It’s good to know a few names — a few individuals — so that the dead are not just an undifferentiated mass. No one gives a damn about masses. People care about people.
Children’s neurologist Pavlo Kovalchuk, who suffered severe burns as the result of the russian missile attack on Vinnytsia, succumbed to wounds after the three-week struggle. This is an unbearable horror & a big loss for the community of Ukrainian children’s doctors. RIP
The above is a tweet from Olena Halushka, a civil-society leader in Ukraine. Accompanying the tweet is a picture of Dr. Kovalchuk.
“Husband, son, father, angel: A Ukrainian family mourns its hero.” That is the heading over an article by Scott Peterson, of the Christian Science Monitor. The subject of the article is Oleksandr Palahniuk (and his family). What a man.
A report from the New York Times begins,
The first air raid alarm rang out over Mykolaiv at 1:01 a.m. and for the next four hours, explosions thundered as Russian missiles rained down on this already battered southern port city.
By dawn, a hotel, a sports complex, two schools, a service station and scores of homes were in ruins and emergency crews raced between blast sites were working to establish the full casualty count. But one of Ukraine’s richest businessmen, Oleksiy Vadaturskyi, and his wife were among the dead . . .
Some more:
Tributes to Mr. Vadaturskyi — who had been declared a “Hero of Ukraine” more than a decade ago for his contributions to society — poured in from across the country as news of his death spread. . . .
Mr. Vadaturskyi made his fortune in the agricultural industry: His company, Nibulon, has built storage facilities and infrastructure necessary for exporting grain.
A little more:
He was killed just as the first shipments of grain since the beginning of the war in Ukraine were being loaded onto freighters at Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea after a monthslong blockade.
A friend of mine — a Ukrainian — was e-mailing me about some musical matters. She said,
We have lost songwriters and singers on the frontlines of the war. Just last week, a songwriter for one of my favorite rock groups, Kozak System, was killed.
That was Hleb Babich.
• In mid April, President Biden used the word “genocide” to describe Russia’s depredations in Ukraine. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.” A lot of people didn’t like this, at all. (Biden’s statement, I mean.) To others, the statement looked like a simple recognition of reality.
Let me recommend a piece by Adrian Karatnycky, a former president of Freedom House: “Putin’s Genocidal War: The West cannot allow the attempted destruction of the Ukrainian people and their state to succeed.” Let me also recommend a piece by National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford: “Putin’s Genocide in Ukraine: Moscow wants to destroy the Ukrainian people, as such.”
• Anyone who turns away from the news can hardly be blamed. The turners-away, I don’t particularly mind. The deniers, obfuscators, and outright Putinists, I do.
Here is an unbearable article, from RFE/RL. The heading: “‘Worse Than Azovstal.’” The article begins,
Relatives of defenders of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol hold a rally in Kyiv on July 30 demanding that Russia be designated as a terrorist state following the deaths of Ukrainian POWs in a deadly attack on a prison in Olenivka.
On July 29, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, issued this statement:
Today’s shelling of a POW/filtration camp is absolutely repugnant. Along with reports of barbaric, inhuman treatment of POWs by Russian forces. We need accountability, and Ukraine needs the means to defend itself against such horrors perpetrated on its territory.
Yes.
Another unbearable article — a long report — by a team from the Associated Press: “‘The mouth of a bear’: Ukrainian refugees sent to Russia.” Unbearable. Deeply reported. And important.
• A terrorist state, yes. “We see all the brutality of Russian forces, that actually resemble a lot of ISIS, who we have been always calling a terrorist organization,” said the Latvian foreign minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, to Politico. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”
Further, “If we condemn countries like Iran, Russia is not different.”
• Here is an article about Estonia — Estonia and Ukraine — by Michael Weiss, of New Lines.
Estonia has donated almost 40% of its annual military budget to Ukraine and more than 0.8% of its gross domestic product, higher than any other nation per capita. It is a contribution made all the more impressive when one considers that Spain, a much larger and wealthier country, hasn’t given Ukraine a single item of heavy weaponry in 2022. Estonia has provided howitzers, armored personnel carriers, mine-resistant vehicles and hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
• I would like to credit the essayist, but the essay appears in The Economist, which does without bylines. In any case, an outstanding essay, powerful in explanation: “Vladimir Putin is in thrall to a distinctive brand of Russian fascism: That is why his country is such a threat to Ukraine, the West and his own people.”
To be read and even studied.
• A report from RFE/RL:
Well-known post-Soviet reformer Anatoly Chubais, who left Russia following the Kremlin invasion of Ukraine, is reported to be in intensive care in a European hospital.
Yup. From one point of view, it is amazing he has lived this long . . .
(Kira Yarmysh, of Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption organization, commented, “No one really doubts that Chubais was poisoned.”)
• Matteo Salvini, the Italian rightist, is one of the most ardent Putinists in Western Europe. He is a darling of the crowd that bills itself as “national conservative” — the crowd that exalts Viktor Orbán, over in Hungary. The latest on the Italian can be read in this article from France 24: “Italy’s Salvini under scrutiny over Russia ties in wake of government collapse.”
I loved the understatement of this sentence: “Salvini has long admired Russian President Vladimir Putin, even wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Putin’s face, a stance that has become politically difficult since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Salvini and his party-mates started a “Friends of Putin” group in the Italian parliament. They also signed a “friendship and cooperation agreement” with Putin’s party (“party”).
They are a little abashed at the moment, but only a little. As a rule, they are out and proud — which I, for one, prefer to the sneaky sort of Putinism. Give me the out-and-proud over the sneaks any day.
• Reports CBS News,
The U.S. received more than 100,000 Ukrainians in roughly five months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fulfilling President Biden’s pledge of providing a temporary safe haven to those displaced as part of the largest refugee exodus since World War II . . .
(Full article here.)
Obviously, the acceptance of refugees does not sit well with a lot of people. But it does with me. America being America.
Long may she, we, wave.