There is a silk thread tens of thousands of kilometers long that in recent weeks connects the coasts of the Black Sea to those of the Pacific Ocean and connects the trenches of the Donbass to the Hong Kong umbrella protest.
"Russia is like China and freedom must be defended everywhere": John uses the tones of the obvious, he is almost amazed when asked why he decided to join the foreign legion and inside he is angry at what is still happening in his Village.
Like him, other Hong Kong citizens would be fighting at the front.
In jeans, a wool hat, an army green T-shirt and a tactical backpack, he reached the Polish border in Medyka to get to the border and enter Ukraine.
Unlike his size, it is only his almond-shaped eyes that betray his oriental origin.
John is 45 and works as a photographer.
"This time I had to leave cars and lenses at home, I only have what I need inside: some clothes and some k rations", he explains.
He is here to fight, convinced that his fellow citizens have already taken up the Kalashnikovs against the Russian columns.
"And others will have to do it, because in some way it is also our cause, it is the same axis of oppressors."
And while he crosses his hands resting on a bag, he remembers that "freedom is trampled on by the other twin giant which is China, which supports Putin. In Hong Kong, which was once a place of democracy, there is no longer the the right to express one's opinion: the problem is that it is an infinitely smaller place than Ukraine, which is why we forget about us ".
And he remembers the arrests,
the repression of demonstrations, censorship on the internet, social networks put out of use and the banning of cinematographic works.
Just a few months ago, the Chinese security forces forced to close the independent newspaper 'Stand News', after a raid in the newsrooms of the newspaper, with over 200 agents, made on charges of "seditious publication".
"Maybe Putin is even less dangerous than the Beijing government: in Moscow it is still possible to write and social networks are still active," he says.
Waiting for him on the other side is a soldier who smokes stretched out in his chair, tired, sheltered from the rain under a muddy tent marked with the black word 'legion', made with a spray that is about to fade.
The new soldier, on the other hand, approaches quickly, ready to join a new Ukrainian 'palyanitsa'.
He is about to show off his personal resume of the resistance, where so far there is only the passive fight of umbrellas against pepper spray and tear gas.