With the cold weather now in full swing, towns in Europe twinned with Ukrainian communities are looking for ways to help. — FRANK RUMPENHORST/dpa
As Ukraine braces for a third winter of war, a small city in Germany is helping people keep warm in its twin town in western Ukraine.
Winters in Ukraine are cold and snowy, with temperatures often plunging well below freezing. Average temperature ranges between -4.8ºC and 2ºC from December to March and in some places, temperatures regularly drop to below -20ºC.
Many Ukrainians have been displaced amid the ongoing Russian invasion, with some 3.4 million people forced to leave their homes. Many of them are holding out in collective shelters that lack adequate winter protection.
On the frontlines, families live in damaged homes, often without reliable heating or electricity, as Russia continues to target Ukraine's energy infrastructure, seeking to destroy morale.
This winter too, Moscow will try to destroy Ukraine's energy supply system, NATO chief Mark Rutte said recently.
Russian President Vladimir Putin "will use winter as a weapon", Rutte said during a visit to Latvia in mid-November.
With the cold weather now in full swing, towns in Europe twinned with Ukrainian communities are looking for ways to help.
Ukrainians fleeing abroad to safety headed to Poland, Germany and other parts of Europe, while keeping close ties to their homeland.
Some cities where they settled have partnerships with Ukrainian communities or launched new initiatives since the Kremlin began its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Six months ago, Frankfurt, Germany's financial hub, sealed a partnership with Lviv in western Ukraine.
Wiesbaden, another major city just outside Frankfurt, recently celebrated the first anniversary of its city partnership with Kamianets-Podilskyi, also in western Ukraine.
Roman Poseck, a minister in the state of Hesse where both cities are located, says "Hesse stands closely by Ukraine's side. Solidarity is also lived and cultivated through encounters. For this, partnerships between municipalities, with their regional approach, are exactly right and give hope for a time after the terrible war."
Such connections are supported "mostly by the commitment of volunteers, who fill them with life", Poseck says.
Alongside bigger cities such as Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, Gudensberg, a small town north of Frankfurt, is twinned with Schtschyrez in the west of Ukraine.
Wolfgang Mand, chairman of the Gudensberg Twinning Association, says: "We have had a cultural exchange and visited each other since 2016. Then came Russia's attack on Feb 24, 2022 and we were in a different world."
More than 1,000 days later, Ukraine continues to put up a fight, and initiatives like the one in Gudensberg are trying everything they can to support the war effort.
A wide range of help has been requested from medical aid to long underwear, Mand says.
"We are now on the 67th truck transport to Ukraine," Mand says.
He and others talk with their Schtschyrez contacts by video link to find out what they urgently need.
One local hospital donated a lot for Ukraine, "from gauze bandages to operating tables", he says.
Two women dressed in the colours of Ukraine pause for a minute's silence in Frankfurt in solidarity with Ukraine. — ANDREAS ARNOLD/dpa
The partnership association, which has around 90 members, also shipped hundreds of school desks and chairs as well as many "expired car first-aid kits". It also sent thermal underwear, warm sleeping bags and mobile phone power banks for Ukrainian soldiers.
Mand says that the reception in Schtschyrez was warm, "but it is also depressing to see how the cemeteries in Ukraine are filling up with the bodies of fallen soldiers".
He says the mayor of Schtschyrez is grappling with hard jobs such as delivering new conscription orders.
"It is admirable to see how Ukrainians, in the midst of war, try to offer their children a worthwhile environment in their daily lives and not just appear in mourning and depression," says Mand.
"We are convinced that the Ukrainians are ultimately fighting for us too and defending the freedom of the West."
His long-term dream is to be able to maintain personal and cultural relations with the citizens of Schtschyrez without war, but also "without a Russian-dictated peace agreement".
Christoph Rosenbaum, deputy head of the city council of Frankfurt, is convinced that "Friendships formed in times of crisis have a special bond".
He hopes that, despite the war, many encounters between the citizens of Frankfurt and Lviv will be possible quickly.
Eileen O'Sullivan, head of Frankfurt's international department, adds: "We want to strengthen the European bond together and promote this in friendships between citizens and joint projects in the fields of business, science, technology and culture."
Shortly after the outbreak of war in 2022, Hesse suspended its decades-old partnership with the Russian region of Yaroslavl, about 200km northeast of Moscow.
Hesse's Europe Ministry says the state is now working on a link with a region in Ukraine, preferably as a trio partnership with its Polish partner region of Wielkopolska, which in turn is already linked to the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
The war means the partnership "will include a reconstruction and support component. In addition, bringing Ukraine closer to membership of the European Union will be an important area of cooperation", says Manfred Pentz, the minister for Europe.
"For us, this is not about symbolic politics," he adds, reassuring words as Kiev looks to the West in concern about the future of support it badly needs. – dpa
