Ukrainian refugees in Ireland - Megathread

Please God your offer is taken up soon. From what I’ve seen of the Ukrainians, they are a very proud people, willing to work to support themselves and their families.

I cannot watch the news any more. I hear enough from the refugees I volunteer with. One came to me in floods of tears saying that she can no longer go home. She’d seen her street on the news and her home is gone. Her partner is still in Kyiv. Too heartbreaking for words 😢

let's deal with some realities here. Iraq received serious investment from the US, when the US economy had received the infusion of monetary profits from their war profiteering (advancing military tech, private military firms, etc), and the subsequent reconstruction (by US approved companies) occurred.. Huge amounts of investment was poured into Iraq to make it a success for democracy, and it was never bombed the way Ukraine has been. The majority of the fighting in Iraq was urban small combat, and rural strike operations. Ukraine has mostly been the case of urban shelling and urban clashes.

Ukraine is screwed. It was a 2nd world nation before the conflict. I don't think people really realise just how low the standards were in comparison to Ireland, but in many cases, they would be bleak. And then, with the conflict, there will be unexploded ordinance, such as mines, and shells. The actual shelling will have made a mess of an Urban infrastructure. That means all those former soviet highways, apartment blocks, etc which wouldn't be up to our standards but were generally extremely well built for enduring time, have been demolished. That includes sanitation, electricity grids, etc.

Ukraine is one of the few examples of urban areas being systematically attacked, and TBH I can't think of a similar conflict since WW2 where urban areas were the primarily focus of a semi-modern conventional military.

This is not about some time. Using Ukrainian assets alone, as the weakest economy in Europe, and serious issues with corruption (I find people are very quick to forget what Ukraine was like before the war), the reconstruction would take forever. Likely it wouldn't end before I died (50 years, hopefully). With foreign investment, we're looking at 1-2 decades. It's not going to be quick.. and it's going to cost an enormous amount of investment... at a time when both European and US economies are rather weak.

The problem here is that they have nothing to offer the EU, except the sympathy vote, and to NATO a position closer to Russian borders. That's hard. Really really hard.

Ukraine will remain a problem in terms of war refugees, and later economic refugees, likely for the rest of the natural lives of any poster on boards. This is not going away. There are no quick fixes. Remember 44 million people. That's a rather hefty amount of people to be in need, and to have been extended the status of being "European".