Rooting for Ukraine

Bees are essential to pollination for 90% of wild flowering plants, and much of our food. Bees are rapidly disappearing, because of human activity. One nation is so intent on maintaining ancient bee-keeping methods that 1.5% of its population is involved. It’s the largest country in Europe, and had a flourishing civilization when Moscow was a mud village.

Ukraine has a young democracy that its people are also desperate to maintain. While we poison our democracy with partisanship and conspiracy theories, Ukrainians have fought to wrest theirs from corrupt authoritarian pals of Vladimir Putin.

Russia is in a difficult and dangerous position: steadily sinking to a minor economic role in the world’s economy, with privation at home, while possessing powerful weaponry. Historically, most major wars have been started by a once-proud failing state.

For most, this war is a rude surprise. After centuries of terrible wars, Europe seemed settled. (Our world is now so interconnected that when Russian drivers with electric cars stop at a Ukrainian-made charging station these days, they get no juice, but an on-screen message urging Putin to perform an anatomically impossible obscene act, solo.)

Those earlier wars were long, bloody and costly. Russia and Ukraine suffered far more than we did in World War II. So Putin is telling Russians that Ukraine is a Fascist nation persecuting Russians. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky’s paternal grandfather was the only survivor among four Jewish brothers fighting the Nazis.

We’re seeing a nation of heroes. I respected Zelensky telling the U.S. he didn’t need a ride, just weapons. “Why does it matter to us?” ask a few isolationists, saying they “care more about our southern border than about Ukraine.” Gee, so do I; but I can almost see the border, and there ain’t 90,000 Russian troops massed there.

Unlike many foreign situations we’ve manipulated for the profit of U.S. businesses, this distant crisis matters because peace and democracy, after growing for decades, are threatened by Mr. Putin and other authoritarians. (Even our country elected a fellow who thinks Putin’s just swell.) Ukraine keeps grabbing at that brass ring, freedom, and repeatedly pays the costs. If a larger neighbor can simply swallow it, the world as we know it is endangered. And, although leaders shouted, “domino theory” to the point of idiocy during the Cold War, Ukraine might not be all Putin wants of the old Russian Empire.

This won’t be pretty. How will it end?

Will the Ukrainians remain resolved, and persist in armed resistance if the Russians occupy their cities? I believe they will. But in cities of rubble, with most civilians dead or fled, how do you blend in to fight on?

Will NATO and the U.S. continue strong sanctions, despite inconveniences? I hope so. Russians accepted Putin because he seemed a shrewd, savvy guy returning Russia to prominence while avoiding war. Severe economic pain and frustration could make everyday Russians and Putin’s fellow oligarchs ask hard questions.

Can Putin’s propaganda keep citizens blindfolded? Soldiers call home and describe what they see. Russian control of the Internet is less complete than China’s, but Putin’s pressuring big tech to help him lie. A few brave Russian news outlets have spoken truth; but this week Putin shuttered TV Rain and Echo of Moscow.

If all of us are resolute, oligarchs and popular discontent could oust Putin. Here’s hoping Ukrainians won’t already have disappeared, with the bees they strive to save.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[I started this column a week early, before the invasion. The draft from the day before I turned it in was more positive: Ukrainians holding out; sanctions working; and some combination of Russian body bags, shocked soldiers calling families, and internet posts perhaps cluing in clue Russians. (The disappearance of TV Rain, Echo of Moscow, and Novaya Gazeta should tell folks something.) But the next morning the news seemed all worse. More of Ukraine in rubble, Russian progress, and the muzzling of the last vestiges of Russian press, plus stronger pressure on Facebook, Google, and the rest. But as soon as I sent it in, news seemed sunnier: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said the sanctions were working; Russia’s second biggest gas company, Russian chess grandmasters, and others spoke out, breaking with Putin. Meanwhile, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindeman called the invasion the beginning of the end for Putin. And the U.S. population seemed to realize that the Biden Administration had done a masterful job of building consensus with allies. (Positive views of Biden jumped 8 per cent after the State of the Union, an unusually large change.)]

[So I’m no expert. And can offer no very well-founded predictions. And I can’t stop reading the latest news, but that news twists me around like a flag in the wind.]

[I do find that I care, greatly. I’m rooting for the Ukrainians the way I rooted for the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson at 9. Like Lindsay Graham, I keep hoping some set of oligarchs will take Putin out, now that he’s kind of a liability. I can say that. Senator Graham shouldn’t. But he’s right.]

[Rarely, I think, has such a war been so clearly the madness of one man. Even Hitler had a lot of Germans behind him, feeling he would make Germany great again. Putin has few supporters. Not only are those who can distancing themselves from him, Russia’s silent majority would prefer peace and stability, and is only silent from fear and because they’re told Putin’s saving Russians in Ukrainia from a fascist regime. “What a hypocrite! He says he’s coming to save us but he’s slaughtering us,” said one Russian-speaking Ukrainian. Hell, Zelensky grew up speaking Russian. But maybe Jews don’t count.]

[I’m glad most Republicans are not taking the isolationist view on this. I’m sure glad Trump isn’t in office. I can’t help contrasting Zelensky’s character and courage with the superficial egotism of Trump, who saw Zelensky and the Ukraine as simply a possible tool to smear Joe Biden with. Both Trump and Putin have now tried to intimidate the comedian, and found him stronger than expected. I wonder if much of that comes through to good U.S. citizens who believed Trump.]

[A recent Foreign Affairs article, also citing Russia’s mistaken assumptions and tactical blunders, notes quotes Roman historian Tacitus, “They made a desert and called it peace.” So may the Russians, if they destroy much of Ukraine but still can’t govern it.]