On 24 March 2022 the Munich town council held a meeting and Klitschko participated through a video link. After a few words from the mayor, Dieter Reiter, Klitschko gave a report (in German) on the current situation in Kyiv.
Klitschko starts out by saying that even two months ago the idea of the Russian army invading and destroying Kyiv was unthinkable, but that it was now happening. Every morning before opening his eyes, he thinks the war could only have been a nightmare, but then he opens his eyes and realizes the nightmare is real. Kyiv, he says, is half empty now. The sirens are going hourly day and night to warn people of Russian rockets. The infrastructure of the Ukraine is being destroyed. (He will later give a long list of Ukrainian cities like Mariupol that no longer have heating, electricity or running water.)
Klitschko is vague on the human loss of both sides, not because he wants to be, but, as he says, hard figures are difficult to come by. He gets up, gets some metal balls and holds them up for the town councillors to see: “These are metal balls from a Russian rocket.” These balls, he says, destroy all human life within a radius of 500 metres. After such a rocket strikes, it’s impossible to recognize the dead, never mind counting them. Klitschko says, he was astonished when he was given the figure of 70 tons of Russian losses. He had thought that surely the dead would be counted. But the reality of modern warfare is that there are no corpses left that you can count, thus the horrific number of 70 tons of human remains.
Like others before him, Klitschko deplores the war, because he has family and friends in Russia. His mother is Russian, his first language was Russian. You can hear his anger and frustration at being forced into a war with a people the Ukrainians feel historically very close to. These feelings, however, do not cloud his determination to put up a fight. On the contrary. He describes his fellow countrymen as determined to withstand the current onslaught. “We are fighting for our families, for our women and children. We are fighting for our future. We are fighting for European values and principles and we are fighting for all of you. Because none of us knows where the ambition of Putin ends.”
One of the three mayors of Munich, Katrin Habenschaden, was interviewed after the meeting and was visibly shaken. All of the town councillors observed a minute of silence for the Ukrainian victims.
Two days after the invasion Munich sent 14 containers of goods (medical supplies, ambulances, baby food, etc.) by train to the Ukraine. More goods, like fire engines, etc. are to be delivered. The city then published a list of goods needed for the arriving refugees. After three days the place of collection was closed, because so many people had followed the city’s plea for help. On my way there I saw lots of people like myself carrying bags with shampoo, sanitary napkins, nappies, baby food, etc. When I stacked the stuff I had bought into the allocated cardboard boxes that were already filled to the brim, I didn’t feel proud or happy that so many people are trying to help. Instead, this war suddenly felt very real and close by.
Like Berlin and many other towns in Germany the city of Munich has now put up posters all over the city asking for donations. Currently about 60 000 Ukrainians have arrived in Bavaria. At the beginning 1700 refugees arrived per day, now the number has dropped to 850.