All four of these articles cover about the same years, with two covering thhe same city, yet they do not sound like they are describing the same place. February, Ukraine and Germany sign a declaration at the Munich Security Conference to open a “Unity Hub” in Berlin — education, careers, help for people who want to go home — on top of the €20 billion Germany’s already spent and the 200,000 Ukrainians who found work through Jobturbo. Two months later Berlin’s own numbers come out: 77 assaults on asylum seekers and refugee housing in 2024, roughly double the year before, 34 people hospitalized, 16 of them women. Nationally, 218 politically motivated attacks on refugee shelters. Same city, same calendar year, two completely different welcomes that reflect the rising anti-migrant sentiment we touched on last class.
One thing I keep getting stuck on is the part of that gap that never produces a number. Berlin can count 34 hospitalizations because when someone is hospitalized that generates paperwork—a police report, a suspect, medical records. However this is only the floor not the ceiling. This is partly influencing what I could choose for my final topic. Reading the German statistics they all seem to be built around events violent enough to be official, but if far-right violence is up 17 percent, what about the ordinary, unrecorded stuff underneath it? I don’t know how I would source that, but that was something going through my mind during these readings.
Professor’s Amos’s piece hit me differently. The detail that resonated the most with me was the commitment by the judges, in their chambers during the day then a twelve-hour night shift on the Dnipro with a machine gun that, as Anton says, is “older than my grandma, but they still work.” I found it funny the Constitutional judge is the one with the power to mandate the others go home. But at least they are getting paid for it now, up to $2,400 a month. That’s not heroism language, that’s HR language. Three and a half years in, shooting down drones has become a second job with a pay scale. Meanwhile the Reuters episode is off in the other direction entirely — swarms, fiberoptic drones, Ukraine as “a testing ground for the next generation of weaponry.” So you’ve got 1940s guns pointed at the most advanced weapons anyone’s built, and both things are true at the same moment on the same river. It is absolutely insane that in the early years of the war, I remember seeing videos of trench warfare with Russian waves close enough for bayonet combat. Now, videos of the drone warfare is showing a more human side: conscripts and criminals not even attempting to defend themselves against a Ukrainian drone.
It seems that the drone warfare switch is giving Ukraine an edge they did not have before. With Russian military now resorting to reporting false victories on the front-line, sometimes 10 to 15 to even 20 kilometers into proven Ukrainian territory. Just like with Germany, Russian state elections are influencing the politics on the ground. Cheapness is a major factor in allowing Ukrainian defense to go on indefinitely — and the longer it goes on, the longer Ukrainians stay in Berlin, and the more that second set of Berlin numbers matters. I’d like to know whether anyone at the Unity Hub is thinking on that timeline, or still treating this as temporary.
