Jamaican businessman William Massias, who is now living in Ukraine with his family, is not fearful of Moscow’s sabre-rattling, but says he’s watching the situation closely with an eye on returning to the island if it develops into war.

“I’m feeling trapped, but not scared because I believe I’m here for a reason,” Massias, the CEO of online deal and discount provider Brawta Living, told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday in a phone interview.

Massias, an Observer Business Leader nominee in 2005 when he was executive chairman of Capital Solutions, said he, his Ukranian wife Victoria, and their five children moved from their house in Dnipro about a week ago to Lviv in western Ukraine.

“Not from fear, but out of being cautious when I saw Mr Putin put some ships in the Black Sea, which is south of Dnipro, and Dnipro is between the warships and Kyiv. So I said I don’t want him firing any missiles over my head… so let me move,” Massias explained.

“We could have left the country, but two weeks before the escalation of this thing I met in a car accident,” he said, explaining that his car skidded on black ice on the road and ran into another man’s car.

“I wasn’t going fast, thank God, and I was just half a mile from where we lived. The occupant of the other car suffered a broken leg. So, in this country, when those things happen and someone gets what is called a medium injury they open up a case against you and they suggest you don’t travel until the case is resolved,” he said.

“So I got a lawyer to deal with it for me and he said the best thing is to go to the victim and settle with him right away so that when the case comes up it will be an open and shut case,” meaning that the victim would basically not press charges.

“So we did that, made sure his medical was paid for, gave him the money he wanted in his hand, paid for his car, everything, and he signed off,” Massias said.

“But during this period this escalation of tensions started, and even now the case hasn’t opened, so I said I don’t want to have any problems, so I stayed.”

Adding to that, he found out that his children’s US passports had all expired and the only way that he could have them renewed was to go to the capital city Kyiv.

“But I’m not going to Kyiv because that is where they’re going to strike if anything happens,” he said.

“And now they have restricted a lot of the air travel out of Kyiv,” he added.

Weeks ago Moscow began massing tens of thousands of heavily armed troops on Ukraine’s borders, triggering warnings from Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, that sanctions with “enormous consequences” would be imposed on Russia if those troops invaded.

However, instead of a blitzkrieg-type offensive, Russia has moved 150,000 troops closer to the Ukraine frontier, and on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin would recognise the rebel statelets of Lugansk and Donetsk in the southern region as independent and deployed so-called peacekeeping forces to the region.

But Putin was careful not to say when Russian troops would cross into Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Massias said, despite the international tension, people on the streets in Ukraine appeared calm.

“If you see how the Ukranians are on the ground here you’d never believe we’re surrounded by Russians because the Ukrainians are so cool,” the Jamaican businessman said. “For instance, there is no panic buying. All supermarkets are fully stocked. It’s business as usual, despite all the tension and all the things that you are seeing in the media. No panic buying of gasoline either. No panic at all.”

He said, while he can’t speak to what is happening in Donbass and Lugansk, “You’d never believe that there is potential war brewing.”

At the time he spoke to the Observer Massias said he had just heard that the Ukraine Parliament had imposed a national state of emergency aimed at helping to forge a response to the threat of a Russian invasion.

Asked if he would leave Ukraine if the tension develops into war, Massias said, “Yes.”

“I told my wife if it comes down to war we would have to leave because I don’t want to subject her or the kids to any full-blown war and the atrocities that would come with that.”

In preparation for that possibility, he said he has already reached out to the Jamaican foreign ministry as well as the US State Department which has told him that it could send him “a letter of travel” so his children wouldn’t need to acquire new passports.

“So I am going to see how things unfold, but I’m going to get the documents in order,” he said.

— Additional reporting by AFP