I have an Impromptus column today, which begins with China. There are many horrors out of China, and one of them is organ-harvesting. Are the patients alive when the operations begin? (“Patients” is a strange word in this context. “Murder victims” is more like it.) This is an old issue. I myself have been writing about it since at least 2006. But the issue has resurfaced, with more proof of this horror out of that horrific country, the People’s Republic of China.
In this post, I would like to pen some notes on Ukraine.
The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the issue of China and Taiwan. This is how a column by Josh Rogin, of the Washington Post, began:
While appealing to Asian nations for support to fend off Russia’s invasion on Saturday, . . . Zelensky said the international community should help Taiwan resist China’s aggression now, before Beijing attacks the island democracy it claims as its own province.
Zelensky spoke of the “appetites” of dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. His words amounted to the old French saying: “L’appétit vient en mangeant.” Appetite comes from eating. You have to cut off the expansionist — the eater — as soon as you can, because he will never be sated, for long. He must be stopped.
Putin swallowed Crimea and other parts of Ukraine in 2014. The idea that he will be content with his swallowings, whatever they are, is fantastical.
• Boris Nemtsov, as you know, was the opposition leader in Russia. He was a staunch advocate of freedom and democracy. He lasted until February 2015, when he was gunned down on a bridge next to the Kremlin.
Later in the year, his eldest daughter, Zhanna, started the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. (I have had the pleasure of meeting her.) It awards a prize for courage. And this year, it was awarded to Zelensky.
• In Mariupol, the Ukrainians had a Freedom Square. Russian forces have now taken over the city. And they renamed the square “Lenin Square.” From Freedom to Lenin — that is the wrong direction. It is also starkly illustrative.
• Speaking of stark: Inna Sovsun, the Ukrainian legislator, circulated a video and said,
This is what the outskirts of Mariupol look like. Thousands of new graves. Graves of Ukrainians who were killed by Russia. Mass graves without names. People are thrown into pits like garbage.
This will all be shoved down the memory hole. Not in Ukraine, of course, but elsewhere. Not many people want to face these facts now. They are tired of the Ukraine movie, so to speak. It’s time to leave the theater and move on to something else. But for Ukrainians, these horrors are the daily reality, the daily challenge.
• For a long time, we heard from some quarters of the West that Vladimir Putin was the great champion and guardian of Christian civilization. When he launched his all-out assault on Ukraine, last February, pro-Putin voices got quieter. They are now getting louder, however. And anti-anti-Putin voices are louder still, and more numerous. In any event, Putin has never been an example of Christliness, as many of us see it.
Ostap Yarysh, of the Ukrainian service of the Voice of America, circulated a video of a burning structure and wrote,
About 300 people (including 60 children) were sheltering in the Sviatohirsk monastery in the Donetsk region of Ukraine when the Russians started shelling it. At least 4 people were killed, and 4 more were wounded. The historic wooden church caught on fire.
• On occasion, Putin can be very frank. He recently said he was like Peter the Great — taking back lands that belong to Mother Russia. His apologists say he was spooked by NATO. “Encircled.” Putin is not on the same page as his apologists. Will they adjust, to get on the same page as Putin? I don’t think so, really. When your lines are ingrained, and you have an investment in them, you stick with them.
• An expansionist dictator is redrawing boundaries in Europe by force. Again. It’s amazing to me that so many of our politicians and “influencers” are shruggy about this. Few have a sense of the gravity of the situation, it seems to me.
• If there is one point I could stress, it would be this: Ukrainians are fighting not just for “territories”; they are fighting for the people in those territories — to keep them from rape, murder, subjugation, displacement, etc. Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human-rights lawyer, made this point at the Oslo Freedom Forum last month.
Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, recently said, “I am very worried by the premature calls for a ceasefire or peace, since a ceasefire does not mean the atrocities will end in the occupied territories. We have already made this mistake three times, in Georgia, Donbas, and Crimea, and we cannot make this mistake again.”
Kallas grew up in the Soviet Union. She said, “Gas might be expensive, but freedom is priceless. People living in the Free World do not really understand that.”
• Every day, people carry out acts of heroism. I would like to draw attention to a report by Elena Becatoros of the Associated Press. It is headed “Ukraine: Drivers risk all to bring aid, help civilians flee.” I will quote the initial paragraphs.
As Russian artillery pummeled the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in April, one family decided to flee, walking for miles with three young children in tow to a nearby village. But it was thanks to a volunteer driver who crossed the front line that they managed to eventually make it out of Russian-held territory.
“The driver, Zhenya, is a saint,” said Luda Lobanova, 58, after stepping off a minibus in the central Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia in early May along with 8-year-old Ihor, 7-year-old Sofia, and 2 1/2-year-old Vlad. “There were so many times that they turned us around. If it wasn’t for Zhenya, we wouldn’t have made it.”
With tears in her eyes, Lobanova thanked him before he slipped away, clambering back into his minibus. He had more humanitarian aid to deliver, more people to pick up.
God bless this Zhenya, and all like him.
• Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian internal-affairs minister, highlighted Oleksandr Pikuii. “This Marine lost both his arms in Mariupol but survived and got married. His willpower and optimism are inspirational.” Incredible.
• A story to be aware of:
The family of a British man condemned to death for fighting for Ukraine said it is devastated by the outcome of what it termed a “show trial” and called Saturday for him to be released and accorded the treatment an international human-rights convention guarantees prisoners of war.
Yes.
• I would like to quote Anders Östlund, of the Center for European Policy Analysis. He wrote,
Those who propose “peace” at the price of cutting Ukraine in pieces have not understood anything. A “peace” with Russia is nothing more than a battle pause and the war will continue for those who will get killed by the occupiers. Ukrainians will fight until they are free.
Mr. Östlund is right to put “peace” in quotation marks. Peace is a most interesting concept. I wrote a whole book about it, in a sense: Peace, They Say.
• To the American taxpayer, support of Ukraine is very costly. I believe that a Ukrainian defeat, and a Russian victory, would be costlier still. It’s very hard to convince people of this, however. I hope that Ukrainians accomplish as much as they can as quickly as they can. I believe that America, to say nothing of Western Europe, will fall away. There is a window.
Remember: For a lot of the world, the Ukraine war is just a game. Chess pieces, moved around. Putin versus Biden or what have you. But for the Ukrainians — it is their country and their freedom and their very lives.
Also, many of us believe that they are on the front line of a wider conflict. To support them is not only right, from a moral or human point of view, it is also an expression of self-interest. Ukrainians are paying in blood.
I admire their valor, their patriotism. They are doing their utmost to resist a great evil being pressed upon them: a murderous, raping, all-destroying evil. Strength to their hands.