It's been a while since I wrote something meaningful (and by meaningful I mean something that is more than 500 words long), and I got an interesting request by @flemingfarm : I'm curious how much the war is affecting you and your country so far. You are not far off from the action... Not like the many thousands of miles/kilometers away I am.
So here I am, about to tell you guys, dear and lovely people of Ecency what is happening in my country in the past 10 days or so.
For starters, as a lot of you already know, I was not in Belgrade when the war broke out. I was in Istanbul, so naturally, a war in Ukraine came as a bit of a shock to me. My first feeling was that this was a conflict that was to last shortly, approximately 3-5 days, as in essence, I truly believed the Ukrainians and Russians to be very similar to eachother - so a conflict between basically the same people should be a ludicrous affair. Right?
Well... wrong. And it is not the first time Europe has seen it.
Throback to the 90ties when my country was in a very similar position as to Russia is today: Serbia invaded Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina under the guidance of mr. Milosevic, who wanted to create an ethnically pure regions where Serbs could live happily ever after. I was not around when those things happened mind you, I was only a baby, so I couldn't tell you what was going on - but I can tell you that Serbia can feel the consequences of that war even today, 20 or so years after the conflict.
What is truly remarkable this time around though, that it is not only Russia and Ukraine that seem to be involved in this war. Everyone in Europe is - and everyone in Europe is already feeling the consequences of the conflict.
For starters, the prices of oil and electricity went up in a remarkably short period of time - which already let to widespread panic here in Serbia three days ago. People caused mass hysteria and plunged into the petrol stations trying to stock up on oil as much as possible. In the supermarkets the scenes were not that much different in comparison to March 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak was confirmed as a worldwide pandemic - the supermarket shelves were emptied fairly quickly as people did not know what kind of lockdown the governments would implement, so they stocked up on the basic needs such as flour, cooking oil, toilet paper.
Things are not good, and the president of Serbia, mr. Vucic, addressed the people in a very dramatic TV apperance saying that ''the worse is yet to come'' - in relation to the many different price increases of some basic needs that the people of Serbia will be exposed to.
And all of this is really, really strange and worrying to say the least. Inflation, prices going up, economic turmoil - all of these are causes for great concern for every normal individual living not only in Belgrade, but in Europe as well. What is the end game plan or how do things go back to the way they were?
My own opinion is that.. they don't. It is too late now. The crisis has escalated to such a point that I don't believe mr. Putin to back off now. He has already commited too much, which means that there is no way that Russia will stop until they achieve their goal of 'demilitarazing Ukraine'.
As for Europe and the USA, all of those sanctions that they were hitting Russia with? Yeah, they havent worked in a way in which they anticipated - Russia is bleeding economically, but so is Europe. So is every normal working individual.
And what is the most worrying aspect of it all? The leading people of the EU nations claiming that indeed, the worse is yet to come from this war, economically speaking. If that is indeed true, then may God help us all - as already now the future is looking bleak for a lot of people. Huge price increases will drive a lot of families to poverty, will destroy countries economic status for years to come and it can arguably cause the crypto market to crash as well.
Tough days ahead of us. Only thing we could do is stick together. As mr. Albus Dumbledore once said:
ā¤ļøš