Head of Ukrainian Cultural Exchange Association Predicts “When the War Will End”

What Ukrainians want most now are weapons. It is not bread, water, or clothing. They want us to send them weapons.”

Ukraine is under daily bombardment by Russian forces. Motohiro Ono, 52, chairman of the Japan-Ukraine Cultural Exchange Association (Yao City, Osaka Prefecture), speaks for the Ukrainians, who live in constant danger. He listens to the sincere voices of those who are suffering from the ravages of war, and he is also deeply moved by the devastation he sees in the region through news reports.

I feel as if my heart is being torn out of my chest,” he said. But there is little we can do. All we can do is raise our voices. I want the Russian troops to leave as soon as possible. And we cannot tolerate Russian propaganda.

According to news reports, Russia has so far been engaged in propaganda efforts based on political agendas, spreading false information such as “Ukrainian troops are destroying cities” and “there is a biological weapons research facility in Ukraine, and the U.S. is supporting it. Mr. Ono continues.

In Russia, the current war is not supposed to have taken place in the first place. It is a crime to disseminate false information. We would like to continue to send out as much information as possible in order to destroy it.

Mr. Ono’s involvement with Ukraine goes back more than 15 years. The starting point was the Russian literary giant Dostoevsky, whom he read in high school. He was particularly impressed by the depth of humanity depicted in “The Poor.

Wanting to read Dostoevsky in the original, she entered the Russian Language Department of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Tenri University. After graduation, he planned to teach Japanese at a university in the Soviet Union, but this did not happen because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, his senior year.

He therefore joined a publishing company in Osaka and continued his independent research on Russia. Eventually, he came to realize the historical fact that the birthplace of Russia is Ukraine. In 2005, at the age of 35, he resigned from the publishing company where he had worked for 13 years and flew to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

I went there with the money I had saved up in Japan,” he said, “and I was prepared to jump off Tsutenkaku Tower.

With the cooperation of his former student mentor and others, he continued to hold events in Ukraine for a year to promote Japan-Ukraine exchange, such as tea ceremonies and contemporary art exhibitions. During this time, he was struck by the generosity of the Ukrainian people.

I made a lot of friends,” he said. People in Ukraine are very close to each other. When I visited the western part of the country. I was thirsty, so I asked a house around there for water, and they said, ‘Come in! He invited me to come and see him. Not only water, but he said, ‘Go ahead and have some milk, and there’s some rice, too. They gave me vodka and let me sleep there. After a few days, I was ready to go home, but they said, “Why don’t you stay here forever? That doesn’t happen in Japan today, does it?　It’s not every day a foreigner shows up out of the blue and lets you stay the night.”

Although he was sometimes bewildered by the proximity, Ono returned to Japan at the end of his one-year stay and established the Japan-Ukraine Cultural Exchange Association in 2006. His activities continue to be grassroots cultural exchange. Currently, the association has about 250 members, including international political scientist Glenko Andriy, who has been in the media since Russia’s recent military invasion.

Mr. Ono, too, has been inundated with inquiries from the media as the situation in Ukraine has become increasingly tense, and his phone has been ringing nonstop.

Until now, we have only received two or three inquiries a year about Ukraine,” he said. Now, however, we receive calls every day from more than 100 media companies asking us to introduce them to Ukrainians.

On the other hand, I also received a silent phone call early in the morning. A total of four times, one from the company and one from a cell phone. This was after Mr. Ono appeared on TV.

All of them are blocked calls. They may have been harassed by people who don’t like what I have to say because I am pro-Ukrainian.

Members in Ukraine also received a daily stream of messages indicating the effects of the war situation: “I woke up to the sound of bombs,” “The gas station is gone,” “The bakery is out of bread,” and so on. Ukrainians who had initially been reluctant to appear in the media because of their relationship with Russia, began to appear on TV, saying they were “ready to die. Seeing these Ukrainians live their lives brought tears to Mr. Ono’s eyes.

They even say they want weapons, and I think they will be thorough. President Putin will continue to fight until his life is gone. So there is no drop-off point in this war. We will do it until one of them makes a sound. But I am confident that Ukraine will not be dented.”

Ukraine and Russia are continuing negotiations for a ceasefire, and the Ukrainian delegation has mentioned the possibility of an agreement, but its future is uncertain. Mr. Ono said.

If a ceasefire could be achieved through negotiations, the armed struggle would have already ended in the eight years [since the Crimean peninsula was annexed in 2014].” So I feel that negotiations will be broken. Even if the war continues and Kiev falls and a Russian puppet government is established, even if it takes years, the Ukrainians will try to overturn the situation. So this fight may not end this century.”

As we speak, Russian military bombing continues in the region. A theater in Mauripol in southeastern Ukraine was bombed, and in the capital city of Kiev, urban areas have been shelled and the death toll continues to rise. According to the United Nations, by the 17th, 816 civilians had been killed (59 of them children) and 1,333 injured (74 of them children).

We have no choice but to raise our voices.

Will the voices of Mr. Ono and others around the world who wish for peace in Ukraine ever be heard?