“It’s a pity that Boris Yeltsin still isn’t the Russian leader, he liked to party, he and your Boris would have got on well together,” Nicolai Olynik observed. “Maybe all this fear of war could have been lifted a bit with a few drinks.”
There has not been much cause for levity in the Donbas, eastern Ukraine, amid warnings of an impending conflict and around 125,000 Russian troops massed at the border.
Nor have people here been following the ‘partygate’ saga in the UK in much detail. But the scheduled visit to Kiev on Tuesday by Mr Johnson has kindled some interest in what has been taking place in London in recent days.
There is, undoubtedly, a feeling of gratitude in Ukraine over the weapons – NLAW anti-tank missiles – that the UK has supplied to Kiev as the threat of invasion by Kremlin forces rose in recent months and hope that support will not be dissipated by focus on domestic British issues.
Mr Johnson was also supposed to have had a telephone call on the Ukraine crisis with Vladimir Putin before meeting the President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev. That call, however, was cancelled because the British Prime Minister had to be in the Commons following the partial report by Sue Gray on breaches of lockdown parties at Downing Street, and is now scheduled to take place on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr Johnson, speaking on Monday, declared that President Putin needed to “step back from the brink… any incursion into Ukraine beyond the territory that Russia has already taken in 2014 would be an absolute disaster for the world, and above all it would be a disaster for Russia.”
Mr Olynik, a 33-year-old businessman said: “It is a pity if this phone call between Johnson and Putin is not done, maybe we would have more of an idea about what the Russians want to do. At the moment there is a lot of uncertainty here and lot of different ideas about what’s going to happen. Any news about Putin’s intentions would be good to know. Mr Yeltsin probably could have been bit open after a few vodkas and champagne.”
Mr Yeltsin was the first President on the Russian Federation, for eight years, from 1991. His excessive drinking became a public issue and a matter of international interest. Documents, declassified two years ago, showed that by the mid-90s, the UK government had drawn up contingency plans about courses of actions to follow if he were to die in office.
Boris Johnson is today the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain. Even schoolchildren are laughing at him
Some Russian media outlets sought to pillory Mr Johnson over the party allegations.
The state backed Rossiya 1 channel claimed that his “anti-Russian hysteria” was “a way to divert attention from domestic problems” as he sought to “stifle” scandal. “Only anti-Russian sanctions can distract from Johnson’s protracted ‘Partygate’. ”
NTV, owned by Gazprom, declared: “If it were in the power of Boris Johnson, [Sue Gray’s report] would have disappeared into the bowels of the Victorian sewers of the city of London. Boris Johnson is today the most disliked, disrespected and ridiculed character in Britain. Even schoolchildren are laughing at him.”
Anatol Mischenko, a business partner of Mr Olynik, commented: “Yeltsin was very indiscreet, Putin is not like that of course, he is a very controlled person I think. Maybe he’ll try to use the issue of British weapons in a bargain with the UK.
“But I do not think it’ll be possible even for world leaders of big countries to know what Putin is thinking until he does something : and for a place like this, that is quite worrying.”
Slovyansk was the first city to be seized by separatists and experienced some of the brutalities of the conflict including extra-judicial killings and torture of prisoners. It was later retaken by Ukrainian forces. The Russian backed Donetsk Peoples Republic is a short distance away, and there have been frequent clashes since the 2014 war.
“We’re quite a way away from Kiev of course, and only time we hear about international leaders is when they come for a few hours to say they have been to the frontline,” said Galyna Ostapenko, a ceramic designer. “Even then they normally go to Kramatorsk [a nearby city] rather than here, I think some British MPs went there recently.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boards an aircraft on his way to Ukraine
“Of course there is a lot of interest in what the leaders are saying, and there is a lot of interest in the UK at the moment because they are helping us. We’ve heard Boris Johnson has home problems, but I do not know the details. We shall see what happens when he goes to Kiev.”
Arrangements for the UK visit had to be hastily rearranged after Liz Truss, tested positive for Covid on Monday. The British Foreign Secretary had announced new legislation on sanctions which may be imposed on the Russian political and commercial hierarchy if a military attack takes place on Ukraine, and was expected to speak about these during the trip.
Valentina Bondarenko, a 23-year-old student in Kiev, is keenly interested in domestic and international politics and watched some of the Commons proceedings on Monday on ‘partygate’.
“I couldn’t fully understand some of the things being said, things that have happened, but it was good to watch, some of them [MPs] were obviously very angry,” she said. “But we hope they’ll all continue to support Ukraine, we think it is so important to keep up pressure in Russia, that is one way of avoiding war.”
At the instigation of a friend in London, Ms Bondarenko also watched television interviews – rather colourful ones – with the culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, on the Sue Gray report.
“That was also interesting, how can I say, in a different way” she said. “It was more like what you see in some appearances by politicians on TV in this part of Europe”.
