DAVID Nottage. PHOTO SUPPLIED
DAVID (Rabbit) Nottage wears a topknot hairstyle as a tribute to the warlike Tartar tribes of Eastern Europe, whom he admires.
The flamboyant hairdo has come in handy on the long-serving Ruapehu district councillor’s regular visits to former Soviet Union countries, now totalling three to Russia and nine to Ukraine.
In particular, it has gained him fans at the Zaporizhia Tatar Museum where staff urged him to grow a long droopy moustache to complete the look.
As one would expect of man who has spent so much time in the Former Soviet Union, Rabbit has definite views on who is to blame for the war in Ukraine, but more on that later.
The truck contractor isn’t certain where his obsession with the former Soviet Union came from, though he recalls it kicked in early.
Maybe from geography and history classes at St Augustine’s College, Whanganui, where he listened in rapt attention to stories about the Crimean War, including stories about the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.
Or, maybe hearing from his dad, a World War II veteran, who explained Russia’s decisive contribution to winning the war and the way “General Winter” wasted Hitler’s armies.
Or maybe, from serving in the New Zealand Army after leaving school, which gave him a desire to see the other side’s Cold War arsenal.
Whatever the reason, a couple of years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Rabbit booked his first flights to Eastern Europe. This to the astonishment of his Whanganui travel agent who pointed out that he was leaving a Kiwi summer for one of the coldest winter environments on the planet.
But that’s what he wanted. He’d read how General Winter stopped the armies of both Napoleon and the Nazis and wanted to experience it for himself.
“In fact, all my trips to Eastern Europe have been during our summer and their winter. You learn from the Russians how to dress for it, they show you how to do that.”
Still, going from his sunny Ohakune home to a hotel room in Moscow was a shock.
Russian friends whom he’d corresponded with before the trip pointed out that the Mafia were all around Moscow at the time. They drove dark-coloured Mercedes, with windows blacked out and what locals described as, “don’t f**k with me lights” blue flashing lights on their roofs.
The Russian couple he had befriended ahead of the trip taught him not to speak English anywhere in public, not to answer the fortified door of his hotel room door to strangers and not even to answer his phone.
“I was told being identified as a foreign tourist could make me a target, because criminals would expect me to have money. So, when they called, it was a pre-arranged series of rings, so I knew it was safe to pick up”.
“After the first time out walking in the snow, I ditched my red and black Kiwi Swanndri and purchased a dark-coloured coat like those the Russians wore. I seemed to be the only man in Moscow wearing something like that and it drew too much attention.”
However, just as striking as the feeling of vulnerability was the warmth and friendliness of ordinary Russians, even officials.
Red Square had been sealed off during elections then underway but when Rabbit told police officers “I’ve come all this way to see it, can’t you let me though”? His winsome smile worked its magic, and he was alone in being allowed past the cordon to walk onto the square and take photos beneath the Kremlin’s great domes.
In fact, Rabbit’s friendly manner seemed to open doors for him everywhere, for example at the Tchaikovsky Museum in Votkinsk. There because he was the first Kiwi they had met, and a charming one at that, staff invited him to sit at one of the great composer’s pianos, try on one of his uniforms and even strum the great composer’s balalaika.
When he stayed with Russian families, he was given the warmest room and the best food available. Out in rural areas, he stayed with friends of friends, folk whose standard of living was basic by New Zealand standards, in one case having to draw water for the household from an outside well. “They were as poor as can be, but they gave me everything they had.”
Rabbit drank in the architecture of many towns and cities, the most striking being that of St Petersburg. He lapped up the Kalashnikov Small Arms Museum, which had a firing range on which to try out the famous rifles. And he recalls “a white knuckle episode” on an international Aeroflot flight which had to land in a snowstorm.
“There had been recent crashes there and the passengers on my flight were so relieved when we landed safely that they cheered and clapped the pilot.”
Following three annual holidays spent in Russian, Rabbit booked his next one to Ukraine. This led to a kind of spiritual awakening on his first day in the country.
“I haven’t had many spiritual experiences, but when the plane dropped below the clouds and I saw the snow on the ground in Ukraine, one hit me. Suddenly I felt like I’d really come home, or had been there before, or something. Whatever it was, it made me shed a tear. Nothing like that’s happened to me before or since.”
In fact, Ukraine has maintained a strong pull on Rabbit’s heart. He spent about the next decade using his annual holidays to comb through the country’s famous cities, cultural, museums and major industrial sites.
The truck driver and digger operator became animated when describing the huge factories and shipyards he’d visited which allow public access. Rabbit has albums of photos taken at giant industrial plants producing tanks, railway locomotives and rolling stock, military and civilian aircraft of every type, space rockets and missiles. As a winter visitor, he did a lot of snowboarding and ice skating.
He also found the country’s restaurants to be among the best he’d seen anywhere in the world.
But by far his favourite pastime was just walking through the cities, many kilometres at a time, and taking photographs of buildings, many of which he found magnificent.
Rabbit usually bases himself at the same small hotel in Kiev, the so-called City of Golden Domes, which is one of the most beautiful he has seen. But he has also travelled extensively throughout the country, including to the Crimea and many of the cities and towns now heavily contested in the Donbas region.
“It’s just so tragic – some places I know well, such as Mariupol, have been razed. “Last year, a friend living near Ukraine’s border with Belarus sent me phone video taken when the Russian Army poured in on its way to Kiev on February 24. You could hear the explosions of artillery and see the smoke rising. I couldn’t believe it, because even Zelinski had said an invasion wouldn’t happen.
“Putin has brainwashed so many of his people to believe there are Nazis living in Ukraine. I’ve met no Nazis there, just ordinary people like us; people who just want to have a job and raise a family. I hate the way he [Putin] uses images of the Great Patriotic War to justify what he’s doing in Ukraine. The heroism of the Russian people in World War II was real; he’s just cashing in on it for political reasons.
“The trouble is it’s so hard for Russian people to stand up to or question their leaders. Critics of the present regime have been imprisoned, journalists have been shot and critics of the Government seem to jump out of windows, commit suicide, or die in mysterious circumstances.”
Rabbit’s annual visits to Ukraine have been disrupted for three years, first due to the Covid pandemic and then because of the war.
He said the west of the country was probably now safe, aside from some rocket attacks, but travel to the country remained a bit complicated.
“Like everyone, I am hoping for the war to end and peace to be declared. I’m in touch with Ukrainian friends and can’t wait to get to get back and see them.”
