When Russian forces recently bombed Kyiv, they killed Vira Hyrych, who worked for RFE/RL. Those initials stand for “Radio Free Europe” and “Radio Liberty.” This organization is a jewel in the American crown. I have written about RFE/RL many times, most extensively in this piece four years ago.
The president of RFE/RL, Jamie Fly, said,
We are deeply saddened by the death of our Ukrainian Service staffer Vira Hyrych in Kyiv overnight. We have lost a dear colleague who will be remembered for her professionalism and dedication to our mission. We are shocked and angered by the senseless nature of her death at home in a country and city she loved. Her memory will inspire our work in Ukraine and beyond for years to come.
The Kremlin propagandists work night and day, and they have their echoers in the West — certainly in the American media. But there are people such as Vira Hyrych too (and no one can kill them all).
• Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for the Kyiv Independent, wrote this:
What America is doing now in terms of sending weapons to Ukraine is a masterpiece of logistics. In all regards, starting from bureaucratic hurdles.
Americans can be proud of this.
• An interesting article from Jay Reeves, of the Associated Press:
Harrison Jozefowicz quit his job as a Chicago police officer and headed overseas soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. An Army veteran, he said he couldn’t help but join American volunteers seeking to help Ukrainians in their fight.
• A congressional delegation went to Kyiv, to meet and express solidarity with President Zelensky. Headed by House speaker Nancy Pelosi, the delegation was all Democratic. My worry is that Republicans, many of them, will regard Ukraine’s struggle as a Democratic concern: Whatever she is for, I am against. This would be tragic, and horrendous.
• Said Boris Johnson, the British PM, “I’m more committed than ever to reinforcing Ukraine and ensuring Putin fails.” Good.
• Here is a woman to know about: Lyubov Panchenko. She starved to death during the Russian occupation of Bucha. She was 85 years old. As Agata Tumiłowicz-Mazur says, “She was one of the artists who during the Soviet censorship revived Ukrainian art.”
• Mykola Kharchenko is from the village of Vremivka in the Donetsk region. He has now been evacuated. He is not intact, though. “I had to bury my daughter in the garden under a pear tree,” he said. “I speak Russian. From whom am I being freed? From my daughter?”
You may have heard this, before the war: People in the east of Ukraine are Russian-speaking and want to be with Russia. People in the west look to the EU and NATO. Some people repeated this ignorantly, and innocently; some people were maybe less ignorant and innocent.
There should be no ignorance and innocence now, however.
In December 1991, there was a Ukraine-wide referendum on independence. Ninety-two percent of Ukrainians said yes to independence. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and launched the Donbass War, almost 2 million people fled to other parts of the country: They are IDPs, or “internally displaced persons.”
People vote at ballot boxes — and also with their feet.
• “Lavrov compares Ukraine’s Zelenskyy to Hitler, who also ‘had Jewish blood.’” (Article here.) Lavrov is Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia. He is a sinister character, a fitting successor to Gromyko, and, before him, Molotov.
• In December 2019, I wrote the following:
On November 2, the Washington Post published a report headed “A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.” It said that “Trump’s animosity to Ukraine ran so deep and was so resistant to the typical foreign policy entreaties about the need to stand by allies that senior officials involved in Ukraine policy concluded that the only way to overcome it was to set up an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.”
Such a meeting has not taken place. On December 10, however, Trump did meet Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office. Lavrov is the Russian foreign minister. This meeting pained and bewildered many Ukrainians: Lavrov is not even a head of state or government. It is very rare for an American president to grant a one-on-one meeting with a foreign minister in the Oval Office. And Lavrov, of course, represents the country that has invaded and is warring against Ukraine.
On December 11, the day after the meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on what had taken place. “This is an important moment,” he said. “The very fact that the Russian minister was received by the U.S. president is an important point, of course.”
Oh, yes. If you were Ukrainian, what would you think? What would you conclude?
• In Ukraine today, Russians keep putting up statues of Lenin. This is to let the locals know: The old sheriff is back in town. (I think they know.)
• I recommend, if you can bear it, a report by Yaroslav Trofimov in the Wall Street Journal: “Russia’s Occupation of Southern Ukraine Hardens, With Rubles, Russian Schools and Lenin Statues.” The subheading of the article is, “Fearing conscription by Russia, Ukrainian men escape occupied areas with their families. ‘We are like aliens in the cities where we were born.’”
A nightmare.
• Here is a bulletin from the Kyiv Independent:
Mariupol mayor: Russian military killed twice as many residents as Nazi Germany. Vadym Boychenko said that in 2 years of Mariupol’s occupation during World War II, the Nazis killed 10,000 people. Russians have doubled the number of victims in 2 months of the Mariupol siege.
• Nazar Shashkov is an extraordinary person — another one. Three reporters from NBC wrote about him.
Facing potential conscription into Ukraine’s military, ballroom dance instructor Nazar Shashkov, 32, says he would be “useless” with a gun.
But the soft-spoken Shashkov has already faced more danger than some army recruits, having made repeated journeys behind enemy lines to rescue his students and others trapped in his besieged hometown of Mariupol.
A pro-Russia soldier “took a gun in his hand and told me to get on my knees in the corner,” he said, describing an encounter at a checkpoint in the city.
As he kneeled with his arms in the air, the soldier put the gun to his head and held it there for about a minute, Shashkov said.
“I was silent. I didn’t say anything,” he recalled, adding that the soldier eventually let him go but only after robbing him of his money and warning him that his next trip to Mariupol would be his last.
• From Glenn Greenwald, a tweet for our time:
Noam Chomsky, in an interview this week, says “fortunately” there is “one Western statesman of stature” who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it.
“His name is Donald J. Trump,” Chomsky says.
• Natan Sharansky once told me, “The biggest mistake the KGB made was letting Avital out.” When Sharansky was in the Gulag, his wife, Avital, campaigned for him around the world, with great effectiveness. Many spouses have been thrust into this role. Now it is the turn of Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of Vladimir Kara-Murza, the Russian democracy leader, who is in prison. See her here.
“I only emerge on rare occasions,” she says, “when my husband is either poisoned or thrown in prison.”
• A video that reaffirms humanity: A woman in South Wales greets the Ukrainian family she is taking in.