The compatriots love Slovakia very much. There is a geographical, linguistic, but also mental closeness behind it
Diplomat Gabriela Stanková worked at the consular section of the Slovak Embassy in Kiev. She left under the dramatic circumstances of the beginning of the war, after Russia militarily attacked Ukraine. She also worked at the Grand Embassy in Kiev at the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014.
In the interview, he describes how the country has changed in recent years, how the Ukrainians have a relationship with the Russians and what happened in Kiev shortly after the outbreak of war.
When and how did you return to Slovakia?
I returned under dramatic circumstances on Sunday, February 27th. Our group leaves the embassy first. At that time, Ambassador Marek Šafin, his deputy Matúš Korba, police attaché Ludvík Šoltés and military attaché Martin Špirek still remain at the embassy.
We left the city at noon on February 25, in a military convoy. All the cars that were available and had drivers who took home to Slovakia people who got to our embassy at that time collected and needed to go to safety, but they had no. The way back was about 2,700 kilometers long and took almost two days. First we went to Romania and from there we traveled to Bratislava the next day. For comparison, the distance from Kiev to Bratislava is about 1,300 kilometers.
Among the people leaving the Slovak embassy a week after you were also Denník N reporter Mirek Tóda and photographer Vlado Šimíček. In his last report, Mirek wrote that “In the middle of the war, the Slovak embassy became small for a while Babylon: in addition to Slovak journalists, diplomats took on Czech, British, German, Ukrainian and Afghan refugees. “ Who were these people?
It was really a very big mix. There were journalists, there was, for example, a gentleman who came to Ukraine to visit his girlfriend, or two men who were originally on a business trip. They all had different reasons why they eventually got stuck in Ukraine.
The people who met at the embassy like this did not have much in common. Maybe if we met somewhere else and under other circumstances, we wouldn’t even notice each other. But the fact that we met at such a time and at such a moment made us feel like we had known each other for many years. We have created a great team together. The way we managed to come together and work together as one big homogeneous group was nice, but the circumstances weren’t really very pleasant.
Crisis situations can sometimes bring people closer.
They give a person a different optics. You suddenly look at ordinary things completely differently. You understand otherwise. Not even intentionally, in the sense of “I have to set up and mobilize”, the behavior will change quite naturally.
How did these people actually find themselves at the embassy?