The Russian invasion of Ukraine completely turns Bart van der Vossen’s life upside down. 62-year-old Van der Vossen from Paterswolde, who grew up in Vries, was forced to give up his life there after 25 years. Now he is committed to his afflicted compatriots from his brother Jan’s farm in Een.
Horecaman Van der Vossen has been living in Ukraine for about 25 years. “The marriage did not go completely. Then I thought: away for a year and it will be all right, but unfortunately that was not the case. I liked it so much that I stayed there,” he says in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata . A look in the newspaper took him to Eastern Europe. “That was the first thing that happened. I was in the newspaper looking at something that was not normal. Something very different. There was an advertisement for a cook in Kiev. It had to be me.”
As an employee, Van der Vossen opened restaurants in Kiev and trained staff. “Kitchen, service and bartenders.” That’s how he got to know his second wife, a Ukrainian. Life smiles on Van der Vossen, until the end of February this year. When the Russians invade the country, the man from Paterswolde lives with his wife in Lisniky, a village just outside Kiev. “We had to leave. We got a call that my wife was no longer safe and that she had 24 hours to leave.”
Van der Vossen’s wife works for a foreign company and appears to be on a death list of the Russian secret service. He can’t say exactly what she does for security reasons. The trip to the Netherlands takes two weeks. First they flee to the Moldovan capital Chisinau. “Then my wife got a phone call that she has to go to Europe. We first drove down to the west. I also dropped off two of my wife’s relatives. You really sit behind the wheel until twenty o’clock, it doesn’t go fast and you just drive 450 kilometers.”
The journey eventually leads to brother Jan in Een, where they are now staying. From that moment on, he tries to help his Ukraine in various ways. “I try to tell things in the media, to make it personal. People watch the news and see war for a month, people and soldiers on the street. Corpses on the street. You get a certain repetition in your head of. It goes less with you Not because you’re hard or heartless Look at the news and you see so many wars Unfortunately we have this mess in the world We still can’t live together I’m trying to make it more personal, closer to the people.”
Because help is needed, Van der Vossen knows. “Clothing campaigns are wonderful, but don’t get much done. We’re heading towards the summer. People still have clothes there. Food and medicine, actually, that’s the most important thing. If you can give people shelter, give them shelter. But think about it.” Think about it very carefully. Don’t take two people in a three-room apartment. A room for those two people, then you have no privacy anymore.”
The war makes Van der Vossen gloomy. “This will not be over in a few weeks. I expect six months, a year, just say. The sooner the better, but I don’t see it.”
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