Here is the opening paragraph of a report in Time magazine:
Russia pounded targets from practically one end of Ukraine to the other Thursday, including Kyiv, bombarding the city while the head of the United Nations was visiting in the boldest attack on the capital since Moscow’s forces retreated weeks ago.
Yes. Vladimir Putin is indeed “bold,” if that’s the word. The forces of freedom will have to summon boldness of their own, if they hope to defeat him.
• The U.S. embassy in Kyiv memorialized a particular Ukrainian:
@USEmbKyiv is grieving the loss of our dear colleague Volodymyr, who took leave from his job as an Embassy bodyguard to rejoin the army and defend Ukraine. We will never forget his kind spirit, dedication, and bravery. Our deepest condolences go to his family and friends.
• You may not have the stomach to read this article by Yaroslav Trofimov in the Wall Street Journal — and if you don’t, I don’t blame you — but I will supply the headline: “In Ukrainian Villages, Fears Grow for Men Taken to Russia.” Also the subheading: “Six men were taken from Velykyi Bobryk; ‘We have no idea where he is, what happened to him, is he alive, is he dead. Nothing.’”
• Listen to Beth Van Schaack, a U.S. State Department official, testifying at the United Nations. It’s not easy:
. . . we saw violence of a different order. This was interpersonal violence: credible reports of individuals killed execution-style with their hands bound; bodies showing signs of torture; horrific accounts of sexual violence against women and girls. We now have credible information that a Russian military unit operating in the vicinity of Donetsk executed Ukrainians who were attempting to surrender, rather than take them into custody.
• Kaitlan Collins of CNN writes,
The mayor of Mariupol says a third mass grave has been found near the city and that Russian forces are making locals work for “hours” in exchange for food and water. “Now there is not enough humanitarian aid in Mariupol, so people are forced to do it,” he said via Telegram.
Anne Applebaum, the historian, commented, “In the Gulag your ration size depended on how hard you worked.”
• Lloyd Austin, the U.S. secretary of defense, said this about the Ukrainians: “We believe that they can win, if they have the right equipment, the right support.” (Article here.)
• He also said, “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” There was an outcry about this. I appreciated what Shashank Joshi, the defense editor of The Economist, said:
All this hand-wringing at Austin’s comment that US wants to see a weakened Russia. Russia has spent the last decade seeking to weaken the US & Europe. It has spent the last two months seeking to erase the Ukrainian state. Weakening Russia has costs, but it is in NATO’s interest.
My gosh, isn’t that obvious?
• An interesting headline, from the Associated Press: “France’s victorious Macron boosts weapons, stakes in Ukraine.” Did he need to get by Le Pen, in the election, in order to do that? Marcon is quoted as saying, “We are delivering consequential equipment. We need to continue down this path.”
Encouraging.
• The AP reports,
Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday and threatened to do the same to other countries, using its most essential export in what was seen as a bid to punish and divide the West over its support for Ukraine.
For years, European democracies declined to wean themselves off Russian gas. Now, apparently, they will be wrenched off. Cold turkey. They will find ways to live, I trust.
Vladimir Bukovsky, the late Soviet-era dissident, said, “Too many Western politicians put their desire to fry their morning bacon on Soviet gas above their own declared values.”
• Francis Scarr of the BBC tells us,
Russian state TV says it has discovered an “organisation of gays and lesbians” in a building in Mariupol where Ukrainian “nationalist battalions” had been based.
It was apparently “funded by USAID” and “virtually under the patronage of the US President and Congress.”
Lies are poured into the ears of Russian citizens night and day by their state media. That is a difficult thing to grapple with, in the world.
• On state TV, they were talking about the prospect of nuclear war: nuclear warfare between Russia and NATO. If that comes to pass, said the host, breezily, “We will go to heaven and they will simply croak.”
• Another piece by Yaroslav Trofimov, in the Wall Street Journal: “Russia’s Long Disdain for Ukrainian Nationhood.” The subheading: “Even Russian liberals and dissidents have traditionally shared Putin’s view that Ukraine has no distinct cultural identity.”
Trofimov quotes Volodymyr Vynnychenko, a Ukrainian writer, artist, and statesman (1880–1951): “The Russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins.”
For many years, I have said about Chinese dissidents, “They will use their last breath, after hours of torture, to choke out, ‘Tibet is an irrevocable part of China.’”
Yet, as Perry Link recently pointed out to me, that is not true of the best of them: of Liu Xiaobo, for example, or of Jianli Yang (to choose a living example). And think of the Russians who put their lives on the line, to tell the truth, in opposition to their government: heroes, these people.
• David Frum made an important point:
To listen to the far-left and far-right, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the fault of everyone except the people doing the invading.
He was puckish, too:
“Look at what you made Putin do. If you don’t now give Putin what he wants, obviously he’ll have no choice but to keep doing it. Then all of you who said No to Putin will be to blame for the future suffering that the poor man is compelled to inflict by your non-compliance.”
Exactly.
• The U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said, “We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.” Is that so? Let us hope so — and work toward it.
• Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, spoke with Time magazine’s Simon Shuster. Outside Ukraine, said Zelensky, “people see this war on Instagram, on social media. When they get sick of it, they will scroll away.” So true. Writes Shuster, “Zelensky senses the world’s attention flagging, and it troubles him nearly as much as the Russian bombs.”
The rest of us can scroll away. (I often do.) But Ukrainians are fighting to stay alive. They are fighting to stay alive individually, and fighting to keep their country alive. I am reminded of that, as I go about my day, scribbling blogposts, hitting golf balls, eating grilled-cheese sandwiches, going to concerts. What a luxury. How lucky some of us are. The least we can do is keep an eye on sparrows — at least a few of them — being tortured and killed.