Three years ago, we moved to Warsaw, Poland.
Then there was a global pandemic.
Then our neighbours in Ukraine were invaded by our neighbours in Russia.
Russia says the Ukrainian identity is not valid. I haven’t heard anything like that since what happened in China, Myanmar, Rwanda and Bosnia. Of course there are others; the list of modern horrors is long.
As Canadians, we have heard of these stories for decades, but they’ve never really affected us. Some refugees show up in Canada as a result of these conflicts, but for the most part we’re shielded from real conflicts outside of what people think about vaccine mandates. (See also: Wohlstandsverwahrlosung). It’s a measure of Canada’s relatively good quality of life if I pretend that wages, the cost of living, housing, and pending economic collapse aren’t critical issues.
Lately I’ve been faced with my own Wohlstandsverwahrlosung. In the past month, we have accepted two families and a student who left Ukraine due to the conflict. The two families are Ukrainian, and the student was from Nigeria (he’s home and safe now). The first family went on to the U.S. for six months or longer, and the second family that is here now are hoping that they will be able to go back to Ukraine at some point, because that’s their home.
Poland so far has accepted 2.5 million refugees. For a country with the population the same as Canada, it is like increasing the entire population rapidly by 7%. Some will want to go home at some point, some are accepting that their old lives are lost and accept relocating. Those who return one day will find everything changed or that there is nothing left.
Why the Russian argument doesn’t work
Ukrainians are being told by Russia that this invasion is for their own good. They’re told that they’re being saved from a Nazi leader who is Jewish. (I will not digress on the anti-semitism that I hear commonly from Russian mouths.) I’ve been told that Russian nationalists support the invasion because Ukraine is essentially Russian if you go back 800 years. (If you want to go back in time to justify your invasion, then we can talk about who really “owns” Kaliningrad, too.) The thing is, when you talk to Ukrainians, they just don’t see the “one Russian” identity thing that Russians claim. They believe they are their own people and wish to be their own sovereign nation. This is fairly consistent with Ukrainians both on public record and in our house. If Russians learn the “one identity” claim is bullshit, they’ll seize the land anyway to justify that it’s needed strategically because they can’t have NATO on their doorstep. I’m not sure how much the West ultimately cares because they’re on their doorstep in the Baltic states anyway, and they have their own problems (gas prices, am I right?) so I would not be surprised if Putin gets to fulfill at least part of his dream of invading and reviving the old Soviet states, which would mean we’d be out of here faster than a Russian soldier abandoning Chernobyl. He got away with taking Crimea, which was the test he put to the world before becoming emboldened to make this decision.
Today I overheard the boy in our house talking to his father on speakerphone. I don’t know what they were saying, but listening to their normalized father-and-son talk brought tears to my eyes. I imagined if it was my son and I was having that talk whilst serving against an invasion of my country. I think of all of the families that are torn apart, all of the bodies laying in Ukrainian suburbs, and the rapes that are largely underreported as the Russians terrorize as they go. I am in awe that Russian people continue to eat up the Russian news without balancing their information elsewhere (especially Russians not even in Russia!) This is not a global conspiracy against Russia. These are war crimes that are being committed and justified by Russians who have dehumanized the Ukrainian identity.
The UN and NATO. WTF.
According to the UN and NATO, these things aren’t supposed to happen anymore. They came together with feel-good self-righteousness (and budgets) after World War II, and mandated that these kinds of war crimes could not be allowed to happen again. What an absolute load of bullshit that’s been for the past several decades. And now, as Ukrainians plead for help, the Canadian prime minister can’t even make his mind up about whether or not to expel Russian diplomats when even those in much closer proximity realize they must do something. No surprise. Trudeau’s entire legacy has been spineless stammering and inaction except for matters that financially benefit his circle.
I have lived nearly fifty years in relative comfort while I heard stories about Myanmar, China, Syria, and a very long list of atrocities that goes back to Reagan. I’ve heard Americans milk their global and cultural capital for “saving the world” in WWII, while they continue to plunder nations and suppress democracy for resource extraction (after all, they were founded on that principle with slavery. Taking other people’s resources is their founding national identity). I see them waging their fingers and talking tough at Putin. But I also see people’s homes, neighborhoods, schools, cities, towns, lives and families torn apart by an army who tells them that they are being saved.
There is a nine year old boy in my house who will have his tenth birthday here, without his father, who is fighting to stop a foreign army from invading his country. This is not what they want.
BUT HE HAS NUKES
To those who think that nothing can be done because Putin has nuclear weapons: Do you really think his decision to use them will be based on whatever actions the West takes? If Putin wants to use nukes, he’s going to. He knows that if he says the word, the West will largely sit back and watch him take Ukraine, as they did with Crimea. Putin is a chess player, and mentioning nuclear capabilities preemptively tells the West. “We’re taking Ukraine. Stay out.” I’m not going to invoke Godwin’s Law here, (unless mentioning it automatically invokes it) but taking the “wait and see” approach to fanatical dictators in the past has never, ever worked out. It just means the inevitable conflict down the road gets messier, costlier, and most importantly, lives are lost while people find ways to stay out of the conflict. In the meantime, the news migrates to think pieces about men slapping each other at awards ceremonies because the proud tradition of awards and self-congratulation lives on.
I just wonder, fifty years down the road when all this is done, which people will take credit for saving Ukraine? Will drunken fools at at pubs misquote history by talking about how Russia tried to invade Ukraine, but Americans saved the day?
Probably not, because that future will have meant that someone actually intervened.
