Petro Poroshenko, the man who had climbed on the tank and tried to calm the protesters during the Maidan riots, was elected the fifth president of Ukraine on 25 May and inaugurated as Ukraine’s president on 7 June 2014. He had captured more than 54 per cent of the vote in the first round, thereby winning outright and avoiding a run-off. Poroshenko was one of the richest men in the country and he also owned a television station; for some this made him a dubious leader. But he had also actively and financially supported the Euromaidan protests between November 2013 and February 2014, and this led to an upsurge in his popularity. For now, most Ukrainians were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. When it became clear he had won the election he announced that his first presidential trip would be to Donbas, where armed pro-Russian rebels controlled a large part of the region. Poroshenko also vowed to continue the military operations by Ukrainian government forces to end the armed insurgency claiming, ‘The anti-terrorist operation cannot and should not last two or three months. It should and will last hours.’ Poroshenko and the rest of the world could not have fathomed then that five years later the Donbas would still be controlled by separatists and the fight for the region’s autonomy would remain ongoing.
The second phase of the Ukrainian attacks on the separatist positions started around mid-May 2014 and, as the Ukrainian forces gained ground, it became evident that the pro-Russian fighters were actually only in control of the urban areas of the Donbas. During the clashes the rebels lost quite a number of men, but they were able to ruthlessly take revenge.
On 14 June 2014, a Ukrainian Air Force transport aircraft was shot down by forces of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic during the Ukrainian anti-insurgent operation in the Donbas area. The incident came less than a week after pro-Russia rebels launched a series of attacks on Ukrainian forces at Luhansk International Airport. The airport had been under the control of government forces, but the rebels held most of the rest of the city. The aircraft was carrying troops and equipment; it was said that on its approach to land at Luhansk International Airport, it was shot down using an anti-aircraft rocket system.
A surveillance video that captured the plane’s destruction showed a streak of light rising from the ground, then an explosion near the airport where the plane was making its final approach to Luhansk. Parts of the four-engine jet plane lay in a barley field and were reported to be scattered about and mangled beyond recognition, wholly unguarded by either side. All forty-nine people on board had died. It was the biggest loss of life suffered by government forces in a single incident since Kiev began its operation to defeat the insurgency in east Ukraine.
Chapter 11
17 July 2014
Willem Grootscholten was on his way to Bali to start a new life. It was there the 53-year-old had met the love of his life just a year ago. After selling his house, his motorbike and his car, he was now on a plane that would take him to the woman he loved.
Life had not been easy for this hugely muscled man, who weighed about 130 kilograms. He joined the army when he was twenty years old and was posted in Germany for years where he early on married and raised a family. Leading an outwardly settled life, he unexpectedly returned to the Netherlands poverty-stricken and alone. He never really told anyone what happened in Germany, but it was obvious that it had had a great impact on him. Never known as a man of many words but as someone who kept to himself, Willem did not appreciate the limelight.
After returning from Germany, the burly giant, who had once trained his muscles to the limit, was a shadow of the man he used to be; he started wandering aimlessly, even to the extent of becoming homeless for a short while. In an effort to get his life back together he applied for a security position; his military background and imposing figure helped him to get the job. Still, although he managed to find his feet again, there was always the feeling that something was lacking in his life.
When he went on a trip to visit a friend in Bali, all this changed. The friend had left his home in the Netherlands, burning all his bridges in order to settle himself in Indonesia. Willem fancied this idea and, when he fell passionately in love with a Balinese beauty, he decided to emigrate. Leaving his job as the bouncer at a local coffee shop, he was now on his way to his new life with his darling Christine, a guesthouse owner and mother of two.
The father of Christine’s fourteen-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter had died six years before. The children soon bonded with the new ‘father’ and had already started calling Willem ‘Daddy’. When he returned to Bali in May the previous year to celebrate Christine’s birthday, he told her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
Christine had never been happier. Willem had to sort out his life in the Netherlands first and sadly they had to say goodbye yet again. But this time it would not be for long, just a few months, and when he returned it would be forever.
The usually quiet and reserved Willem Grootscholten had enthusiastically spoken about the new turn his life had taken to the lovely woman at the Malaysia Airlines check-in counter at Schiphol. Smiling, she had wished him good luck and a wonderful life. As the plane he was on took him further towards his new life he knew exactly what he intended to do with the rest of his time on earth: lead a wonderful life.
Emma Bell was a school teacher in the remote Northern Territory town of Maningrida. Daughter of Peter and Barbara Bell and a sister to Sean, she was returning home after a four-week European trip. A homelands teacher for the last eighteen months, she loved her job. She had studied creative arts before discovering that teaching was her real vocation. The challenging area of Indigenous education suited her to a T: she travelled out from Maningrida College along bush tracks to service the smaller homelands education sites in Arnhem Land, teaching students aged one to eight. Emma adored the kids and was learning the local language.
The Aboriginal community had locked her into their hearts and one family had even adopted her and given her a ‘skin name’. In most Indigenous languages, there is no word for ‘stranger’: everyone is related through the very complex kinship system of skin names. Now that Emma had been given one, it meant that she belonged to a family and that she would no longer be seen as an outsider in the communities.
Next to teaching, Emma’s other great love was travel. In fact, she had searched online to see how she rated as an avid traveller and it turned out that she ranked within the 5000 most-travelled people in the world, coming in at 4283. According to this rating, she was the eighth most-travelled Australian female. She was curiously proud of this and was eager to have her place on the list go up a few notches in the near future. That would happen fairly soon because, after her latest visit to Europe, she was ready for bigger and more demanding journeys.
Her planned trip to Brazil during the next Christmas holidays peaked high on her list, but undoubtedly her greatest challenge was going to be her proposal to explore Africa during the coming year, travelling through most of the continent, visiting as many countries as possible. Her parents had been slightly horrified by the idea, but Emma, a young woman in the prime of her life, felt the need to live her life to the fullest.