Why two narratives being sold about the nature of Ukraine are both mistaken.
Why two narratives being sold about the nature of Ukraine are both mistaken.
O ver the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the latter has received an outpouring of support from Western nations. Many in the (mostly terminally online) contrarian class, those individuals who are either openly pro-Russia or are anti-anti-Russia have responded to this newfound support for Ukraine in two ways. They have either derided Ukraine as a woke Western satellite led by equally woke puppet comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, or peculiarly, have made the opposite argument: Ukraine is plagued by neo-Nazis. Both dramatically misunderstand the situation, in terms of both how woke Ukraine truly is and why Ukraine is receiving support.
The first notion, that Ukraine is a woke paradise, is easily dispelled by actually looking at the country’s politics. Fewer than just two years ago, Zelensky was being critiqued by Western organizations for closing Ukraine’s Human Rights Directorate, which was opened in 2016 to much Western fanfare. Members of Servant of the People, the ruling political party, have frequently pushed anti-LGBT laws (though most have failed to become enacted). And in 2020, over 300 MPs — a majority of the Ukrainian parliament — joined a parliamentary group with the goals of “protect[ing] the eternal values of Ukrainian society and [counteracting] attempts to destroy fundamental natural law in the name of political fashion” and popularizing “a wide range of world conservative” intellectual Ukrainian thought. Not exactly a Clinton Foundation mission statement.
And the Ukrainians themselves are pretty far from left-wing on social causes. A Pew poll taken in 2020 found that 14 percent of Ukrainians supported social acceptance of homosexuality (the exact same number, coincidentally, was also found in Russia), whereas 69 percent were opposed. Why then, do so many view Ukraine as woke? It’s not just those opposed to the country; some supporters have come to see it as a pro-LGBT bastion as well, as highlighted in this recent Vanity Fair piece. To a degree, it’s probably because Ukraine’s social-media teams, prominent on Telegram and Twitter, have highlighted LGBT soldiers fighting in Ukraine in an understandable attempt to stir up support in the West.
The second argument, that Ukraine is actually a hotbed of Nazism, also fails upon closer inspection. Proponents of this “theory” often point to the existence of the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian national guard group with some admitted connections to neo-Nazism. But Azov has at most about 1,500 members; out of a military of over 100,000 and a country of over 40,000,000, this is relatively small potatoes. The far-right in Ukraine has also been a small fish in Ukrainian politics. In 2019 parliamentary elections, the main far-right party, Svoboda (“Freedom”), won just over 2 percent of the vote and a single seat in parliament — the same year the Jewish Zelensky was elected president with over 70 percent of the vote, the highest in free Ukraine’s history. One recent survey, moreover, showed that Ukraine was among the most accepting places of Jews among neighboring countries, much more so than Russia. If Ukrainians are trying to run a Nazi state, they are spectacularly bad at it.
And how about Russia, that supposed great opponent of Nazism and defender of traditionalism, opposed to the “woke” Ukraine? Supporters will point to a 2013 law banning the distribution of material in favor of nontraditional sexual relationships to minors, which is on the books. But, as mentioned above, as a people Russians are no more anti-LGBT than Ukraine. The much-vaunted Russian Orthodox Church, held up by trads inside and outside of Russia, is likewise beset with problems, and is typically silent (at best) about Putin’s rather un-Christian violence both in and outside Russia. Although Putin’s government has funded the building of thousands of churches, many of them sit empty, and church attendance under Putin has fallen from its already relatively low late-1990s “heights.” And while Putin has regularly preached about the importance of traditional families, his rule has seen a startling increase in the number of marriages ending in divorce (in 2021, the divorce rate in Russia reached a seven-year high). Perhaps the divorce rate is so high because of Russia’s domestic violence, which was decriminalized by Putin’s government in 2017. On top of all this, the country has one of the world’s highest abortion rates. So much for Russia being a socially conservative paradise.
What about Russia’s image as a defender against Nazism and fascism? The Kremlin has named the so-called de-Nazification of Ukraine as one of its primary casus belli for the war. But de-Nazification, already a concept with no real-world foundation when it comes to Ukraine, has after only a month given way to calls in Russian media for “de-Ukrainization” by means of mass murder and cultural destruction by means of genocide. Ironically, in (officially) attempting to pare down fascism on its borders, the Russian state has regressed into a police state itself. Protesters have been arrested for holding up blank signs and, once taken to jail, have been threatened with violence by police. And, bringing to mind the symbols of early 20th-century authoritarian regimes, the letter “Z,” originally used as a military marking painted onto the invaders’ tanks, has been paraded by the Russian government as a symbol representing support for their invasion and for Putin. Citizens are being encouraged to sport the symbol. Some, like Russian athletes, have done so knowing what it means. Others, like the terminally ill children in a cancer hospice who were made to stand in a Z formation in the middle of the Russian winter snow, have not.
In a way, however, these arguments are redundant. There’s no mystery as to why Zelensky has surged in support in the West and why Ukrainian flags adorn Facebook profile pictures. It’s not because of anything to do with Ukraine’s internal politics. It’s because people inherently support the weak against the strong. The story of David and Goliath has repeated time and time again throughout history, and rarely do those watching the battle come down on the side of Goliath. Both Kosovo and Kuwait received an outpouring support from Western publics, and approximately zero people took those conservative Islamic places for woke liberal democracies. They received support because the smaller Davids were being attacked by Serbia and Iraq, the bullying Goliaths. Likewise, Vanity Fair aside, few are rallying to Ukraine’s aid, donating food, and taking in refugees because they think they’re helping like-minded woke liberals. The Western Europeans who are taking in refugees by the thousands are well aware how conservative Eastern Europe and Ukraine is, but they don’t care. They’re supporting them because they’re being attacked by a bigger, stronger foe and holding their own.
There’s nothing conspiratorial or cynical about that.