FORM-Idea

Ukraine is a country that I know well and to which I am emotionally attached, and so great was the shock of the news of the Russian invasion that I was unable to sleep those first nights of conflict. As a historian, the deeply shocking images remind me of the Blitzkrieg, the surprise attack on Poland by the Nazis. For more than a month, the Russians amassed troops at the border, before the eyes of the world’s press, repeatedly denying any intention of invasion and calling the Americans hysterical for suggesting otherwise.

However, the annexation of Crimea should have alerted us to the possibility of just such an invasion. All the signs of an expansionist Russian nationalism were plain to see. Unfortunately, Westerners preferred to condemn Russia, without really sanctioning, assuming that Putin would act rationally. It is clear that Islamic terrorism, which has impacted us all in one way or another, had become enemy number one; and some even saw Russia’s brutal intervention in Syria as the act of an ally protecting the Judeo-Christian civilization [1], despite numerous warnings from certain intellectuals on the true nature of the Putin regime, such as the American historian Timothy Snyder and Russian dissident Garry Kasparov.

After the shock comes the anger, and I ask myself, how can we put that anger to use in the service of the struggle for a free Ukraine? It would be pointless to talk about peace as long as Putin is in power and so we have to ask whether his cynicism and extremism has brought us to a point of no return. On Sunday February 27, I received the following text message from a Ukrainian friend:

  This totally trilingual Ukrainian-Russian-English Ukrainian is a patriot, a Christian married to a Jewish woman, father of three children, as far from the Nazi of Russian propaganda as you can get.

The main culprit of this war against Ukraine is Vladimir Putin, there is no doubt about that. However, Russian citizens have also played their part through their support – tacit or otherwise, their fatalism, their inaction and by a certain collective amnesia in the face of history. On the one hand, retirees and civil servants – traumatized by the breakup of the USSR and especially by the economic chaos of the 90s – are thirsty for a sense of national triumph and have made this former KGB agent into an autocrat. They crave grandiose imperial images on TV. They swallow everything the official propaganda outlets tell them without the slightest curiosity to learn what the independent media might be reporting. They know there is a war in Ukraine but prefer the official narrative. Corrupt oligarchs and technocrats, greedy for personal enrichment, are also to blame. And finally, there is the Russian Orthodox Church, which promotes a pan-Slavic Russian nationalism; one nation, one language, one religion. The Patriarch of Moscow has only one wish: to put an end to the Orthodox Church of Kyiv. This usurper of the message of Christ stirs up Putin’s aggressive nationalism. His church is as criminal as the Moscow government.

We are paying dearly for the short-sighted policies of the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who imposed a terrible austerity on the rest of Europe, demanding cuts to the budgets of her European partners, including the reduction of military expenditure, unless it concerned the sale of German submarines to Greece. She has shown incredible economic selfishness. Under her watch, Germany pursued a policy of Russian energy dependence, refusing to sacrifice the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, despite the war in Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war waged by Russia in the Donbass for the past eight years. Maintaining dialogue with Putin was her mantra and I’ve no doubt that this is the advice she would have given to Emmanuel Macron before her retirement from politics [2].

Russian propaganda in the West also spread a lot of disinformation; that Ukraine was an artificial country, divided between Ukrainians and Russian speakers, in the West the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists labelled as Nazis, in the East Russian speakers discriminated against. These lies were repeated on the Russia Today and Sputnik networks and by shameless media freeloaders as well as by the useful idiots of political figures with interests in the nebulous world of Russian business such as former German Chancellor Schroeder, former Prime Minister Fillon, Silvio Berlusconi, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen. A total disgrace!

Faced with this naked and brutal aggression perpetrated by a so-called civilized country on the peaceful and democratic nation that Ukraine has become, we must ask ourselves about the threats that authoritarian regimes pose to our own democracies.

The first victory that brings me any sense of comfort is that of the triumph of Ukraine in the information war. Wanting to eradicate their Slavic brethren would be an act of suicidal madness on Putin’s part. According to Emmanuel Macron, NATO, which has been in a brain-dead state, seems to have come out of a coma.

The millions of Ukrainian refugees in the European Union will lean even further towards Europe and North America than ever before. People of Russia, Putin is a mere mortal, rise up!

[1] Yet Putin let Kadyrov establish an Islamic Russian republic in Chechnya, just as he let the Orthodox Armenians be expelled from much of Nagorno Karabakh.

[2] President Macron cannot be blamed for having done everything to preserve peace.

Translated from French by Maurice Caldera and edited by Annie Clein.

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