviet lands, its people have shown warm and welcoming hearts to fleeing Ukrainians.

With the influx of refugees, 1 in 8 children in Moldova are now Ukrainian. Per capita, the country has received the largest number of refugees from the war, or about 4% of its population. Most of them have been put up in some 50,000 private homes.

“We are the single most fragile neighbor of Ukraine,” Nicu Popescu, Moldova’s foreign minister, told Financial Times. “We are committed to making Moldova a safe place where people can find safety, and calm and dignity.”

For its efforts and fragility, Moldova will receive part of a $320 million initiative by the United States and EU aimed at building up the civic “resilience” of Ukraine’s democratic neighbors. The money is especially designed to counter “Moscow’s strategic corruption and kleptocracy.”

Since 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has controlled a breakaway region of Moldova called Transnistria with the presence of some 1,300 troops. That, along with Moldova’s high dependency on Russian fuel exports, makes its situation similar to Ukraine’s before the war. “To a great extent, this war has indeed united our people,” said the foreign minister.

For now, says Ms. Sandu, that unity is focused on quickly making Moldova “stronger,” one that will make it “a pole of stability and development in the region.”


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Photographer and videographer from Ukraine/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Can we find solutions to current world issues in an ancient text? This short podcast explores how lessons from the Bible relate to current events and can empower us to actively contribute to peace.


A message of love

Jacquelyn Martin/AP
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken listens to a question from the daughter of a U.S. embassy Algiers staff member, March 30, 2022, while meeting with staff and their families at the embassy in Algiers, Algeria, the last country in Mr. Blinken’s three-nation tour of the Middle East and North Africa. While in Algeria, he urged the nation to limit ties with Russia, and said, “The international community must increase the pressure on Russia to end this unprovoked and unjustified war.”
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. Come back tomorrow: We’re working on a story about why, after decades of work, fusion is starting to look like a viable clean energy source.

More issues

2022
March
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Wednesday

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