On January 14, Yaroslav Trofimov circulated a video. He is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. “Dnipro today,” he wrote. “The screams of Ukrainian civilians buried under the rubble of their high-rise on Orthodox New Year.”
• It’s important to know a few names. Maria Avdeeva tweeted a photo — a goofy photo — of two young women: Olha Usova and Irina Salamatenko. Avdeeva describes them as “excellent doctors, volunteers.” They were killed in Dnipro. “Irina has two children,” Avdeeva says, “Olya has a little son.” She goes on to say, “There’s only one way to fight terrorists. And we all know what it is.”
Yes.
• A statement from Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia: “With attacks on Dnipro and elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia has again proven it is a terrorist state.”
• Another report, this one from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: “Surgeon Yevhen Botvinov spent 3 1/2 hours applying pressure to stem his wife’s bleeding after she suffered a head injury when a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro.”
• From Bela Szandelszky, of the Associated Press:
The ruined kitchen of his family’s Kyiv home stands at the center of a 42-year-old carpenter’s traumatic experience of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Serhii Kaharlytskyi and his 10-year-old son had a narrow escape when a Russian missile landed outside on New Year’s Eve as they watched television together. The explosion tore off the front of their house in the city’s traditionally tranquil Solomianskyi district.
Kaharlytskyi’s 36-year-old wife, Iryna, was in the kitchen preparing a meal. She didn’t survive the strike.
(For the article, go here.)
• This one is by Hanna Arhirova, also of the Associated Press:
In a Ukrainian hospital ward for wounded soldiers, where daylight barely penetrates, a father talks to his injured son for hours. Serhii Shumei, 64, never scolded Vitalii for choosing to go to war. Even now, despite the damage done to his son’s brain by an exploding artillery shell, Serhii feels pride, not pity.
“I’ve been constantly with him in the last five months, beside him, beside him, beside him,” says Serhii, a retired former soldier himself. “I’m not going anywhere — except for a smoke.”
• A story very important to know (yet another such story): “Ukrainian civilians vanish and languish in Russian-run jails.” War crime after war crime.
• The United States is helping the Ukrainians: “U.S. to help Ukraine repair power grid after Russian strikes.” I think Americans can take satisfaction in that. (Some do, some don’t.) “Expanded U.S. training for Ukraine forces begins in Germany.” “Ukrainian troops to train on Patriot system in Oklahoma.” “Pentagon Sends U.S. Arms Stored in Israel to Ukraine.”
America is not standing by, doing nothing. Some Americans think we should do more. Some think we should do less, or nothing at all. But America is not standing by.
• From the Economist: “The West should supply tanks to Ukraine: Allies have been too cautious about giving it the means to resist Russian aggression.” (For that editorial, go here.)
• According to a recent poll, 52 percent of Republicans in America now oppose aid to Ukraine. (For an article on this, go here.) I’m not surprised at the 52 percent, and I expect the number to rise. There is an old expression: “You are what you eat.” I have taken to saying, “You are the media you consume.”
Over the years, I have cited Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator from Iowa. He was elected to the House in 1974 and to the Senate in 1980. During the contra-aid debate of the mid-’80s, he said something like this: “If all I knew about Nicaragua came from the mainstream media, I’d oppose contra aid too.”
Say you are a Republican congressman who believes that the U.S. ought to aid Ukraine. You think it is a national-security imperative and a moral imperative. Do you explain this to your voters and try to persuade them of your position? Or do you back down, not wanting to lose reelection, and not wanting to get crossways with your party’s media?
• From a column yesterday by George F. Will: “Astonishingly, some congressional Republicans, being parsimonious where this is least virtuous, profess alarm about the cost of aid to Ukraine.” The word “profess” is exactly right.
I don’t believe that opponents of aid, as a group, care about the cost. They tend not to be “budget hawks” in general. And our aid to Ukraine is a drop in the bucket of our defense budget. Listen to opponents of aid: You will not find sympathy for the Ukrainians and their cause (independence, freedom, their lives). On the contrary.
• In the Journal, Trofimov writes, “The war in Ukraine, it’s clear by now, won’t end soon. The bet in Moscow — and the fear in Kyiv — is that the West will lose stamina before Russia suffers a decisive defeat.” Yes.
• Phillips Payson O’Brien has an article in the Atlantic headed “Time Is on Ukraine’s Side, Not Russia’s.” The subheading reads, “The Ukrainians will win if they keep getting better weapons.”
• In the Washington Post, Condoleezza Rice and Robert M. Gates had a jointly written column headed “Time is not on Ukraine’s side.” They conclude their column by writing,
The way to avoid confrontation with Russia in the future is to help Ukraine push back the invader now. That is the lesson of history that should guide us, and it lends urgency to the actions that must be taken — before it is too late.
• From Richard Goldberg and Rebeccah Heinrichs, writing in the Dispatch: “Let Ukraine Defeat the Russia-Iranian War Machine: Biden’s chronic risk aversion is prolonging the war and making it more costly.”
• At American Purpose, Vladimir Tismăneanu has an essay titled “USSR: Four Letters, Four Lies.” (You may remember an old crack: “‘German Democratic Republic’ is three lies in one.” That state was not democratic, not a republic — and not all that German, given rule by Moscow.)
The USSR “vanished from political maps,” writes Professor Tismăneanu, but it “continued to exist in Putin’s mind and heart.” The author goes on to say the following:
As I write this obituary for the USSR, he and his cronies, driven by a quasi-mystical belief in Russia’s providential mission, are losing the imperialist war against Ukraine. Their defeat will be the final nail in the coffin of an autocratic, mendacious, terminally sick empire. The Russian Federation is the USSR’s inglorious heir, a kleptocratic militaristic colossus desperately trying to rejuvenate a decaying, terminally sick multi-ethnic empire. The crucial unintended outcome of Russia’s war against Ukraine will most likely be imperial breakdown.
That would be something.