Arno Klijbroek has been back in Ukraine for over a week, the country he moved to about 25 years ago. The Tuitjenhorner built a life there with his wife and daughter, but their lives were suddenly turned upside down when the war started. After a few months in the Netherlands they are back home and they are trying to pick up daily life again.
“The air raid siren goes off almost daily and sometimes several times,” says Arno Klijbroek when he outlines the current situation in Kiev. “And every major city and sometimes smaller towns have checkpoints that you have to pass first.” It is the new reality that the family will probably have to get used to for a long time, because the war does not seem to be over any time soon.
That is why Arno, like his compatriots, tries to live as he lived before the war. “Everyone in Kiev is picking up daily life again,” he says. “Everyone is walking down the street, sitting on terraces and the music is playing.” It therefore felt like the right choice for the family to return to Ukraine for a month. “We were really excited to go home and see friends and family again,” says Arno.
In the meantime, Arno, who, unlike his wife and daughter has already returned for the second time, manages to find his way at home again. But he does remain on his guard. “Several missiles landed northwest of Kiev last week.”
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Images from Ukraine – Private images Arno Klijbroek
“Yesterday a soldier who died in action was buried in our village, half the village walked out. Then you are again pressed with your nose on the facts,” he says. This has been happening daily, all over Ukraine for 5 months. Klijbroek knows that the attacks can also come back to their village. “It is also taken into account that things can happen here again.”
“You hardly see the whole raw picture of what is really going on in the Dutch media”
Since her return, daughter Katja is also happy that she can see her friends live again. But she has certainly not been sitting still in the Netherlands in recent months. She passed online at her school in Ukraine and entered the Regius College in Schagen on 4 havo in mid-April. “It was a tough job, two schools at the same time, but we still managed to close that with decent results,” says her proud father.
At the end of August she will start her final year in Schagen. Then the family will in any case return to the Netherlands. “That will be quite a challenge for her,” says Arno.
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National media
Because Arno has recently been in the Netherlands, he clearly learned how the national media paid attention to the new events in Ukraine. It feels frustrating to him to say the least that the flow of information gradually diminished.
“You hardly see the whole raw picture of what is really going on in the Dutch media,” he concludes. “It makes a lot of people not realize how hard it is.”
And that while Arno still often contacts a few national news organizations with which he had a lot of contact at the beginning of the war. “I regularly send images of people at the front to the national media, but there is no response anymore,” he says in amazement.
And Klijbroek finds this extremely frustrating, because he notices that fewer and fewer people have a real awareness of the terrible situation that Ukraine will not get out of for the foreseeable future. “Ukraine will not survive without the support of Western Europe and America.”
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And then Klijbroek has another big frustration: the money raised from Giro555. According to him, only a small part actually ends up in Ukraine and most of it is spent outside. “Most Dutch aid organizations do not have the contacts that we have, simply because we have our roots here,” Arno explains. “Nevertheless, they are not or hardly open to any form of cooperation.”
Own foundation
Klijbroek knows better than anyone what kind of things Ukraine needs, so he has been collecting goods with the De Leeuw Kiev Foundation for months that do go quickly to the problem areas. “The foundation is still going strong. In recent weeks there have been several cars that we have managed to bring this way that will go on to the Ukrainian army,” he says.
A lot is still needed, while Arno notices that donating is no longer as fast as it was at the beginning of the war. For example, we are already thinking about supplies for next winter and that is why we are already looking for large batches of sturdy sleeping bags. Cars, especially pick-ups and buses, for soldiers are also needed in large numbers because a lot is broken during the battle.
In any case, Klijbroek hopes that the war will not be forgotten by the Dutch and that people will continue to donate, which he believes will be needed for a long time to come. “I assume that the war will continue until well into next year.”
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