“Have you got your list of names ready?” It was the first joke Esther Bleijendaal heard Tuesday morning after Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a vindictive speech. Bleijendaal is supervisor at De Telefooncentrale in Alkmaar. A creative workplace for small entrepreneurs in a former telephone exchange. From the outside it looks like an ordinary office behemoth with a cell tower on top. Why the question? “Under the ground is a nuclear bunker from the Cold War,” says Bleijendaal. And she can have the key.
At the time, after a possible nuclear attack by the former Soviet Union, PTT employees would have to keep the telephone network running for at least two weeks.
What is the mood now in this place that played such a major role in the previous period of tension? According to Bleijendaal, the situation in Ukraine does not leave the entrepreneurs in the old telephone exchange untouched. “Some have been talking about it all morning.”
To care
A little further on, Terry Bruyn and Marcel Berghuis, in their thirties, are sitting behind their computers in the office of their event agency. “I’ve been looking up information about troop strengths and stuff all morning,” says Berghuis. He’s worried. He and his partner have just finished the corona crisis in which there were hardly any assignments. “This puts the global economy on edge again. I’m not really looking forward to that.”
Bruyn does think that the West should draw a line. “I find it quite intense when one country invades another country just like that. Europe and NATO must do something. Otherwise, Putin will threaten further and further to the West,” says Bruyn. He believes that the West should send troops to Ukraine to stop Putin.
Polls show that many Dutch people see Russia as a threat. At the end of 2018, the Dutch and Sweden turned out to be the most critical of Russia, in a study by Pew Research Center: 79 percent compared to 66 percent on average.
Two years ago, more than 23,000 Dutch people were asked, in the Clingendael Buitenland Barometer, to what extent Russia poses a threat to Europe. The results of this were less unequivocally negative than in other studies. Of all participants, 35 percent agreed with the statement that Russia poses a threat to Europe’s security, while 38 percent were neutral or did not know. Of those polled, 27 percent said they did not see Russia as a threat. After Putin’s speech and invasion of eastern Ukraine, concerns are likely to grow further
Also read: Cyber attacks on Ukraine directed via the Netherlands
This is also the case with René Geurts from Aerdt in Gelderland. “If Putin wants something, he does it.” Together with her husband Hans, an avid fan of air planes, she drove to Soesterberg today to visit the National Military Museum. Surrounded by starfighters, missiles and armored vehicles, the Cold War and the threat of the Soviet Union are visible here.
“At that time you also wondered: what is going to happen?” says Hans Geurts, sitting on a bench with a US Sherman Tank in front of him, which was used in the 1950s during the war in Korea, where the West and the Soviet Union also faced each other. Geurts especially remembers the tension he felt when the Russians wanted to place missiles in Cuba in 1962, near Florida in the US.
Everyone gets involved right away, so do we
students at Soesterberg Air Base
Geurts finds it ‘sad’ that war is now threatening again. It is bursting with representatives and diplomats, yet it seems impossible to avert a new conflict. While after WWII almost everyone said: ‘never again’.” In the meantime, it is all being put on the plate of the Ukrainian population, René adds. “Terrible for those people.”
Another visitor also thinks that insufficient account is taken of the people who live there. “Europe is now too focused on oil, gas and corporate sanctions,” she says. “But what positive consequences do corporate sanctions have for the people of Ukraine?” says Ans, who only wants to give her first name. Like her husband Rick, who is in favor of heavy-handed intervention: “We in the West have the means to oust Putin from his throne,” he says. “And that is necessary, because it is degrading what is happening in Ukraine.” He should know, as an ex-serviceman. Together with Ans and their grandson, they are looking at the war material today. It’s spring break in her area and their grandson loves to learn and talk about his grandfather’s work.
Students Emma and Martijn Scheltens, brother and sister, also decided to take a look at Soesterberg. Their parents live right next to the airbase. They recently discussed the situation in Ukraine with friends. Martijn thinks it looks bad now that the Russians are invading Ukraine with a ‘half peace excuse”, under the watchful eye of a threatening Putin. Moreover, we are expected to receive sanctions from both sides, Martijn and Emma realize. “Everyone gets involved immediately, so do we in the Netherlands.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 24, 2022
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