On August 24, Ukraine’s independence day, I e-mailed a Ukrainian friend, to wish her well — and to wish her country well. She answered, “Such joy and sorrow, pride and fear.”
• On Independence Day, Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, returned to Ukraine, to stand with that country, as it is under assault by Russia. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, awarded Johnson the country’s Order of Liberty.
Said Johnson, “If we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood.” He also said, “What happens in Ukraine matters to us all.”
Yes, it does (whether people know it or not).
• Nicholas Burns is the U.S. ambassador to China. On Ukraine’s independence day, he assembled the ambassadors to China from all 30 NATO countries. They stood in front of the American embassy, with the Ukrainian flag, in a show of support.
Good.
• A report by Edward Wong in the New York Times:
The U.S. State Department and Yale University researchers said Thursday that they had identified at least 21 sites in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine that the Russian military or Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists are using to detain, interrogate or deport civilians and prisoners of war in ways that violate international humanitarian law. There were signs pointing to possible mass graves in some areas, they said.
Bruno Maçães commented,
Concentration camps and mass graves have returned to Europe. If this does not shake you to the core, nothing ever will.
My impression is, relatively few are shaken to the core, or shaken at all.
• From Reuters:
Russian rockets struck a passenger train in a station in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding 50 more, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
(Full article here.)
Yes, Ukraine and Russia are engaged in a war. But Russia is clearly a terror-state. Every Ukrainian knows it. Not a few Russians know it too.
• A headline from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: “Ukraine Claims Breakthroughs Made Against Russian Forces In Southern Offensive.” Article here.
It is amazing that the Ukrainians are still standing, six months after Russia launched its full-on assault. It is amazing that Ukrainian forces are making even a little progress against Russia. Few could have predicted this, back in February.
The courage and determination of the Ukrainians are astounding. And the support of the United States: crucial.
For Ukraine, America is indeed the “indispensable nation,” after Ukraine itself.
I maintain, as I have said before, that Americans should take pride in this. Many of us do not, I realize. But I hope that many do.
• You know, the Ukrainian cause ought to be right up our nationalists’ alley. The Ukrainians are struggling to keep their nationhood, their independence, their sovereignty. They are fighting for their very right to exist. They are doing all they can to fend off a behemoth neighbor, which is trying to re-subjugate them, re-colonize them, absorb them back into empire.
Our nationalists ought to be the Ukrainians’ biggest supporters. And yet . . .
• The name of Maksym Butkevych is one to know. Last month, Valerie Hopkins of the New York Times wrote,
Maksym Butkevych made his name in Ukraine as a journalist and human rights activist . . .
At the end of June, he was captured by Russian forces while fighting for Ukraine, and his hard-earned reputation became a potentially dangerous liability.
Russian propaganda began bragging about Mr. Butkevych’s detention almost as soon as he was captured . . .
I was moved by the words of the prisoner’s mother, Yevheniia Butkevych. She said her son had been a pacifist — but that changed on February 24, when Russia sent missiles into Kyiv and other cities and towns across Ukraine.
That very day, Maksym, who was 45, joined up.
Mrs. Butkevych quoted her son as saying something like this: “I will leave my human-rights work for a while because now it is necessary, first and foremost, to defend the country. Because everything I have worked on for all these years, and everything we have all worked toward, is under threat.”
I understand Maksym Butkevych very well. And I admire him tremendously.
• Another name to know — that of Yevgeny Roizman. He was mayor of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, from 2013 to 2018. But he is a critic of the war — therefore, he has been arrested.
For a report in the Washington Post, go here.
• I wish to end these notes by recommending two pieces. The first is a historical-geographical essay by Norman Davies, the venerable British historian (b. 1939). It is on the complicated, and important, history of Russia and Ukraine. I would also like to recommend — when don’t I? — a column by Daniel Hannan. This one is headed “Why Putin Must Lose.” And it concludes as follows:
The Soviet Union was never held properly to account for its atrocities in Poland, the Baltic States, or, later, its Comecon satellites because it was never formally defeated. Russia, as its designated successor state, was given a fresh start. Let us not repeat that mistake. Putin must be seen to lose, and justice must be seen to take its course.