Ukrainian Refugee Yuliia Bond,The Senedd and the Flag 🇺🇦
by Yuliia Bond Yuliia lives in Caerphilly and works for the Welsh Refugee Council.This is her
There is a question I genuinely cannot stop thinking about since reading discussions about removing the Ukrainian flag outside the Senedd.( I had no idea this was even being discussed).
And the question is simple:
What exactly would removing it fix?
Would it shorten NHS waiting lists?
Would it build affordable homes?
Would it strengthen struggling communities?
Would it reduce poverty or ease the cost of living crisis?
Or would it simply do one thing:
Remove one of the very few remaining public symbols quietly saying to Ukrainians:
“We still see you.”
Perhaps this is the part of the conversation many people understandably struggle to fully understand unless they have experienced war, displacement, or the strange emotional reality of being physically safe while mentally still living somewhere else entirely.
When I arrived in Wales in 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I was not arriving excited about a new beginning.
Like many Ukrainians, I arrived carrying grief, fear, exhaustion, survivor guilt, and the strange contradiction of being physically safe while emotionally trapped somewhere still under missile attacks.
War becomes ordinary
My mornings did not begin normally.
Before coffee.
Before breakfast.
Before anything else.
I checked my phone.
Who replied?
Who had not?
Who survived the night?
Which city had been bombed?
Had somebody I loved spent another night listening to explosions?
Had somebody I loved died?
Survival
That becomes normal during war. You stop measuring days by dates and start measuring them by survival.
War trauma is heartbreakingly ordinary. It follows you into everyday life.
It sits beside you while you answer emails, buy groceries, smile politely at strangers, and try to function normally while part of your mind remains somewhere else waiting for bad news.
And then something happened in Wales that changed how I felt. I started seeing Ukrainian flags.
Everywhere. Outside homes. In windows. On schools. On churches. On public buildings. In villages I had never heard of.
People may think this sounds dramatic, but I cried more than once. Because when your country is being destroyed, when your family is still there, and when your entire sense of safety has collapsed, small things stop being small things.
“People still support us?”
I remember standing near the Senedd and taking a photograph of the Ukrainian flag flying there and sending it to my mum, who still lives in a war zone. Her reply was simple.
So simple that it still breaks my heart.
“People still support us?”
Imagine surviving war and genuinely wondering whether the world has quietly stopped caring.
I replied: “Yes, mum. Look. Wales still remembers.”
I also remember sending photographs of the Ukrainian flag outside the Senedd to a close friend serving on the frontline in Ukraine.
He was exhausted, traumatised, frightened, and carrying the impossible burden of living every day knowing survival itself was uncertain.
His reply was devastating in its simplicity.
“That makes me happy.”
Happy.
Imagine that.
A soldier living in trenches, surrounded by unimaginable suffering, finding comfort in a Ukrainian flag standing outside a parliament building thousands of miles away.
Because to him it meant something. “People still care.” He later died in the war.
Again I feel for those people in Ukraine... But again HAD my Girl Princess Diana been Queen of the whole world there would have NEVER been War... Diana Cared about everyone.... But that's Not how the world works apparently... I'm Sorry...
It is unlikely to happen because the members who proposed this are politically isolated in the Senedd and have no mandate or chance of commanding a majority vote. It is however ironic that the party which condones the illegal and unregulated attaching of other flags to lamp posts, bridges, etc (the very definition of "virtue signalling") objects to a generally popular symbol of peaceful solidarity.
But I understand that Comrade Nigel will have to pay his dues to his political masters 🇷🇺
Is it part of a general policy to fly only the Welsh flag and none of any other country anyway? If so the removal could not be considered a slur against Ukraine.
Or was there some other reason? What did the Senate give as its reason?
(I translated the name deliberately. It seems ironical that a political body that includes members wanting to break up the United Kingdom should name itself after the parliament of the United States of America. )
@TheSirfurryanimalWales Unless you tell us otherwise, this has not happened. The call to remove the flag was made by one Reform UK MS and echoed by his leader. Neither are part of the Welsh government. But clearly have a little too much time on their hands.
@TheSirfurryanimalWales Ah - I thought it simply "Welshified" the word Senate - which actually originated in Ancient Rome though.
Migbht have guessed Farage's Farago were around the matter somewhere... I gather there's another lot even further right, I forget its name despite hearing it this morning, which appears to admire the USA's ICE policies. (Though perhaps without the brutality.)
