On a daily basis, Joël Frantz speaks rather Russian while trying to improve his Ukrainian. However, this Frenchman has been living in Kiev for almost 30 years. In the Ukrainian capital, where a thousand French expatriates live, he opened his restaurant, The Gorchitsa, “which means mustard”, in the language of Chekhov.
As Westerners continue to negotiate with Moscow, the restaurateur says he is not afraid of Russian military intervention: “Not everyone has the same state of mind since some embassies have called on people to leave. I myself was advised to leave. Among my acquaintances is an American journalist who has already done interviews and who had written to me that I should perhaps stay in France, leave.”
Joel Frantz does not want to participate in a panic movement but he simply does not see himself leaving Ukraine: “I live here, I have my wife who is here, her parents are here. My life is here.” And even if the French authorities ordered all French expatriates to leave Kiev, he asserts, “I think I will stay.”
“All this stuff, it was a little too much mayonnaise, I don’t believe it.”
Joel Frantz, French restaurateur from Kiev
at franceinfo
Among the customers, Ange, a 50-year-old Frenchman who has also been living in Ukraine for two years, does not seem more worried. “I’m going to stay. It’s friends, buddies who say ‘it’s war’. I tell them ‘calm down’ in Russian, he explains. I just received a message that Putin would raise troops on the border. Well, it’s the messages, you know, we get a lot of them. We’ll see. People live day to day here. For my friend who is Ukrainian, history repeats itself. They are more philosophical than us. They have a history behind them, the USSR, a hard history. What will happen will happen.”
French nationals in Ukraine are not invited to leave the territory but from diplomatic sources, if necessary, an evacuation plan can be triggered. This departure would be made in particular by road in the event of closure of the airspace. As a precaution, the French ambassador in Kiev nevertheless asked the French on the spot to prepare their papers, to stock up on water, food, and to fill up with fuel in the event of a hasty departure.
Ukraine: the state of mind of the French in Kiev – Report by Benjamin Illy
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