Sonja van den Ende
Are these still refugees who supposedly cannot return to their homeland?
Anger is boiling over in German and Dutch cities - and rightly so. While many Europeans are having to count every euro twice in this crisis of Europe's own making, convoys of Ukrainian cars are heading east during the Christmas holidays. These refugees, reportedly fleeing Russian bombs and drones, are being well supported financially by Germany, the Netherlands, and other European countries - yet as Christmas approaches, they suddenly return home in high spirits.
At the Polish-Ukrainian border, cars are stuck in traffic jams for kilometers. Journalists report hours-long waits, and the flow of returning travelers shows no signs of abating. Families registered as war refugees are heading back to Ukraine for the Christmas and New Year holidays. While air raid sirens supposedly never cease in Ukraine, the fear of missiles and drones appears to fade. The contradiction is stark. Mainstream outlets like Deutsche Welle, whose reporter Christopher Wanner covered the border traffic, have reported on these queues (the report can be viewed here ).
Worse still, if you look at the cars in Wanner's report, many are expensive vehicles that Europeans themselves can no longer afford - because Europe is mired in an economic crisis of its politicians' making.
Is this still fleeing war ? Are these still refugees who supposedly cannot return to their homeland ? Or is it simply vacation travel at the expense of the European taxpayer ? Calls are growing for every refugee to be thoroughly screened. Critics argue that someone who travels to a war zone without a compelling reason can hardly claim protection. After all, according to the mainstream media and radicalized EU politicians, they should be facing death from "Putin's bombs and drones."
Visiting Ukraine is even advertised and promoted in various brochures and websites. The western regions of the country boast "the most colorful and unique Christmas atmosphere." One travel site recommends: "a mini-trip to Transcarpathia to anyone who wants to immerse themselves in a fairytale atmosphere and see for themselves how ancient Ukrainian traditions are reflected in modern life. Find more New Year's and winter trips to Ukraine here."
These so-called Ukrainian refugees are among the approximately 6.5 million people who have sought refuge across Europe. Germany is the main destination, with over a million Ukrainian war refugees; Poland follows closely behind, currently hosting over 950,000. But are they really refugees ? No, of course not. The majority come from western Ukraine, where there is no war. The people of the Donbas - now part of Russia - should be the real refugees. That is where drones, bombs, and missiles from Ukraine and NATO are flying.
But the majority of people from the Donbas, which has been Russian territory since the 2022 referendum, are evacuated by Russia when fighting approaches, as recently happened in Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk) or Dimitrov (Mirnograd).
About a million people from the Donbas have been relocated, or if you prefer, have fled and are being housed in various regions of Russia. Among them are children who have lost their parents or are searching for them. Europe calls this "child stealing," an absurd claim. Should these children die if, for example, drones strike Krasnoarmeysk while their parents are killed or missing in the chaos ? Ukraine and Europe label this "child abduction" and have issued arrest warrants through the International Criminal Court (ICC) for President Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia.
The European population is slowly waking up, perhaps too late. Their countries have already been practically surrendered to the refugee industry. It is rampant across Europe and worsening daily. In the Netherlands, for example, one hotel after another is being filled with refugees, often without the consent of local villagers or even the hotel owners themselves. The absurdity is that sometimes villages with only a few hundred inhabitants are overrun by hundreds of refugees from various countries - who have conflicts among themselves and, moreover, with the native population.
Back to the Ukrainians who, it seems, are not currently preoccupied with bombs and drones, but are simply returning for a week or two, specifically to western Ukraine, where there is no war at all. These are the profiteers of European taxpayers. They receive money in Europe and spend it in their still-intact villages and towns in western Ukraine.
Ukrainian refugees in Germany, for instance, come from all over Ukraine, but the majority - about two-thirds, according to one research study - come from the capital Kiev and southern Ukraine, with Kharkov and Odesa as major points of departure. Lvov is considered a transit hub. According to official German data, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia has received the most Ukrainians. In July 2024, 232,252 Ukrainians lived in this region.
The region is known for major cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Dortmund, where life has become unbearable. No-go areas have emerged due to high crime rates. Many remnants of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, or so-called Arab clans (mafia), brought there by the UN after the fall of Aleppo, Syria in 2016, reside there. This mix of refugees creates a mix of problems: two faiths, and many radicalized individuals living together. The real Germans fled these areas and cities long ago.
On social media platforms like X, discussions about the so-called Christmas holidays of Ukrainian refugees are intensifying. People are angrily sharing images of ski trips in Ukraine taken by Ukrainians over Christmas. Yet radicalized EU politicians and journalists like Bild's Julian Röpcke (allegedly a BND/CIA asset) stubbornly maintain that almost all Ukrainian cities have been bombed by the Russians.
Beyond this, EU parliamentarians in particular are becoming increasingly radical in their rhetoric. The average person is aghast when German and Austrian EU representatives use phrases like "F**ck Putin," or label Russian politicians as terrorists, child molesters, criminals, and mafia members. If you examine their CVs, they are graduates of renowned universities where such language was presumably not taught...
Of course, EU politicians and their brainwashed journalists continue to insist that Christmas in Ukraine is now celebrated on December 25 and 26 (since 2024). However, the reality in Ukraine is quite different. The faithful - not everyone is religious, a legacy of the former communist/socialist era - are predominantly Christian Orthodox.
Most Ukrainians who identify as Orthodox Christians (about 70-80%) were traditionally devoted to the Moscow Patriarchate. But Ukraine has banned that patriarchate and declared a new church. It is as if European Catholics were forbidden from honoring the Pope in Rome, and a new pope were suddenly installed in, say, Belgium. That is the simplest explanation. But believers, of course, remain followers of Moscow or Rome.
Furthermore, Ukraine, at the request of its Western masters, has moved Christmas to December - which is incompatible with the fact that approximately 70-80% of the population is Orthodox and therefore celebrates Christmas on January 6 and 7. Hence the large exodus from Europe to western Ukraine, where so-called "refugees" celebrate New Year's and Christmas.
Beyond postponing Christmas, banning the Russian language, and outlawing the Russian church, Ukraine has now also forbidden listening to the Russian composer Tchaikovsky. "Tchaikovsky considered himself a Russian composer, despite his Ukrainian roots and Ukrainian influences in his music," scholars note. Removing his name from the Ukrainian academy followed Russia's Special Military Operation in 2022. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, performed during Christmas and New Year's in many European cities. One wonders: will this too be banned in Europe?
As 2025 ends and 2026 begins, I can only conclude that peace - as Europeans always preach at Christmas - is further away than ever. Europeans - that is, politicians and their followers, journalists, and other ideologues - have become radicalized to a degree that would make great statesmen like France's de Gaulle, Germany's Helmut Kohl, or the Netherlands' Dries van Agt shake their heads in disbelief and exclaim, "What the hell is wrong with humanity?" How did we reach the point where fools rule the people ? Well, there is a saying: every country gets the leaders it deserves. Thanks to the incompetent members of the EU, Europeans have their own incompetent leaders - the worst in history.