A column by Artem Chekh makes for very difficult reading. But he says so much, in the words he writes. The column is headed “I’m a Ukrainian Soldier, and I’ve Accepted My Death.”
It begins,
Recently, one of the companies in our battalion returned from a mission in eastern Ukraine. When we saw our comrades a month earlier, they were smiling and cheerful. Now they don’t even talk to one another, never take off their bulletproof vests and don’t smile at all. Their eyes are empty and dark like dry wells. These fighters lost a third of their personnel, and one of them said that he would rather be dead because now he is afraid to live.
Here is another paragraph, further into the column:
I read obituaries on Facebook every day. I see familiar names and think that these people should continue writing reports and books, working in scientific institutes, treating animals, teaching students, raising children, baking bread and selling air-conditioners. Instead they go to the front, get wounded, develop severe PTSD and die.
Some more:
More than anything in the world, I just want to be with my wife, who is still in Kyiv with my son. I want to live with them, not die somewhere on the front line. But I have accepted the possibility of my death as an almost accomplished fact.
And this is the ending:
To quote Kurt Vonnegut, even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. But encounters with death could be very different. We want to believe that we and our beloved ones, the modern people of the 21st century, no longer have to die from medieval barbaric torture, epidemics or detention in concentration camps. That’s part of what we’re fighting for: the right not only to a dignified life but also to a dignified death.
Let us, the people of Ukraine, wish ourselves a good death — in our own beds, for example, when the time comes. And not when Russian missiles hit our houses at dawn.
• Over the years, I have heard from many in the West, “Ukraine is not a real nation, you know. They are not a real people. They are basically western Russians, with a funny dialect, and ‘Ukraine’ is an artificial construct of neocons in the American government.”
Ukrainians themselves have put the lie to this assertion. For one thing, many returned from abroad to take up arms in defense of their country.
The Associated Press has told the story of one such person: Andriy (last name withheld). This fellow “had moved to Western Europe to pursue a career in engineering.” Then he got a call.
Andriy relates the following: “Early in the morning on February 24th, I received a call from my mother. She lives in Bucha and told me the war had started. She could hear helicopters, airplanes, bombing, and explosions. I decided to return.”
As the AP says,
Andriy scrambled home, taking a flight to Budapest and arranging a 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) overland route that included paying “a big amount of money” to a driver willing to take a risky journey eastward.
Then what?
He bought his own gear and a U.S.-made sniper rifle, and began receiving training from a special forces instructor, connected through friends in the military.
This is an impressive form of patriotism. And it is one thing that the Ukrainians have going for them. They are fighting for their country, their independence, their right to exist. And what are the Russians fighting for? Subjugation. The Ukrainians have the better, and stronger, motivation, I hope.
• An interesting report from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty:
Inmates at a Russian penal colony reportedly said that businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has close ties to the Kremlin, tried to recruit them to a paramilitary group on the promise that they could “do anything they want with the Ukrainians.”
• Many Ukrainians are maimed. The Ukrainian defense ministry put out a picture of a nine-year-old named Sasha. “As a result of a Russian attack during an evacuation, she lost her arm. Now she has a new bionic hand.” See it, see Sasha, here.
• Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, spoke to RFE/RL. “Kuleba said Europe is deluding itself if it thinks that only Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for the ongoing war and not wide swaths of Russian society.”
Kuleba’s words were these: “. . . calling this war a ‘Putin problem’ and not the problem of the Russian society that mostly supports its president is self-deception.”
This is a very, very painful issue to confront. (It should be borne in mind, however, that independent media in Russia have been banned. It is Kremlin propaganda day in, day out.)
• After the war — World War II — John Dos Passos went to Germany. He talked to an American college professor on a train. As Dos Passos reported, the professor said this, about the Russians he had encountered: “They aren’t so different from other people. Except for their tremendous indoctrination.” The professor further said, “. . . we know what the Nazis could do to the German mind in twelve years. The Communists have had a quarter of a century to work on the Slavs.”
Finally, the professor said this: “We should never underestimate the Russians. They are one of the most talented peoples on earth, but between them and us there stands the Kremlin propaganda.”
The present year, 2022, is a lot different from 1945. And yet . . .
• Did you see this news? “The chairman of Russia’s Lukoil oil giant, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, reports say.” Uh-huh. Why are Russians so careless? Always falling down stairs to their deaths, falling out windows to their deaths . . . Eating and drinking things that are poisonous.
Really, they should exercise more care, you know?
• “Sweden to purchase 40,000 tons of Ukrainian grain for countries in need,” reports the Kyiv Independent. “The Swedish government announced it will be buying at least 40,000 tons of Ukrainian grain for countries where the risk of famine is currently at its highest, such as Ethiopia, Yemen and Afghanistan.”
Good for the Swedes.