A Plea for Balance: The Situation In the Ukraine is Far More Complicated Than We are Being Told
Whatever the cause, wars’ consequences are the worst behavior human beings are capable of displaying. It’s always the same, rape, pillage, maiming and human beings killing other human beings on a massive scale. War makes clear that we are animals once the restraints of civilized expectations are removed. However noble the intentions claimed, however interesting battles can seem in history books, war’s horror is so evident that it cannot be sanctioned, explained, or justified in any way. Not now. Not ever. Putin and the Russians should be universally condemned. But we can also assume that by now some of the Ukrainian soldiers have matched the Russians in performing terrible deeds. War unleashes grotesque impulses on every side. All the more reason that we are entitled for our news to be told with more than the simplicity of a good guys vs. bad guys narrative.
Putin’s contention that Ukraine is part of Russia is being treated as a reincarnation of Hitler. Not entirely ridiculous. We should see him as a potentially dangerous man, a bully preying on the weak. He rules a large country. He has attacked a small one. That hasn’t happened in Europe for a very long time. His neighbors, especially former satellites, have good reason to fear Russian aggression. They were imprisoned by Russia until the Soveit Union crumbled. Nevertheless, treating Putin as a mad man avoids this war’s particulars. Here are simple facts. Khrushchev who led Russia from 1953-1964 was, in essence, a Ukrainian. Although ethnically Russian, he was born and raised close to the border of the Ukraine. His father worked in the Ukraine, and his early career and political successes were all in the Ukraine Communist Party. He expressed his fondness for them repeatedly. Leonid Brezhnev who followed him was a Ukrainian. He led Russia from 1964-82. Chernenko, a Ukrainian was Brezhnev’s chief of staff. He also led the Soviet Union from 1984-85. During the Brezhnev era, the head of both the KGB and the Defense ministry were Ukrainians. In essence, for a very long time, Ukrainians ruled Russia. Gorbachev led the Soviet Union from 1985-92. His mother was Ukrainian. In the west he is thought of as our hero. He ended the Cold War. He ended Communism.
Another fact: Gorbachev felt that Russia was correct to take back Crimea. Within the Soviet Union many Russian were furious, when in 1954, Ukraine aficionado, Nikita Khrushchev gave it to the Ukraine. Crimea had been a part of Russia from 1783 until Khrushchev’s gift. It wasn’t just Crimea that Gorbachev disagreed with our point of view. Gorbachev was furious with the United States for going back on many of their agreements regarding the resolution of the Cold War. Before he died he also made clear that he thought Putin is a trustworthy leader defending Russian interests. For his support of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he was banned from the Ukraine.
A simple question: If the Ukraine is unequivocally not part of Russia how did the Russians allow so many non-Russians to lead their nation? Obviously for many of those years the Ukrainians were considered Russian. Not that there weren’t plenty of tensions and a history of bloodshed between them, just as there is between Mississippi and Massachusetts. But briefly, in 1991, the Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world. A huge number of Russia’s nuclear weapons were in the Ukraine. Not something we would expect Russia to do if it considered the Ukraine a foreign nation. We have all heard of the Chernobyl disaster in Russia. Actually Chernobyl is in the Ukraine. Putin claims that for a very long time we have been trying to pry the Ukraine away from Russia. Of course we have. Does that mean Putin was entitled to go to war when Ukrainian leaders wanted to complete the break, become a member of NATO, part of an alliance specifically designed to oppose Russia.
Putin is not a good guy. I’m inclined to believe those stories of poisonings of his political enemies, whether he personally ordered them or not. I suspect his gang of supporters has done many other terrible things. Probably the recent air plane crash killing Prigozhin, the leader of an army who, for a while, sought to overthrow Putin, was not an accident. There is nothing to like about the political process in Russia. They are not able to rise above violence as a way to settle political disagreement. This is not the United States where we tar and feather political opponents, tell an incredible number of lies, try to destroy those who are hated, but by using our mighty media, not literally by killing them. For now, and probably for the foreseeable future this means Russia is less civilized than us. We saw when the Serbs and Crimeans went to war how barbaric political battles became. Long time neighbors killed each other. We saw the same in Saudi Arabia. A journalist opponent of the rulers got killed, his body chopped up, put in suitcases. During the Viet Nam era, nations in South East Asia had numerous killing fields. Many Latin American nations solved political dispute with violence. European kings and princes once regularly beheaded opponents. Except for our Civil War we have managed to avoid that. Still, there is a lot to dislike about the way our democracy has been functioning in recent years. The first casualty of war is truth. On that basis what has been going on in America is a war. Those on the Left are demonized by those on the Right and vice-versa. Lies pile on top of lies from both the right and left. The Democrats tried to immobilize Trump’s election with the Russian collusion lies. Trump tried to throw out the election in 2020 with his lies.
The Ukraine is presented similarly with propaganda that is inevitable in wars. Flag waving is the only acceptable attitude. Our side is heroic. The Ukrainians are venerated. They are noble, kind, brave, suffering human beings, not far from sainthood. Every time Zelenskyy speaks to legislators in the west he gets standing ovations. Presumably, the foul behavior of the Ukrainians in the past, has long since been forgotten. These are very fine people. Their enemies, our enemies, are crazy animals. They are rapists, murderers, and beasts. Their soldiers are stupid to agree to the suicide demanded of them. When they bring orphaned Ukrainian children for care in Russia we claim they are kidnapping them. When the Russian people show their support for Putin, our explanation is that they have been duped. We cite Putin’s critics as evidence that he is barely holding on to the leadership of Russia.
The lies of our politicians and our media are intolerable. They have completely lost our trust. But Russia’s political process is worse. Far worse. It has not returned to a society where the KGB once grabbed people out of their apartments at night, never to return. And people were too frightened to object. Nor has an iron curtain been erected keeping its people imprisoned, shooting those trying to escape. Russia’s citizens can leave their country and travel freely. They have access to the West’s media. The process is very flawed by our standards, but it is not helpful to characterize their politicians as madmen, and dismiss their claims as outrageous. We are entitled to hear the whole story when we go over why the Ukraine was attacked.
Half Ukrainian, half Russian, before he died, Gorbachev grieved over the war. He saw the two people as brothers with a long historical bond. Gogol was Ukrainian. So was Trotsky. Sergei Prokofiev, the great Russian composer, was born in the Ukraine. Fiddler on the Roof, which we all assume was about a Russian shtetl took place in the Ukraine. Little Odessa in Brooklyn described a neighborhood of Russian and Ukrainian people freely mingling. People moved there to be among their own. My wife’s grandfather always described himself as Russian. It now turns out he was Ukrainian. Sholoim Aleichem was Ukrainian. There are monuments to him in Lviv and Moscow. Solzhenitsyn’s mother was Ukrainian.. So were the genius Russian pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, violinists David Oistrach, Nathan Milstein. Soviet Cosmonauts Georgy Beregovoy, Leonid Kizim, Anatoly Levchenko, Anatoly Filipchenko, Anatoly Artsebarsky, Igor Volk, Pavel Popovich, Verkhovna Rada, Georgy Dobrovolsky–all were Ukrainians.
A good many Western Ukrainians, apparently a large majority, have considered themselves European and hated Russia over the centuries. But what is and is not the Ukraine has been literally all over the map throughout its history. Parts of the Ukraine, Galicia and Polhynia were ruled by Poland. Like Russia today Poles didn’t think of the Ukraine as a real country. From the point of view of ordinary citizens in that part of the world, they have not been that far off. I knew this Hungarian Americans family who see themselves as totally Hungarian They spoke Hungarian. They were Hungarians. It now turns out they actually lived in what is now the Ukraine. Parts of today’s Ukraine were considered Czechoslovakian, other parts Rumanian.
For much of their history most Ukrainians didn’t think of themselves as part of a Ukraine nation. They were Hungarians Poles, Russian, Slavs, Tartars, Cossacks. Not just in the Ukraine, the idea of what is and is not a nation hadn’t been clear in much of Europe until the 19th century. It was then that being part of a “nation” ascended as the dominant way of viewing territories. Just as Venetians, and the Milanese started thinking of themselves as Italians, and Prussians and Junkers began to think of themselves as German, Ukrainian nationalism believed they should be part of their own nation. It was an idea, a call to action rather than something that actually existed. But clearly it was a dangerous thought if you were Polish.
The Poles tried to suppress Ukrainian nationalism wherever it popped up. They closed down Ukrainian speaking schools. They tried, not always nicely, to turn the Ukrainians into Roman Catholics. Although throughout its history other peoples occupied their lands and considered the Ukraine part of their country, Ukrainian intellectuals starting thinking of themselves as Ukrainian. They were spreading an idea, a nation of Ukrainian people.
Russia was equally hated They also tried to suppress Ukrainian nationalism. But that was not their worst sin. In the 1930’s Stalin viciously tried to impose collective farming, shooting any one opposed. This led to the greatest non-wartime famine in history. A million Russians starved to death and four million Ukrainians. Many Ukrainians greeted the Germans in World War II as liberators. They joined them in the slaughter of Jews at Babi Yar. Not only Jews. In 1943, Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazi’s help, also slaughtered 60,000 to 100,000 men, women and children of Polish origin who were living peacefully in villages in the Ukraine.
Putin often speaks of the Ukrainians as Nazis, seemingly a ludicrous accusation considering that their leader is Jewish. Yes, a charmer from show business, a television personality is the public persona of the Ukrainians nation’s cause. He was elected by a majority of the Ukrainian people. But a minority of Ukrainians are Nazi affiliated. And they have occupied a prominent role in their society. The 1943 killing of Poles were initiated and directed by a radical Ukrainian nationalist Stephen Bandera and his Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.
Led by Stephen Bodera the murders were committed with incredible cruelty. Many were burnt alive or thrown into wells. Axes, pitchforks, scythes, knives and other farming tools rather than guns were used in an attempt to make the massacres look like a spontaneous peasant uprising. In the blood frenzy, the Ukrainians tortured their victims with unimaginable bestiality. Victims were scalped. They had their noses, lips and ears cut off. They had their eyes gouged out and hands cut off and they had their heads squashed in clamps. Woman had their breasts cut off and pregnant woman were stabbed in the belly. Men had their genitals sliced off with sickles. All the horrible things described about the treatment of Jews during that era were also done to the Poles
In 2016 the Polish parliament instituted the National Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists against citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, at the same time labelling the massacres an act of genocide. But there has been no public apology. Indeed, Bodera is seen as a national hero. A Ukrainian stamp commemorates his heroism. There is a 22 ft statue of him in Lviv in front of the Stele of the Ukrainian Statehood a towering monument to Ukrainian identity. Although their common fear of Russia has, for now, united them, the issues between the Poles and Ukrainians is far from over. In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law allowing people who denied the heroism of Ukrainian national resistance fighters to be punished. The Poles passed a bill making it a criminal offence to deny the “crimes of Ukrainian nationalists”. Zelenskyy has gone to a Polish Church, supposedly as an act of contrition for what the Nazi Ukrainians did to the Poles. But the towering statue remains. Bodera is a hero.
It should also be noted that these wonderful people were the mainstay of the Nazi’s death camps. Ukrainians were said to outnumbered the Germans 10 to 1 at Sorbitol. It was similar in other death camps. Not every nationality would have been able to supply so many guards equal in cruelty to the Ukrainians that herded the Jews. And while Zelenskyy, during his election campaign, intended to clean up Ukrainian’s notorious corruption with his dream team of reformers, the dream team was gone after a few months in office. He made peace with a rotten bunch of people.
In complete contrast Russian speaking Eastern Ukrainians were the mainstay of the Ukrainian underground fighting the Nazis. Since 2014 Eastern Ukrainians have been fighting the rest of Ukraine in a civil war seeking independence. There are reports of them committing war crimes, just as there have been reports of the Ukrainian army killing unarmed prisoners. I assume the reports are not fiction.
I must admit that I am not a long time scholar of the Ukraine. I am using Google and Wikipedia, and news articles, so some of my information may be tainted by the sites. I am new to the subject and find it difficult to separate fact from fiction. And I will admit a contrary streak in me has caused me to find information tarnishing the current angelic presentation of Ukrainians. I welcome factual corrections. However, regardless of my iconoclasm, and probably some mistaken facts, my main purpose is to emphasize how complicated the situation is. Even in educated quarters there has been little attempt to move beyond official attitudes. Part of that uniformity has become part of political correctness. It’s dangerous to stand alone. So very possibly I am exaggerating Ukrainian evil to level the playing field. But I will not apologize for wanting readers to take a better look at official attitudes.
Perhaps the complex issues are best illustrated by Russian Olympic champion ice skater, Victor Petrenko. Born in the Ukraine to Ukrainian engineers, only Russian was spoken at home. He was sent to a Russian speaking school in the Ukraine. Despite being born and educated in the Ukraine he never learned to speak Ukrainian fluently. After he was an Olympic champion, as an adult he organized many charitable events for Ukrainian children including a campaign to help those effected by Chernobyl (once more, in the Ukraine not Russia.)
In June 2008, he was elected to the Presidium of the Ukrainian Figure Skating Federation. In 2022, amidst Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russia, Petrenko was fired from his post as vice president of the Ukrainian Figure Skating Federation (UFFK) and expelled from the organization for taking part in an event in Russia that was organized by Tatiana Navka a Ukrainian ice dancer who won gold for Russia in 2006. She is the wife of Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
One other relevant point of view. At the beginning of the war Thomas Friedman wrote an article in the New York Times, “This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders” (Please use the link) He described the anger of George Kennan (the person often credited with our anti-Soviet policies during the cold war). Kennan, like Gorbachev, felt we were extremely (and unnecessarily) aggressive surrounding the Soviet Union with armed NATO allies. Friedman quoted Kennan in the 90’s: “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”
Russia has repeatedly said it will end the war if its conditions are met by the Ukraine. They are: 1) Change its constitution to enshrine neutrality 2) acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory. 3) recognize the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states (now part of Eastern Ukraine). Despite the clarity of their demands, The New York Times’ Steven Erlanger wrote September 2 of this year “Putin has said a lot of times he won’t negotiate except on his own terms, which are Ukraine’s obliteration.” Not exactly an accurate description. They have repeatedly had referendums in Eastern Ukraine, demonstrating that they are supported by the population. Perhaps, as we claim, their referendums are phony. Perhaps not, but I am willing to consider the possibility that a majority of eastern Ukrainians want to be Russians. Certainly, even before the Russian soldiers joined them, there were a lot of Eastern Ukrainians willing to fight and die for their cause.
It should be noted that the declared boundaries of the Ukraine, which I have noted have previously gone in all kinds of directions were made official in 1991and agreed upon by Russia. But I am not sure how meaningful that was. Russia’s nationhood was far from secure. In that very year, during a coup attempt, their Parliament was surrounded by troops. Gorbachev, the ruler of Russia, was placed under house arrest. So, one may question what it meant for Russia to agree to the present boundaries. And as noted above, Gorbachev was furious with the United States for not living up to understandings we supposedly agreed to when they agreed to end the Soviet Union.
The mention of Trump often goes off in wild directions. But it is not coincidence that Trump’s first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, was a strong advocate of better relations with Russia. So was Trump. And we know how Russia’s enemies in Washington were horrified. Indeed, with their false Russian collusion accusations they succeeded in demonizing Russia even before the Ukraine invasion.
On a purely speculative level, the other current alliances should be noted. Biden has had a special relationship with the Ukraine. His son cashed in on absurd rewards while his father was Vice-president (a million dollar a year for board seat on Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company) Burisma was being investigated by Victor Shokin their top prosecutor. Shokin seized four large houses and a Rolls-Royce Phantom belonging to the company’s owner Mykola Zlochevsky. Biden insisted that this prosecutor be terminated. In a 2018 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, VP Biden bragged that he had threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees for Ukraine unless Shokin was sacked. It also should be noted that Trump pushed in the other direction. He intended to withhold military assistance unless the Ukrainians proceed with their Biden corruption investigation. For this Trump was rewarded with another impeachment drama.
Perhaps the slimy everyday corruption of politicians shouldn’t tarnish the lofty issues often cited in the Ukrainian war. Or perhaps they should for any perspective that might clarify how much of the lofty current war is related to these shenanigans and loyalties. It is worth considering.
To return to the war’s rhetoric, Putin’s demands don’t sound like the ravings of a mad man. Perhaps, if unopposed, he would try to conquer other former Soviet territories. He was very aggressive with Georgia, but here too, the situation is ambiguous. Stalin was a Georgian. Still it doesn’t matter. Reasons can always be found for any strategy. Certainly, the alarmed reaction of Russia’s former occupied nations in Eastern Europe is understandable. The Ukraine’s relationship with Russia is different than theirs, but if history is our guide they have reason for their concern. Both World War I and II were brought on by border conflicts. The borders of nations in that region still could be in flux. That issue was put to bed after World War II. Nations were redefined as the Soviet Empire collapsed in the 90’s. There have been skirmishes but there has been very little warfare involving major powers about boundaries. That relative peacefulness was put in danger with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But even before the invasion many nations have been rearming themselves because we may be reentering an era when not only Russia is a menace but each nation’s neighbors.
If the reader is becoming confused by my support for, and alarm about Russia that their former satellites have shown, it is because I am somewhere in the middle. I am suspicious of our motives, their motives, everyone’s motives. There is reason to be suspicious, to weigh many points of view, to be especially suspicious that right and wrong isn’t the real issue as far as our foreign policy is concerned.
So, let me turn to that, indeed reverse where I was heading. Many have wondered if we have to win this war to counterbalance the humiliation of our retreat from Afghanistan. The war is demonstrating the superiority of our weapons. Regardless of Putin’s character, or the lack of democracy in Russia and China, we are entering a phase in history where war with them may be inevitable. It wouldn’t matter if they were true democracies or led by a king, or whatever their government is. Our focus has shifted. We have grown tired of our war on terrorism, or perhaps the danger has faded. Our focus has shifted to Russia and China. History brings powerful nations into wars of dominance. So now we have to win this war.
After our humiliating retreat from Afghanistan many leaders of other nations were weighing if we can be relied on. Not only can our influence be eradicated by our defeat, but our reliability as a friend must be questioned. Meaning we have to duke it out with Russia. We can’t lose still again. If this is our motive for strongly supporting Zelenskyy I am totally on the side of our leaders. A world where we are seen as a paper tiger is a far more dangerous world. Having so vociferously proclaimed the freedom of the Ukraine as a moral absolute we can’t back down. We may question whether that absolute commitment was necessary but once done, it is done. Certainly, greater honesty about how complicated the war is, might have brought more flexible options. It still might not be too late to broaden the debate.
But let me return to the moral dimensions of the war in the Ukraine. Leaving aside realpolitik, I believe the most important issue to note is that a lot more Ukrainians and Russians will be dying if the war goes on and on. We must quit presenting this war as a moral necessity, a fight against outrageous villains. Granted, if it isn’t presented that way no soldiers would be willing to die for their cause. And we wouldn’t be giving them billions of dollars, if the war was presented as simply a territorial dispute. But if we stopped seeing it that way maybe better solutions could be found. And frankly, the cynic in me can’t help commenting that once again we are having others fight our war.
Since 2014 Eastern Ukraine has been at war with Ukraine trying to be allied with, or part of Russia. No one considered it worthy of a major effort on our part. We accused the Russians of meddling. They lodged similar complaints about us. Russia’s invasion changed the public’s perception and perhaps it is true that Putin’s invasion is analogous to Hitler’s early aggressions. But the fact is, this war would not be continuing if it were not for the principles we are holding sacred (i.e. fighting for a democratic nation’s integrity) Minimizing our own war dead, getting others to do the fighting has been our strategy for a long time now. It was basically true in Iraq where only 4550 American soldiers died in the 15 years we were there. 2400 Americans lost their life in Afghanistan during a 22-year war. By comparison, when we were actually doing the fighting 33,000 Americans died in Korea, 58,000 in Viet Nam and 450,000 in World War II. And now our vehemence that we are fighting a righteous war, risks no American soldiers at all. To achieve our strategic objectives, I am not against it if this must be our marketing tool. But I hope our decision makers are not deluded by their own propaganda.
Moreover, I wonder how Ukrainians will view their many deaths to come, whether they would be this courageous if there weren’t American propagandists and money running the show, promising, expecting victory. Is this another example of how American wealth gives us temporary illusions of our wisdom. We rolled into Afghanistan and routed the Taliban. They fled to Pakistan, but they knew what I fear the Russians already know. Our reliability is questionable. Our persistence evaporates. We eventually forget why we have gone to war. I hope we will not have a twenty year war in the Ukraine, but unfortunately that might be ahead for us. Our hands will be dirtied by the bloodshed to come even if American soldiers are not dying. Our good guy/bad guy polarization is destructive enough in our own domestic politics but extending it to a war is a worse sin. It may entangle us in a long war, a holy war that is non-negotiable, one that will bring many more deaths, rather than a truce, where concessions are made on the basis of both sides understanding the other’s grievances and legitimate desires.
