Ukraine: after sunset I dream of the world before tomorrow
Friday. Kyiv is going to fall, not a matter of if but when. The Russian onslaught is fierce, showing the world what modern war is. As if the pictures of bombed out Chechnya or Syria — or Afghanistan, Iraq Libya, and Yemen weren’t enough.
Saturday. Sleep is riddled with anxious dreaming, of Ukrainian President Zelensky in a bunker, Russian commandos outside. I wake up early to check the news. My nightmares were false. Kyiv still stands. Volodymyr Zelensky is alive. He’s released a defiant video:
There’s a lot of fake info telling that I ordered the Ukrainian army to surrender. So, listen here: I’m here. We are not putting our weapons down, we are going to protect our country. Our weapons are our truth, it’s our country, our children and we will protect them.
During the night, the U.S. offered Zelensky a way out, a means of escape courtesy of U.S. special operations. He responded:
“I need ammunition, not a ride.”
So the US gave Ukraine another $350 million of weapons, the anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles they desperately need. Along with many of the nations of Europe. Including Sweden, one of my two lands — my other is the USA, Mississippi to be precise.
This thing is serious. The future of the world hangs on Ukraine and its courageous people. Everyone living on this new Russian front knows it. We’ve known it in Sweden for some time now. The civil defense authority sent out booklets a few years back. It explained our “Totalförsvarsplikt”:
Sweden has a total defense obligation. This means that the state can enlist Swedish citizens between 16 and 70 years to the defense if there is a war. Those who have dual citizenship and live in Sweden can also be called up for defense.
I’m getting old but I’m younger than 70. If Russia attacked, I would be called to serve. I would do it gladly. They also said this — “If war comes and you hear someone on the radio saying the government has surrendered, do not believe them. Sweden will never surrender”. My Swedish hypothetical of war against Russia is now the reality of Ukrainian men. Never surrender.
I know one of the men now facing this. I was traveling with a group of international filmmakers January, 2014. One of them was Ukrainian and he became a friend during the three weeks we spent together. It was also a crash course in Ukraine; thanks to him, I saw the independence protests in Kyiv’s Maidan square in real time on his social media feed. It was amazing to watch people standing up to their authoritarian pro-Russian strongman, President Yanukovych. To vicariously feel the emotions in the square through my friend. Someone who knew the people who were there. Feeling the emotional ups and downs with him, the tension, the palpable fear. Getting hit with the shock of murder when Yanukovych had his men open fire. I saw it with Ukrainian eyes. The pain and uncertainly. The anger. And the joy of triumph when the regime’s violence backfired and the uprising spread. It ended with Yanukovych fleeing to Russia, while his government melted away like a wicked witch doused in water.
My Ukrainian friend returned to his country, and the euphoria of independence soon turned into the slog of war as Putin seized Crimea and parts of two eastern Ukrainian provinces, Donetsk and Luhanks, using Russian-Ukrainian separatists loyal to Putin. A nasty fight followed, one that killed 14,000 before the thing settled into trench war stalemate, with diplomats unable to find any solution better than inaction. And so it went up to now.
What happens next is unclear. Kyiv could still fall. The Ukrainians are amazingly brave and putting up more resistance than Russia expected. More resistance than anyone expected. Ordinary citizens who never fired a gun before have taken up government-issued Kalashnikovs and gone into the streets in hastily formed civilian-military formations. Civilians supporting Ukrainian soldiers in their desperate fight against the Russian onslaught.
When a big world-changing event hits like a meteor, the mind first resists the new facts. This can’t be happening. The sudden reality-whiplash is unreal. Then comes the nagging: we should have seen this coming. Like a meteor, these things don’t just suddenly appear, they’ve been arriving for a long time. We had plenty of warning on Vladimir Putin. When he turned Chechnya into a smoking ruin. When he seized Georgian land. When his warplanes committed atrocity after atrocity in Syria. When his mercenaries wantonly killed civilians in the Congo and Mali. When he flooded America with propaganda that split the country in two. We had warnings.
This Russian war on Ukraine is Putin’s true face, the reality of his fascism. For too long “fascism” has been bandied about on the social media playgrounds like a toy. But fascism is not a rhetorical insult, it’s a real thing. Putin is showing how real it is. Putin built his fascism around Christian Nationalism, rejection of the modern world and a desire to return to the world of empires, when Russia controlled a vast territory that included Poland, the Baltics, Finland and Ukraine. Listen to his rant to his nation and you’ll see he’s not looking to recreate the Soviet Union, he has bigger ambitions that that. A return to the Empire of the Czars, the world when Peter and Catherine were “Great” and Alexander was beating Napoleon. A time of constant warfare, perpetual chaos and great stupidity.
Putin’s peculiar version of Aleksandr Dugin’s fascism is his gateway to this past. Ukraine is the time-gate through which he is traveling, dragging the whole world along. But don’t just take my word for it. This is what Toma Istomina, Deputy Chief Editor at the Kyiv Independent said on Twitter:
Ukraine was always the centerpiece, the gem for Russia’s empires. It also suffered the most. Putin wanted to reassemble the empire and, of course, needed Ukraine for that. But he will choke on this gem. #Ukraine will be the reason #Russia ends as this sick imperialist state.
We cannot let him win. Regardless of what happens next in Ukraine, we cannot let Putin win.
I last communicated with my Ukrainian friend on Tuesday, two days before the Russian assault. I asked how he was. He replied, “yes it is an anxious time, but we do not lose heart, we are working”. And he talked about how they collected “disturbing backpacks, documents, studied the schemes of bomb shelters and escape routes. But for now, all is calm.”
On the day of the assault he posted a picture on social media of what his five-year-old son had packed in his escape bag; his most important things.
My friend left a final message for his fellow Ukrainians, “hold on and support each other!”
I sent a message yesterday asking how he is, but haven’t heard back.
We cannot let Putin win.
