Ukraine: Why the Fuss?

In 2015, I wrote a curious essay called “Hung Up on Israel: An explanation for the sincere.” People had often said to me, and others, “Why do you write about Israel so much? Why is it so important to you?” I would have thought it was obvious. But if people were asking — it was not.

Let me paste a brief paragraph from that piece:

If the world would leave Israel alone — simply let it be, let it live — I would probably think about Israel as much as I do, say, Uruguay. I don’t mean to offend Uruguay. But Uruguay almost never crosses my mind.

On Monday, I wrote a post about the Ukraine war, concluding the post as follows:

Russia is the aggressor. The Ukrainians are defending themselves. I admire them a great deal, and I hope they succeed.

Someone wrote to say that I was a “partisan” on Ukraine, when I should be more neutral. A different reader, who writes thoughtfully, said, “As grossly evil as Russia’s invasion is, that evil does not make the people and government of Ukraine free of all sin. They are human, given to all the human failures.”

Oh, certainly. So are Israelis. More than ever, they are at one another’s throats. There are people in the Israeli government right now who I think are absolute skunks. I still support the right of Israel to exist.

There are just a few countries whose very right to exist is challenged: Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine. I don’t like the government of Russia very much. Or the government of China very much. Or the government of Cuba very much. Etc. But I don’t know a person who thinks that Russia, China, or Cuba doesn’t have a right to exist.

Say you don’t like the next-door neighbors. The Smiths are not your cup of tea. They play their music too loud or whatever, and their lawn is a mess. But if a criminal invaded, raped, and murdered them . . .

If a foreign power invaded Russia, in order to subjugate Russia, committing mass murder and mass rape against the Russian people — torturing and terrorizing without surcease — I would be hollering for Russia all day long and waving a Russian flag.

And if I were Russian, I would say, I hope, about the Ukraine war: “Not in my name.”

There is such a thing as right-and-wrong. Such a thing as good-and-evil. A lot of people denied it, when I was coming of age. They thought it was silly, naïve, simplistic. I did not. (This is one of the reasons I became a conservative.)

I agree with David Petraeus, the retired Army general and former CIA director, who said that the Ukraine war “is about as clear a right-versus-wrong as we’ve seen in our lifetime.”

Last summer, I sat down with Lou Cannon, the veteran American political journalist. Let me paste an excerpt from the resulting piece:

In Reno, the Cannons had a friend who was Finnish. In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. Lou was six. And owing to the family friend, he was very interested in the war, which would be known as the “Winter War.” He is reminded of that war by today’s war. “I follow the twists and turns of the invasion of Ukraine obsessively,” he says. “Normal people are going to work, and then their houses are destroyed or their children are killed. That gets you pretty damn concerned, if you’re a small-d democrat.”

I did some reporting from Ukraine in late 2019. I was rather moved by this trip: by the people I met; by their fear of a full-scale invasion; by their determination to remain a free and independent country. Russian forces had invaded in 2014.

Here are a few paragraphs from my report:

Overall, more than 14,000 people — soldiers and civilians — have been killed in this war.

At the edge of St. Michael’s monastery — a beautiful light-blue structure, with golden domes — there is a Wall of Remembrance. It commemorates fallen soldiers. It reminds me a little of the Vietnam memorial in Washington. One difference, however, is that this wall has photos. You see the faces of the dead.

Virtually all of these people are known only to their family and friends, of course. But one of them, Vasyl Slipak, had some fame in the broader world. He was a baritone, an opera singer, working mainly in France. He returned home to volunteer for the war and was killed in June 2016. He is the subject of a documentary, made last year.

Since February 2022, the whole country has been mobilized, of necessity. People from all walks of life have fought and died, trying to repel the invader, trying to save their country. “Ordinary” people have died, of course. So have well-known people, including ballet dancers, actors, and athletes.

Last summer, I was able to interview Oleh Sentsov, a noted filmmaker. His career has been disrupted, you might say. For five years — 2014 to 2019 — he was a political prisoner of the Kremlin. He had a respite. Then he joined up, and is on the front lines today. (Sentsov is 47.)

What would you and I and our friends do? Speaking for myself, I really don’t know. I am this second where I usually am: in my recliner.

Several months ago, I talked with Kyle Parker, of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. I said to him (something like), “Isn’t it amazing that the Ukrainians are still standing, a year and a few months later?” He said, “Yes, it is amazing, and it has been amazing to see firsthand. Deeply moving.” (Parker has spent a lot of time in Ukraine.) “Every layer of society has come together to produce this result: this valorous defense of hearth and home. It’s hard to put into words.”

For my podcast with Parker, go here. For a write-up of that podcast — with some of Parker’s most interesting and meaningful words — go here.

This morning, Hanna Liubakova, the Belarusian journalist (in exile, of course), circulated the below:

When I commented on this, a reader responded, “The courage and indomitability of the Ukrainians is awe-inspiring. Like some nation out of a Tolkien saga, come to life . . .” Another responded, “Ukrainians have been pushed to the brink of hell. They are always in my thoughts. I pray for the demise of Putin and horrific Russian aggression.”

Of course, many, many people think and feel differently. Some are neutral; some are flatly on the other side. It was ever thus, even in the most black-and-white conflicts. It was thus during World War II. But memories fade . . .

Last October, I sat down with Oleksandra Matviichuk, who is the executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties, in Kyiv. Days later, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the center would share the Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is an excerpt of what Ms. Matviichuk said to me:

This war started not in February 2022 but in February 2014. I had been documenting war crimes for eight years already. I am very aware of what Russians did to people in the occupied territories. I have interviewed hundreds of people. They have told me how they were beaten, how they were raped, how their fingers were cut off, how they were crammed into wooden boxes, how they were tortured with electricity. One lady reported that her eyes were dug out with a spoon.

We will never leave our people alone in these occupied territories. I know what I’m talking about. It would be inhuman to leave them in this gray zone without any protection.

Allow me to repeat what I said a few days ago: Russia, or Putin’s Kremlin, is the aggressor. The Ukrainians are defending themselves. I admire them a great deal, and I hope they succeed. I also hope that Russia can give up empire, as other powers have, painful though it may be. I hope that Russia can lift itself up — up out of its current and degraded state. I hope that Russia will be a country that Russians want to live in, rather than leave. I hope that Navalny and Kara-Murza and the rest of them will be out of prison. And that Russians will glory in a greatness that comes not from subjugating other people but from a fair and just system, and from the high culture and science that Russians have always excelled in.

A Moscow-born arts journalist sometimes introduces me to her friends by saying, “Jay is Russophile.” She is right.