For the first anniversary of the Ukraine war, I decided to revisit what I originally wrote just a week after the war started. I’ll also add some hindsight notes along the way. All the sections in bold-type are from today, and everything not in bold is from last year.
And for those of you who like nerding out, I’ll put some links at the end of this to some of my favorite talks on the Russia-Ukraine War over the past year. One of these days I wouldn’t mind delving into the history of “how we got here,” but I just haven’t gotten around to that yet. Maybe I’ll save that for the next anniversary. Sadly, I am assuming there’s no rush…
THE WAR SO FAR
(Mar 2, 2022)
I’ve lived through a number of these conflicts in my lifetime now (and I can’t help but follow them minute by minute when they happen), and one thing I know is that you never end up feeling by the end, the same way you felt at the beginning. So consider this a work in progress. Although with every passing day I’m getting the impression that this war may be much more consequential than we had originally thought [and I’m still of that mindset today].
This podcast from War On The Rocks with Michael Kofman came out Monday and gave a great assessment of where the war is thus far (I give this one the “essential listening” stamp). I was feeling fairly optimistic last week, what with the seemingly strong resistance by Ukrainians and immense goodwill being shown towards them all around the world (even within Russia itself). But I think Kofman gives a great summary of why we shouldn’t bank on that optimism just yet. As a friend of mine put it: This has not actually become a war yet.
Bizarrely, most of Putin’s battalions and almost all of his air power have not been put into the fight. It seems as if Putin thought he could quickly push into Kiev without causing massive devastation, cut off the head of the snake [assassinate President Zelensky and install a puppet government], and thus avoid the most severe sanctions. But now that the resistance has been tougher than expected, and because Europe has surprisingly taken an extremely tough stance on sanctions, Putin may come to decide that it’s time to (in Michael Kofman’s words) let the Russians fight the way they were actually trained to fight.
Sidenote: Funny how even the little things have changed so dramatically — today, there’s no way I would make the mistake of using “Kiev” instead of the now-proper spelling “Kyiv” for the name of the Ukrainian capital.
The Russian soldiers around Kiev have been strangely deferential toward the Ukrainian people so far, giving the impression they didn’t want this war either. However, there has been more devastation in other parts of the country (Kofman talks about something similar to the “Highway of Death” in the south), and there is apparently a huge contingent of Chechen soldiers in reserve that may be sent in by Putin, and Kofman states those particular units are not likely to care at all about civilian casualties the way the Russians have been.
This has come to fruition in more ways than one. The Russians have not only relied on groups like the Chechens, and those in the outskirt areas of Russia who have been happy to plunder Ukrainian homes, but the notorious Wagner Group has also recruited from prisons by offering inmates amnesty for their crimes if they agree to fight the Ukrainians (although the Wagner Group recently stated that they plan to stop this practice). These trends have indeed created units that are far more comfortable with committing war crimes than they likely would be if the soldiers came from the ordinary Russian population.
I should also note that Chechen units have been implicated as playing a role in the the famous Bucha massacres that made headlines early on in the war (although they were not the only units involved).
The ubiquitous nature of support for Ukraine has been showing up in many interesting ways. I found out that the Putin Pub in Jerusalem (which I remember caught my eye when I was there in 2014) has removed his name from their building. The Russian House restaurant here in Austin has also changed its name to House [it has since closed down completely]. The Austin FC soccer team held a moment of silence before the game we attended on Saturday, and even SNL got serious in its cold open.
Even more shocking, after an appeal by President Zelensky for foreign volunteers went out, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was “asked specifically whether she would support Britons going to Ukraine to fight, she responded: ‘Absolutely, if that is what they want to do.’” [The British government later dialed this back.] Germany has reversed decades of policy in order to send arms, and Switzerland has reversed decades of neutrality to join the EU sanctions against Russia. This response has been wild.
There have already been think-pieces on whether the response to Ukrainian refugees versus the way we responded to Afghan or Syrian refugees is about the fact that they are white Europeans that are “like us.” And I think that’s probably not untrue, although I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ukraine is a western’ish democracy that has been straight up invaded by one of the major powers of the world. That is truly a big deal, and it is unlike anything we have seen (anywhere in the world) in recent history.
After all, Afghanistan has been mired in chaos and bloodshed for forty years, and Assad’s Syria has always been one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. People tend to look at those situations and say (rightly or wrongly), “Well that figures.” Although I always said it was wrong for people to think that what happened to Syrian society could never happen here (and I feel the last six years have validated my theory), but I think the Ukraine situation brings this home for more westerners than those other conflicts did.
I have thought about how so many people in Europe have been moved to action by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s willingness to stay in Kiev even at the risk of death. Because it’s a stark contrast to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fleeing his country at the zero-hour without telling anyone. That being said, I doubt that if Ghani had stood tall (and been martyred by the Taliban), or even if Afghan forces had fought to the very last man (which even the Ukranians may not be willing to do if this escalates soon), I don’t think it would have garnered any increased support from the U.S. or Europe. So I suppose it is worth thinking about why we in the West see this so differently.
Hey, look, I’ve always been consistent in my rather unpopular stance of believing we should intervene on behalf of all peoples around the world [within limits of course] – so I guess that makes me the least racist person here!
I should say that the Ukrainians have in fact stood tall as the situation has escalated. And I do think there is a difference with Afghanistan: That being that by the end, the Afghans had as little faith in us as we had in them. Whereas in this war, there has overall been mutual faith between Ukraine and the West (for now). Of course, the Ukrainians do worry about our staying power, as there is a slowly rising minority of Americans who are losing their patience for this cause (for reasons I truly don’t understand). The maintaining of that mutual faith is every bit as important as what happens on the battlefield.
I will say that a common theme in refugee crises is that the longer they go on, the more and more animosity starts to develop for the refugees flowing into other countries (no matter what color they are). Right now everyone is ready to sacrifice for these poor Ukrainian people – but will they still feel that way if these “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” are still pouring over their border in another six months, or nine months, or a year?
Recently, there have been more and more pieces noting that the patience for the Ukrainian refugees (even in their fellow Slavic countries like Poland) is starting to wear thin. Refugees are always welcomed at the beginning of a war, and resented by the end of it. The above linked-to report noted: “It is a misconception that refugee hosting contexts often begin with hostilities. In fact, this is almost never the case. In the initial phases of any refugee crisis, host communities are usually welcoming, yet tensions can and inevitably do arise and relations often deteriorate. Previous experience indicates that tensions start to rise on average one year after the refugee influx.”
Yes, many Europeans have shown a lot of bigotry toward the Syrian and Libyan refugees they took in during the 2010s, but we should also remember that they also had to take them in because most Arab governments were not interested in helping their brethren. And that report also noted that Latin America has shown a similar irritation with their fellow Latinos, such as in Chile when Venezuelan refugees started showing up: “Mass media [and social media] contributed to the negative perception by highlighting criminal issues where Venezuelans are involved. This led to 60% of Chileans believing that the arrival of migrants is bad for the country and half of Chileans thinking that undocumented migrants should be expelled from the country.”
I thought this NPR interview on Saturday with Ukrainian journalist, Andriy Kulykov, had some notable excerpts:
Before the attacks started, many [Ukrainian] people were sort of annoyed with Mr. Biden, who has constantly warned us that the invasion would start in so and so many hours, or on the 16 of February. When this didn't happen, many people said, well, he is just flaring up the tension in order to gain something in his competition with Russia. However, there were always people who said, no, he should say this, he should share American intelligence as this was done, because if you're warned, you are better prepared. And it's better to cry wolf and the wolf does not come than not to cry wolf and the wolf attacks you. So after the actual attack happened, the attitude towards Mr. Biden has considerably changed.
One thing I can tell you for certain is that we are not going to subordinate ourselves to the Russians. Again, when I say we, this does not mean everyone. Some people are waiting for the Russians to come. Some people are saying whatever happens will happen and we will live under no matter which power it will be.
I made a point last year of noting that 34% of Americans voted for Biden, 31% voted for Trump, and 33% voted for none of the above. Ukraine is no different than the rest of the world – their society is not, and will never be, a monolith. Similarly to how Americans have been pretty evenly divided from 1776 all the way up to 2022.
I admit, I did not actually believe Putin would invade. At least, not a full invasion. I thought he might send in forces to the eastern region and claim those territories to be his now (like he did with Crimea in 2014), but I did not expect a siege on the capital Kiev in an attempt to conquer the whole country. Also, the siege on Kiev has been launched out of Belarus (Ukraine’s northern neighbor), which has now made it official that Belarus should be considered nothing more than a satellite state of Putin’s (and I am happy to hear that Britain has been the first to announce sanctions against Belarus, and I hope they won’t be the last).
I purposely was not following the Ukraine story that closely these past few months. I was waiting until it was clear which way it was going to go before doing a “deep-dive.” It appears to have been a good call on my part since apparently very few people saw this coming (although Joe Biden did) so most of the coverage up until now was just pointless speculation.
I previously thought maybe Biden was purposely exaggerating the threat of Putin invading. I thought it was a strategic move on his part, and I was not sure how smart it was. It seemed to be working well at uniting a strong coalition against Putin (that’s good), but I worried the hawkish stance by Biden would make Putin fear he’d look weak if he did not go through with it (that’s bad), but it also seemed to catch Putin by surprise and kept him off-balance (that’s good), but then I heard that Putin’s munitions contain potassium benzoate … *long pause* (that’s bad)
(Sorry, that last line was just a joke for the Simpsons nerds out there.)
Of course, now I know that Biden was 100% accurate in what he was saying and this was not a ploy on his part at all. I’ve since learned that he declassified an unprecedented amount of intelligence and made it available to the public too. I think that was a very smart move. I think Putin was surprised because he probably expected the West to simply back down and give him what he wanted.
I do still tend to believe that it was no coincidence that Putin decided to launch this invasion in the wake of the Afghanistan withdrawal. I think that event said to him that Biden was firmly in the “no more foreign entanglements” camp, which meant that Putin could get away with whatever he wanted because there would be no way that Biden would allow the U.S. military to get tangled up in another foreign conflict. However, I think Putin read Biden and the western response wrong, just as he read everything else wrong.
It was a win-win strategy for Biden. Because if Putin invades (as he did) Biden proves that he was the honest broker in this drama and American intelligence was right on the money; and if Putin had backed down, then people would certainly criticize Biden for “overreacting” – but it would have been more than worth the criticism to have stopped a war.
Look, I will never forgive Biden for his behavior toward Afghanistan – never – but I think he has done a fantastic job in this Ukrainian crisis [and I think he has continued to]. And at the same time, I think Putin has been making all the wrong moves so far [and I think he has continued to]. It’s sad that Biden may still not be getting credit for it just because of the general “vibe” toward him being so negative on both sides of the aisle right now (and I include myself in that, even though I give him high marks here). [Although, I think we should all now be willing to admit that Biden’s second year in office was infinitely better than his first.] Of course, it is also worth noting just how fraught foreign policy actually is – in that doing a “fantastic job” still looks like this. But hey… you go to war with the world we have, not the world we want.
It’s been hard to tell exactly how the Russian people feel about this war. Since it does not seem to be a popular action even with the Russian soldiers in Kiev, I doubt Russian civilians really want this war to happen either. Putin has blocked any news coverage of the invasion to keep his people in the dark (which would indicate his government also doesn’t think it would be very popular), but I’ve also heard that as many as three-fourths of Russians still blame the U.S. and Europe for starting this war (but gauging public opinion can be tricky in authoritarian countries).
Research has continued to validate that a majority of Russians still think this war is our fault and not Putin’s. Again, it’s hard to know for sure, but there has also been a huge number of people fleeing Russia to avoid any previous (or future) drafts, which means those left behind are probably more likely to be the types who would either buy the nationalist narrative, or prefer to keep their head in the sand.
Putin seems to feel “goodbye and good riddance” about those who are fleeing, but it is also causing a severe “brain drain” inside Russia and weirdly created a sense of apathy about the war. Those who would protest against the war have either fled or gone to prison, but there’s not really a “rally around the flag” effect happening much either. People are just keeping their heads down, going to work, raising their kids, and attempting to avoid the ugly game of politics.
There was also an awkward Russian Security Council meeting on Feb 21 where Putin brought state TV cameras in (which is an unusual move for him) so they could see all his top officials pledge their support for recognizing the “independence” of the eastern regions of Ukraine. The officials did not seem as enthusiastic as Putin, and in some cases it seemed he had to “encourage” them a little bit (such as when he dressed down his Chief of Foreign Intelligence). [And note that this was not broadcast live, which means that Putin purposely made a point of leaving that clip in there so that people could see it.] Which leads one to think: if his own top officials are uncomfortable with this action, then certainly the Russian public would have to be uncomfortable with it too. Then again, his top officials probably know that everything on the Russian state news is pure horse***t – but the Russian public may not.
A majority of the UN Human Rights Council seems to know this as well. They staged a walkout when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov started to give an address (remotely) at the UN on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Zelensky is now asking for full EU membership for his country. Obviously, that cannot just happen overnight, but it shows just how absolutely stupid Putin’s whole calculus on this has been. At a time when much of the western public (on both the left and the right) has been skeptical of the EU and really quite anti-NATO – Putin has managed to actually unite the European Union, make NATO relevant again, and push Ukraine from being indefinitely black-balled to being considered for a fast-track to EU membership.
NATO and the EU have been essential for confronting this particular war because, as a member of the UN Security Council, Russia has a veto over everything in the United Nations – which makes them pretty irrelevant. And unfortunately, for all the passionate feelings in the West, the overwhelming majority of nations throughout the world are “neutral” on this conflict and don’t consider it their problem (although that could change if they start to starve). They have longstanding animosity with “The West” from a historical perspective (some of it real – some of it conspiracy theory), so in a war between us and Russia, it’s not a guarantee that they would be at all sympathetic to us. Honestly, they’d probably be happy to see the both us kill each other off.
As of now, you can safely assume that there will be no NATO membership for Ukraine (because that would obligate the West to go to war). However, the invasion has still strengthened NATO by pushing them to bring Sweden and Finland into candidacy for membership. The only sticking point has been Turkey blocking their acceptance, and I’ll just be blunt – Sweden and Finland meet the criteria for NATO far more than Turkey ever will. I think that NATO needs to show some backbone and be willing to kick out old members who backslide in their commitments.
Of course, that kind of a hardline stance is trickier than it sounds. After all, if I think we should kick Turkey out of NATO (and I do) then what about Hungary? After all, all democracies backslide from time to time (as we Americans are well aware). And hell, while we’re talking about Hungary – what about Poland? Poland has been seen as one of the strongest friends of Ukraine in all this, but their ruling government (under the Law & Justice Party) is only slightly better than the government in Hungary. Not to mention that they hate the Germans as much as they hate the Russians (which isn’t exactly great for holding the EU coalition together). I recently found out that Poland is going to have elections later this year, which could be very close, and that will certainly be worth watching.
Membership for Ukraine in the EU is still technically on the table (I particularly enjoyed this 2015 scene from President Zelensky’s old comedy show Servant of the People). Many member states are still holding things up, and the issue of whether Ukraine can effectively combat corruption before being allowed admittance is still a factor. A recent scandal has reminded the EU that Ukraine still has some bad apples (although so does the EU — and so does every other country in the world), but it also showed that the current Ukrainian government is actually trying to deal with these bad apples more forcefully than it has in the past. In fact, this war (and the fact that it has given Ukraine a legitimate chance at entering the EU) may actually make it easier for Ukraine to finally put a serious dent in their corruption problem, as well as advance things like criminal justice reform, minority rights, etc. (Unforeseen consequences and all that.)
For the record, I have zero problem with all the people demanding oversight on all the money going to Ukraine. Oversight is never a bad thing. The work of John Sopko (the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) really showed how much money was wasted on the stupidest things over in Afghanistan, and his work was very important (even if everyone in the U.S. ignored it). But we should also note there is a big difference between simply giving people the tools to fight their own war, versus trying to completely rebuild a society from the ground-up during an ongoing conflict and occupation. So we shouldn’t frame it as if the two situations are really all that comparable.
The much tougher work in Ukraine will be when / if this war ends, and we have to start considering whether to give the Ukrainians a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild their country. But even that should be easier than Afghanistan or Iraq, because it’s not likely that their will be some significant internal enemy (a la the Taliban) that will be trying to collapse those efforts in order to take power for themselves (although I’m sure the Russians will try to sponsor some terrorist activities if they can).
There are many places to get the “human stories” from the war, and I think those have to be taken in while you also analyze the strategy and politics. One that stood out was Tuesday’s New York Times Daily where they interviewed three Ukrainian men that had to stay behind to fight (but not all by choice). As people were fleeing the country in droves, the Ukrainian government issued an order on Friday, Feb 25, that all men aged 18 to 60 could no longer leave. They must either enlist or remain behind in case they need to be conscripted. All the men started being turned away from the buses and trains leaving the city (and many had to say goodbye to their families and put them on the buses and trains by themselves).
The second man interviewed was a homosexual cartoonist that said he is not in any way suited for war and even gets sick at the thought of holding a gun. Which is a totally fair point. Not everyone is a soldier. I have never been comfortable with states trying to make killers out of men who are clearly not killers (and putting them on the front line really only endangers the other soldiers anyway); but when the call for men to stay in Kiev went out, this man snuck out of Kiev anyway and then got stopped at the border trying to sneak by. The crowd of refugees (women and children) started yelling “shame” at him for his cowardice (which reminded me of the British women who handed out white feathers to men that did not serve in WWI – which you may have seen if you watched the show Downton Abbey).
I really wanted to empathize with this man, but what bothered me was that he seemed not to empathize with anyone but himself. There was no acknowledgement of how his behavior was clearly controversial and he should have easily understood why his fellow Ukrainians would be upset. There was instead only a seeming indignation that people were being mean to him. Because he even acknowledged that he would be happy to help, but could not carry a gun and shoot people. That’s a totally fair point, but if that is the case – then stay and help people. I’m sure there is going to be a lot that needs to be done in Kiev other than simply killing. Help bring in supplies, deliver food, assist the doctors and nurses – every little bit helps.
The other part that stood out was how the first man interviewed felt it was his duty to stay and fight, but he also felt a lot of compassion for the Russians (he did not believe they really wanted to be there). He said that every Russian killed by a Ukrainian soldier means someone is losing a son, a friend, a husband. What made me uncomfortable was thinking about how it will probably only take seeing one or two of his friends killed, maimed, or burned alive before that compassion quickly fades away. The dehumanization of the enemy happens very, very rapidly in warzones.
THAT SPEECH
If you want to get into the mindset of Putin, I don’t think there was anything more revelatory than his February 21st speech last week. As one Ukrainian noted, “That speech is what changed everything.” She said that when she was preparing to leave Kiev, a fellow Ukrainian friend of hers thought she was overreacting (as most Ukrainians did not believe there would be war up to the very last minute). But once her friend heard Putin’s speech he immediately put his kids in the car.
Just for full disclosure, I initially got that February 21st speech (which was given three days before the invasion started) confused with the February 24th speech (which was given on the day of the invasion and laid out Putin’s case for war). What I refer to from this point on are my thoughts on that latter February 24th speech.
The standout thing for me was that he frames this whole conflict as Russia vs. the United States and the “West” – almost nothing about Ukraine itself. It made me wonder just how psycho Putin really is and where exactly he wants to take all this. And that really cuts into one’s thinking about his threats to use nuclear weapons if anyone “interferes” with his plans. This is certainly one of the most disturbing and shocking developments in this whole thing (especially now that he’s put his nuclear deterrent forces on “high alert”). I mean, my instinct is that all this talk of nukes is just for show, but as Fiona Hill recently said, “Every time you think, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would.”
Although, I also heard someone else quote Fiona Hill as saying that Putin is a highly rational actor who likes to pretend that he is not. My personal view is that he would not use nuclear weapons unless he thought Russian territory was at risk. In other words, if Ukraine was at a point where it had taken back the entire eastern region and pushed on into Russian territory, then he might do it; but if it was just about Putin achieving his goals inside Ukraine itself, I don’t think he will. But who knows…
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replied to Putin’s speech and the invasion by appealing directly to the Russian people (while speaking in Russian):
I know that they won’t show my address on Russian TV, but Russian people have to see it. They need to know the truth, and the truth is that it is time to stop now, before it is too late… Who will suffer the most from it? The people. Who doesn’t want it the most? The people! Who can stop it? The people. But are there those people among you? I am sure… Do Russians want the war? I would like to know the answer. But the answer depends only on you, citizens of the Russian Federation.
Zelensky has been a remarkably good wartime president. Many people have noted that (thus far) Ukraine has definitely been winning the information war over Russia, but I also realize that I have yet to learn much about President Zelensky other than his behavior in the past week (all I knew before was that he was a comedian who played the president on a television show before becoming the real one). Ukrainians are clearly experiencing a rally-around-the-flag effect with him now, but I know that there were grievances with him before (maybe real, maybe imagined). So I hope to spend a little time learning more about the real Zelensky in this coming week.
I did learn a lot more about Zelensky over the past year, so I put together a short profile on him that you can read by going to this attached footnote right here →1
THE RESPONSE
If there’s one conversation I’d recommend on sanctions and the international response, I would recommend Ezra Klein’s conversation with economic historian Adam Tooze. It’s very interesting because they recorded it on Friday, but then they had to have a follow-up convo on Monday before releasing it because everything had completely changed by the end of the weekend.
Tooze says that the increase in the seriousness of the European response feels “just short of declaring war.” You can decide for yourself how you feel about that, but I am very pleased with it. Germany had pretty much kept Russia’s energy sector off the table at first (which Tooze had argued last week made the sanctions pretty feckless), but now German officials have said they’d even be willing to accept some blackouts if it was necessary to put the hurt on Putin. Although as of now, Russia’s gas is still flowing to Germany (as Russia needs Germany’s money as much as Germany needs Russia’s gas), but Germany has put the Nord Stream 2 pipeline with Russia on ice, which is not insignificant.
Klein said it felt as if Russia had always been “too big to fail” on Friday, but then on Sunday Russia was blocked from the SWIFT financial system. I do not pretend to fully understand this system and the implications of blocking Russia from it (apparently it does not come without risk), but what I have heard is that it will effectively cut Russia off from utilizing its foreign reserve exchanges which is what Russia has always depended on in order to weather the storm of sanctions (and they were counting on that again this time). This could make the pressure on Russia orders of magnitude greater than it had been by any previous sanctions. Some may fear it is going too far, but for those of you who have been long demanding a shake-up of the globalist-capitalist “status quo” – buckle up, because you may finally be getting your wish.
Sanctions are always controversial, because the citizens always pay a greater price than the leaders do. However, this is a war. Sanctions are a “peaceful” alternative to military action, but they are still an instrument of warfare at the end of the day. We shouldn’t deny that. Civilians will be hurt, but they will be hurt far less than they would be if we bombed Russia.
That being said, I have always worried about any situation that would bring Russia, China, and Iran into a greater alliance (rather than their occasional alliances of convenience). Isolation from the global economic system could provoke that – but we’re not quite there yet.
I would say that we are definitely there now. The Iran-Russia-China axis is pretty solidly entrenched at this point. But it’s still fair to say it’s an alliance of convenience, and not one of close friendship. They are bonded by sharing a common enemy, not a common vision. (Although I did hear one China expert say they believe it is in fact moved beyond an “alliance of convenience” to one of a real partnership, but I’m not convinced myself.)
What’s more, the bad guys appear to be losing (for now): Russia is bogged down in a war they don’t seem to know how to get out of; Iran is still facing mass protests that started last year over Mahsa Amini’s death; and China faced unprecedented uprisings against its COVID lockdowns. Also, mild weather helped us to avoid the massive “energy crisis” many people were anticipating during this past winter.
However, there’s already signs that the Iranian regime’s crackdowns on the protests are making headway; China reversed the lockdowns and their economy has been recovering recently; and Russia’s economy is faring far better against the sanctions than they were originally expected to as they find new markets to do business with.
Energy (and energy costs) is the other big factor to watch out for. Biden clearly knows that American goodwill may end up being contingent on how much this war affects their pocketbook. Like the refugee problem in Europe, the longer it goes on, the less patience the public will have. If Americans start seeing higher gas prices for a long period of time, then they might start saying, “Well, I don’t love Ukrainians that much.”
But I will not deny there is a part of me that feels a shake-up of the global energy system can just as likely have positive benefits as it could negative. It all remains to be seen, but Biden has been trying to prepare for the fallout since this all started. But again, it all comes down to how much support you can maintain over the long haul, once people are being asked to make real sacrifices and not just make pretty speeches.
Gas prices have since come back down thankfully, and the American economy is actually bouncing back surprisingly well (though it still feels like the economic future is unpredictable). And yet, American support for aiding Ukraine has continued to slip.
Of course, despite the slippage, a majority of Americans still support it: This FiveThirtyEight article states an estimated 70% Americans are supportive; with about 40% from that number saying we were good at the pace we’re going, while another 30% said we should be doing more. However, this recent Pew poll showed that the number of Americans who support Ukraine is only a combined 51% (with only 20% out of that number saying we should be doing more).
The bulk of the slippage is coming from the Republican side. The number of Republicans who have felt we are giving Ukraine “too much aid” has risen from 9% at the start of the war to a whopping 40% today. Another poll showed that 52% of Republican voters want their congressman to oppose aid to Ukraine. The research indicates that a major factor for whether people support Ukraine is “whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses a major threat to U.S. interests or not,” and the number of people who feel that it does has dropped from 50% at the start of the war to 35% today.
The slippage on that sentiment was only 7% on the Democratic side but 22% on the Republican side. Of course, I am upset that this is the lens that Americans are viewing this war through (even though “U.S. interests” can mean so many things), but it is what it is. Also, I think we should probably distinguish between the views of “Democrats” and those of the grassroots left. The polls may not be taking into account that a person who is further to the left than the more moderate type who would likely identify themselves as a “Democrat,” is also far more likely to oppose aid to Ukraine.
In Congress, we have also seen some conflicts (specifically over methodology) from the the Congressional Progressive Caucus on the left, and from some House Republicans on the right (to include Kevin McCarthy). And it should be noted that this week Ron DeSantis parroted the McCarthy position that there should no “blank check” for Ukraine, and even played to the trend noted in the polls (vis-a-vis “U.S. interests”) by saying, “The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all of that and steamrolling… that is not even come close to happening.” He also referred to the conflict as “a proxy war with China,” which I found to be a bizarre talking point (but one that seems to be trending for some reason).
I admit, this slippage in support has surprised me. I could see Americans turning against Ukraine for their own economic interests, but most polling shows that Americans are not connecting domestic economic issues to this war in the same way Europeans are. So for Americans to turn against Ukraine “just because” seems really messed up and shallow to me. Americans really haven’t had to sacrifice anything of significance in order to support Ukraine, and yet so many of them are now willing to just sit back and watch the world burn.
I truly don’t understand it, but hey – no one ever accused me of being a man of the people…
LIVING IN THE PAST
ANNE APPLEBAUM: The Ukrainians emerged from the medieval state of Kyivan Rus’ – the same state from which the Russians and Belarusians also emerged – eventually to become, like the Irish or the Slovaks, a land-based colony of other empires. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Ukrainian noblemen learned to speak Polish and participated in Polish-court life; later some Ukrainians strived to become part of the Russian-speaking world, learning Russian and aspiring to positions of power first in the Russian empire, then in the Soviet Union.
“I am Ukrainian” meant you were deliberately defining yourself against the nobility, against the ruling class, against the merchant class, against the urbanites. The Ukrainian identity was anti-elitist before anyone used the expression anti-elitist, often angry and anarchic, occasionally violent.
On the subject of historical parallels, I have found it particularly odd that people have kept referencing the Cold War over this. I guess that is just because it’s Russia, but the Cold War never felt at all like the right analogy for this situation. Fionna Hill recently discussed this phenomenon as well, and noted that so many Americans are “still stuck in a Cold War mindset,” and we desperately need to reorient our thinking for this new era. Even when discussing the WWII comparison (which I do think is a much more accurate analogy), there are some pretty huge differences between the two that cannot be ignored.
The last thing worth mentioning here is the history. After all, it is something I love to explore, and it obviously plays an important role in this conflict. Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast coincidentally had its episode on the Ukrainian anarchists in the week before this all blew up. It may not relate too much to what’s happening right now, but I found it super interesting. Although I will say that episode does reiterate my point that Ukrainians are, like everyone else, an incredibly varied people.
Yes, Ukraine did have Nazi collaborators that participated in the Holocaust, but in that same era they had this popular Anarchist leader, Nestor Makhno, who was a fierce enemy of antisemitism and also had to fight both the Whites and the Reds during the Russian Civil War.
We also tend to forget that the French collaborated with Nazis too, and so did the Norwegians and so did… well, look, everyone who was overrun by the Nazis had many collaborators that worked with them. Every. Single. Country. [If the Nazis had overrun the British and the Americans, they would have found plenty of “quislings” ready to work with them there as well.] But each of those countries also had resistance movements that risked everything to fight against the Nazis (including Ukraine). [Zelensky’s grandfather and his three brothers all fought in the Red Army against the Nazis.] Look, there are bad people everywhere, even in America, and that’s exactly why good people must continue to fight.
A lot has been made of the potential for a World War III, but I should note that as someone who loves to go back in time on C-Span and listen to roundtable discussions from decades ago (because I like to party), every time there’s a conflict that flares up anywhere (especially if it involves Russia) people start saying this might be World War III. Every. Single. Time. They brought it up over and over in the ‘80s during both the Iran-Iraq War and the Soviet-Afghan War. And you might remember how during the 2000s, we were supposed to be going to war with Iran any day now. (No, of course you don’t. Because it never happened.)
That’s not to say WWIII could never happen, but there is certainly nothing in this current situation that makes me feel that’s a possibility. Of course, I don’t think anyone thought Austria’s invasion of little Serbia (after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand) would set off a chain reaction that led to World War I. But that was also a very different scenario than this one, and every situation is unique.
Alliances are tricky like that. Being locked into common-defense treaties can escalate a minor conflict into a major one by dragging everyone else in; however, they can also be the best way to prevent a major war by creating a legitimate threat that bad actors know they cannot afford to take on. For instance, if Ukraine had already been in NATO, and Putin was convinced the NATO countries would have come to its defense, there is no way he would have invaded Ukraine.
This whole thing could have been avoided by the very thing some commentators are now claiming started it.
I will say that what Putin was doing in the lead up to this invasion was almost exactly what Hitler did just before he started World War II. Hitler felt there were areas that were rightfully German, and he even had some reasonable arguments to back these claims up. So when he took the Rhineland, took Austria (where he was welcomed with open arms), and took the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia (where the international community capitulated to him at the Munich Conference), he could claim he was just taking back what was rightfully Germany’s to begin with. Sure, it was all a ploy, but it had just enough truth to it to make the rest of the world say, “You know what, it’s not worth fighting over” (which is exactly what Putin was hoping we’d say to this).
The difference is that Hitler always had the intention of expanding things into a war of conquest in the East regardless of what happened at Munich or anywhere else. He even laid it all out in Mein Kampf, which is why it’s so shocking that so few people saw it coming since he literally published a detailed layout of his plans years before coming to power. Unlike Hitler, I tend to think Putin has no designs beyond “his” territories (the parts he considers within the Russian sphere of influence). But there is still a question of just how far that territory actually goes. Is it only applicable to the former Soviet Union countries, or does he think all Slavic nations belong with him and not Europe?
So yes, I think the Ukraine situation is actually a good analogy to the Munich moment before WWII in many ways, but the analogy falls apart when we think about Putin’s greater aims versus Hitler’s greater aims. Plus, for all the talk about the Munich moment of “appeasement” with Hitler – if we had stood up to Hitler at Munich we still would have had to fight WWII. So it’s not like what happened at Munich was ever going to change much of anything. We can see in the Nazi archives that Hitler had already made up his mind (although Europe could definitely have benefited greatly from at least preparing for war a little better). However, it looks like the world standing up to Putin in this case has actually had a real effect on his future plans.
I will say that one thing (that I’ve repeated a lot in this past year): I think people have greatly underestimated just how much we truly owe to the Ukrainians. If you want to talk about how this situation could have become WWIII – think about what would have happened if the Ukrainians had not stopped the Russians. I mean, they saved all of our asses – in more ways than one.
Imagine if Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 had gotten bogged down by the Polish armies and turned into a quagmire. There would have been no WWII in that situation. The reason we had a World War II is because people follow narratives, and they especially love to follow the “winners.” Hitler’s early victories gave him an air of invincibility. It appeared to everyone that the Nazi war machine was unstoppable and would soon conquer all of Europe. Therefore, many people jumped on the Nazi bandwagon and became “quislings” for the regime. It was only after Hitler’s air of invincibility was shattered toward the end of the war, that people finally stopped supporting him and started saying, “Oh, I never actually liked that guy.”
And yes, this is similar to what happened with Republicans and Trump (even though I have to issue the obligatory reminder that I don’t think Trump and Hitler, or Republicans and Nazis, are at all similar). When Trump was an unstoppable winner, Republican politicians felt they had to fall in line and kiss the ring – but now that he’s become a “loser,” suddenly a lot of Republicans are changing their tune (and acting like they always had integrity).
So you can imagine a scenario where Ukraine fell apart in the face of the Russian invasion: Zelensky is killed, Ukrainians capitulate, some pro-Russian quisling becomes the new president, and the EU and America issue some harsh words but ultimately decide that there is nothing they can do about it – and maybe in that scenario, Putin (and his allies in China and Iran) start to wonder just how much further they can go. In that scenario, maybe leaders in the region start wanting to join up with the “winners,” and abandon us “losers” in the West.
But thankfully for all of us, the current narrative around Putin is not one of “an air of invincibility,” but rather one of an incompetent and foolish dictator who bit off more than he can chew. And all of that is thanks to what the Ukrainians did for us (all of us).
The Slavic countries of Eastern Europe are a complicated mess, which makes it easy for people to argue for or against the notion that Ukraine was just a creation of the Soviet Union and not a real country. It is probably better to think of Eastern Europe the way Americans normally would think of the Middle East, rather than what they normally think of as “Europe.” It’s a complicated mashup of many different groups and ethnicities where the borders were constantly getting re-shaped and erased by competing empires. None of the current nations in that region really and truly existed before WWI created them.
Although, to be clear (by making this more complicated), they weren’t always “created” by WWI like the Middle East nations were. Some of them (like Poland) were “reconstituted” after long periods of not existing, even though they had existed before. But some were essentially created out of the new nationalist movements that sprung up all around the world at that time.
After WWI, Poland acquired a lot of territory that had majority Belorussian and Ukrainian populations. Then after WWII, the Soviets took that territory from Poland and gave it to (Soviet) Belarus and (Soviet) Ukraine, and forcibly expelled all the Poles from there. While that was going on in the east, Poland took territory in the west that was majority German and forcibly expelled all the Germans from it. So just know that even though it’s true that there are “artificial borders” all over the Middle East, Africa, Asia, etc. – the borders in much of Europe are really not that much less artificial (even Italy and Germany have only existed for a century and a half).
My great-grandpa that emigrated to this country in the 1920s was very Polish and proud of it, but he hailed from Vilnius which is technically in Lithuania. I also had another great-grandpa that everyone thought was Russian, and he was referred to as “The White Russian” by his friends. My mom originally thought this had something to do with the Russian Civil War (which was fought between the Whites and the Reds), but he was already in America before all that happened, so it’s possible that he was actually Belorussian – because “White Russian” is apparently a common nickname for Belorussians. But my mom is still finding out new things about that side of the family all the time. She’s even found some indications that my Russian great-grandmother might have actually been a Russian-speaking Ukrainian.
After this my mother revealed more revelations on the family tree, and it’s even more complicated than I originally thought. For instance, my great-grandpa likely lied about being from Vilnius (and maybe even about the family name), because we think he fled Poland to avoid being charged with murder (long story).
When my mom got her DNA test back it said she was 99% Slavic (a pureblood). So I say we just go with “Slavic” to describe that side of the family. In the same way someone whose bloodline has heritage in Algeria, Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine could just say “I’m an Arab.” The Bielunski side of my family is just a big hodgepodge of borscht-eating vodka-swillers that don’t tan in the sun.
I tend to think recent history is more important than ancient history anyway. In 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up, Ukraine voted overwhelmingly to be independent from Russia (even the eastern territories that now have a lot of Russian sympathizers voted for that). Ukraine even gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for Britain, America, and Russia agreeing to recognize its sovereignty. (Of course, that was all before Putin took over in 1999.)
But if recent history is more important than ancient history, maybe Ukraine should stop calling on Russia to withdraw not only from Ukraine but also the Crimean territory they took in 2014. Not to be a jerk, but would Crimeans still vote for independence from Russia if an honest vote was held today? What about the eastern regions of Ukraine? Would they still vote to be independent from Russia if the referendum was held today?
I actually think they would… now. I think Russia’s aggression (as well as the murders, rapes, looting, and forced deportations) have alienated enough of their former sympathizers in eastern Ukraine by this point — since, ironically, that’s where the worst of the Russian war crimes have occurred. But again, I certainly cannot say any of this with absolute certainty.
As hard a pill as it may be to swallow, maybe the best route to peace would be letting Putin have the eastern part, divide the country, and telling Ukrainians, “All of you that want to be free and democratic go over here, and all of you that love being told what to do go over there.” I guess it could still come to that in the end (TBD).
The Ukrainians have since been very vocal about being against any such land-for-peace deal with Putin. And it is absolutely their right to feel that way, so I support them in that. But I do worry it might mean a much longer war. However, the Russian behavior has made many Ukrainians in the east firmly supportive of Ukraine over Russia now. So if saying “no” to giving up land in the east is considered intransigence – then that must be considered an intransigence that is firmly the fault of the Russians, not the Ukrainians. That being said, I do think Ukraine should be willing to bend on Crimea (if necessary), but I certainly don’t want them to.
I will note that many commentators have made a good point that all these calls for ceding land to Putin in order to get a ceasefire makes little strategic sense. Putin shows no signs of backing down from his final objectives in Ukraine, which means any such ceasefire would just be granting Putin a reprieve to rebuild his military in preparation for “round two.” And the only thing that could stop a “round two” in that scenario, is if Putin died first. But there is no guarantee his successor wouldn’t continue pursuing this policy of “pacifying” Ukraine.
Another interesting take was the notion that it’s not really sacrificing “land for peace” but sacrificing actual Ukrainians for peace. As eastern territories have now been liberated, we have found that every single one of them had political leaders executed, torture rooms set up for prisoners, children taken from families and placed in Russian reeducation camps. No one has really considered the fact that we would be throwing these eastern Ukrainians to the wolves just to get our “peace” deal. Again, going back to that old quote I often throw out, if the only way to get “peace” is to willfully sacrifice innocent lives – how can you call that “peace”? That’s just self-interest.
And look, do that if you want. It is every nation’s right to be self-interested. I really mean that. But if you’re going to do that, at least be honest about it. Stop trying to pretend you’re the “good guy” in this story. I can accept these arguments for “realist” foreign policy as being practical in a world gone mad, but they are certainly not moral or ethical.
For the end of this, I actually want to quote what I wrote a friend in August of last year, instead of drawing on what I wrote back in March. This comment just came up in our normal round of discussions about the latest news:
There was another piece on BBC last week about Kherson (the only regional capital in Ukraine that the Russians have conquered). They were talking about the Ukrainians that have collaborated with the Russians vs those that have resisted them. There was a quote from one Ukrainian which gave me some deja vu from the Syrian War:
“When the war started, people I didn’t expect behaved like heroes. And many others, whom I had counted on, behaved like swine.”
I’ve always said: If there’s one thing war is good for – it’s showing you who people really and truly are.
I’m starting to get that sinking feeling that Ukraine is going to end up just like all the others [I actually go back and forth on this a lot]. It’s really irritating that I cannot prevent myself from having all this hope ‘n’ stuff when these things stir up. I mean, they always start out inspiring, but I’ve also seen how they end so many times. You’d think at this point I would have memorized the script already. I suppose there’s just this insatiable desire in me to believe that before I die – I’m going to see a happy ending just once... That’s all I’m asking for… Just one.
(PS: Coincidentally, right after I had wrote that closing line to you, I was watching a new PBS Frontline doc filmed in Kharkiv and it closed with this…)
PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS
EXPLAINING UKRAINE: Gulliver Cragg: Explaining Ukraine has been in my regular rotation for a while. It focuses more on the cultural / societal perspective of Ukraine, and it has been especially helpful listening to their old, pre-war episodes to get a better understanding of Ukraine was like before the war started. This 2019 episode with journalist Gulliver Cragg was a really insightful one for that purpose. Cragg had been deeply immersed in Ukrainian society since arriving in 2013 to cover Maidan (he then decided to stay permanently), but he is still a native westerner, so his take really helped a fellow westerner like myself understand the country better.
LAWFARE: Vladislav Davidzon: This Lawfare episode with Odessa journalist Vladislav Davidzon gave a view from inside Ukraine as the war was ongoing. I would give particular emphasis to his take on all the controversy surrounding the Azov Battalion (known, rightly or wrongly, for being a hotbed of neo-Nazis). He really pushes back on the western media’s characterizations of Azov in a way that really makes sense (and is not just making apologies for them either).
UKRAINE STORIES: “Svetlana”: That link will take you to part one of Svetlana’s story, and this link will take you to part two. David Greene’s Ukraine Stories was a great bit of oral history recorded with Ukrainians from all walks of life sharing their stories during the first months of the war. This episode with “Svetlana” was particularly intense, and I’ll just warn you that you should not listen to it if you cannot handle traumatic stories — because it seriously traumatized me up.
TIMOTHY SNYDER: The Making of Modern Ukraine: This playlist is of the Ukrainian historian Timothy Snyder’s Yale course last semester on “The Making of Modern Ukraine.” Snyder is a great historian for those interested in Ukrainian history (Serhii Plokhii is also noteworthy). Although, if you don’t want the long commitment to this entire course, and would prefer to just hear a one-and-done talk instead, I would recommend this one with Snyder.
WAR ON THE ROCKS: Michael Kofman: This link is for the most recent episode, but Michael Kofman has been making regular appearances on War on the Rocks since the war began, so you should keep up with the page and catch all the new updates he puts out (although I regret to inform that the bulk of his commentary is now behind the site’s paywall on a separate podcast called The Russia Contingency). He has provided some of the best military analysis of the war. So be warned, this is mostly for war nerds who enjoy technical discussions of military hardware, force strength, battlefield strategy — that kind of thing.
Michael Kofman, along with Lawrence Freedman, also did a short, two-part series called The Kremlin in Command that discusses the post-Cold War history of Russian military adventures. Part one goes through the two Chechen Wars and up to the Georgian War of 2008. Part two goes through Russia’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War and their first incursion into Ukraine in 2014.
BBC RADIO DOCS: BBC has done several radio documentaries from Ukraine, and there are two that I’d like to recommend in particular: One of them I already linked to above, which is about Collaboration & Resistance inside Russian-occupied Kherson. The other is about The Fate of Russia’s Soldiers from last March, which gave me a human perspective from the war that was unique to anything else I had been hearing at the time.
JULIA IOFFE: Reporting in Russia: Julia Ioffe is currently one of my favorite commentators on Russia, and this is an older talk with her from 2015 when she was still a reporter inside Russia. Another journalist named Miriam Elder is on the panel too, but I think Ioffe’s insights are the more notable of the two. This one is just really interesting to get a Russian cultural / societal perspective from that time. And there’s also a very interesting discussion on the protest, punk-rock band Pussy Riot (from 17:40 to 22:38).
PBS FRONTLINE: Putin’s Way: Last year, PBS put up their 2015 Frontline documentary Putin's Way, about his early rise to power. If you are new to Vladimir Putin and want to learn more about him, this doc is a decent place to get started. Putin's Way gets into his rise in Russian politics during the ‘90s, as the aide to the corrupt St Petersburg Mayor, Anatoly Sobchak (who many suspect was later killed on Putin’s orders in 2000). It also covers the controversy over the 1999 apartment bombings, which is considered “Russia's 9/11” and which actually might have been a real inside job. Anyone who knows me knows that I am very much not a guy who gets into conspiracy theories, but unlike the 9/11 inside job conspiracies – this one actually has some evidence to back it up.
NATO EXPANSION: Mary Sarotte’s Not One Inch: Understanding NATO expansion is obviously a big part of the controversy over how this war started, and Mary Sarotte’s book Not One Inch explores the subject very thoroughly. The title of her book comes from the oft-repeated notion (particularly by Putin) that we promised Russia at the end of the Cold War that NATO would expand “not one inch” eastward, and then we supposedly broke that promise. Sarotte explains how this version of the story is not exactly true, and how much more nuanced the debate over NATO expansion actually was.
That being said, Sarotte does argue that NATO expansion was handled very poorly and made a persuasive case that we should have stuck with the “Partnership for Peace” plan instead. But she also illustrates how there were many perfectly reasonable reasons why the West followed the path of NATO expansion instead. The title link is for Mary Sarotte’s interview is from Fresh Air, which is a good introductory talk, but I would also recommend that after that you go a little deeper into the topic with this talk with her from the Woodrow Wilson Center.
There is also this debate from the COFR which you can listen to if you want to get something that includes the people who are firmly in the anti-NATO expansion camp. Because I openly admit that I am firmly not in the camp of figures like John Mearsheimer who believe that the United States and Europe are responsible for Putin invading Ukraine, but I also don’t want to come off as dismissive of their criticisms either. Mistakes were definitely made, but I still do not believe anyone is responsible for Putin’s actions other than Putin himself.
In my opinion, the true sticking point for Putin was not NATO expansion but rather the popular uprisings that happened in the region: the Rose Revolution (Georgia 2003), Orange Revolution (Ukraine 2004), Tulip Revolution (Kyrgyzstan 2005), Denim Revolution (Belarus 2006), Grape Revolution (Moldova 2009), Snow Revolution (Russia 2012), Maidan Revolution (Ukraine 2014) – and even the Arab Spring. These events are what really made Putin become a paranoid nut who believed the West was “out to get him.” This mostly centers on the fact that Putin cannot bring himself to believe that these uprisings were actually begun by the people, and instead thinks they were all completely orchestrated by the United States in order to undermine him (and all under the guise of “spreading democracy”).
Now, I will grant you that the invasion of Iraq (under what ended up being false pretenses) was something real that helped validate the paranoid fantasies of Putin’s (and we did occasionally stick our hands into some of those uprisings over the years too). I just feel I need to mention that because all critics of American foreign policy still bring up Iraq at least once an hour. Matt Duss (Bernie Sander’s foreign policy advisor) made a point of reiterating this in a recent talk, noting “that this skepticism [of U.S. foreign policy] is well earned.” He also made a point to say that just because “this stuff is amplified by Fox News, we should not treat it as illegitimate,” which I do think is a fair point.
Furthermore, I do concede that Bush encouraging NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 was certainly an escalation (although this was also primarily a response to Putin’s own escalatory rhetoric). All this is to remind you — it’s complicated.
NATO EXPANSION: Joe Biden in 1997: This last one is just particularly interesting for hearing how American officials were feeling about NATO expansion at the time, with the added bonus of it coming from the lips of the current president (back when he was still spry). This is Joe Biden in his prime, and as always he is very forthright and candid (perhaps more than he should be), but he actually does a great job of articulating a balanced perspective on how and why so many American members of Congress came to agree with Bill Clinton on NATO expansion. Because as Biden admits, he had originally started out in the “skeptical” camp himself.
A PROFILE OF VOLODOMYR ZELENSKY:
I actually watched quite a bit of Zelensky’s show Servant of the People last year (Netflix began hosting the show after the war started), which was actually filmed in Russian (which is Zelensky’s native tongue) and was a big hit in Russia as well as Ukraine. Zelensky was described as a comedian in Ukraine “not like Jerry Seinfeld, but more like Stephen Colbert.” Like someone you would know from The Daily Show or something (even though he did plenty of other silly, superficial stuff on television too).
Zelensky even started a new party when he ran for president in 2018-19 that he also named “Servant of the People.” Commentators noted how this would be like Martin Sheen running for president at the height of popularity for his show The West Wing, and then starting a new party called “The West Wing.”
Volodymyr Zelensky was actually a pretty unpopular president inside Ukraine by the time of the invasion. Many westerners don’t realize this now, because his star has risen so much during this conflict. His campaign was actually written off as a joke in its early 2018 stages, but over the course of a year he gained momentum and ended up being the top vote-getter in the first round of the 2019 election with 30% of the vote (which was a substantial 14 points ahead of the second-place winner who got 16%). And in the run-off, Zelensky beat Petro Poroshenko with 73.2% of the vote. The only Ukrainians he was unpopular with were the ones in the diaspora (Ukrainians that now live in other countries).
Zelensky won in both the Russian-speaking east (where Zelensky is originally from) and in the pro-western west (in fact, he had significantly more support in the east). He was also a Jewish candidate (with several relatives that were killed in the Holocaust) that got 73.2% of the vote in a nation that Putin would later claim was overrun with Nazis. He was also the candidate who (in contrast to the Putin narrative) had defeated the supposed “western puppet” of Poroshenko, and was going to be a Ukrainian president the West could not control (even though Donald Trump certainly tried).
A vote for Zelensky in 2019 was considered a “protest vote” against the corrupt establishment. The voters really did want Zelensky to “drain the swamp” of Ukraine. However, Zelensky soon failed to live up to the hype in most Ukrainians’ estimation, and it could be that much of this was just because he did not have the political chops to take on the entrenched system. Regardless, his unfortunate appearance in the Pandora Papers was (according to one Ukrainian commentator) “the final nail in his coffin.” Although, I actually think there is credibility to the excuse that Zelensky “had created the offshore companies to ‘protect’ the group’s incomes against the ‘aggressive actions’ of the ‘corrupt’ government of then pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.” After all, Yanukovych was very much an oligarch-stooge for Russia, and it is reasonable to think that in his Ukraine, you might want to hide your assets.
Zelensky wanted a peaceful solution to the Russian occupation of the Donbass when he first came to the presidency (although he would sometimes make digs at Putin), leading some people to actually worry that he was going to be a “stooge” for Russia himself. Back then, it was even likely that Zelensky would be willing to give up some eastern territories to Putin in exchange for peace. There were also fears by 2021 that Ukrainians were starting to lose patience with the West (as we were seen as talking a good game, but doing absolutely nothing to help them) and wondering if they shouldn’t look elsewhere for partnerships (such as China).
I remember early on in the war listening to an episode of The New York Times Daily podcast on Zelensky that actually felt quite white-washed (although I did think this BBC profile of Zelensky was much more balanced and worth a listen). I eventually had to look to pre-war materials to get a real sense of what his presidency was like before the invasion.
Early in the war, Anne Applebaum related a story she heard from someone who knew Zelensky well. This person had said of Zelensky (paraphrased): “First and foremost, he is an actor. And he knows he has a role to play.” Applebaum emphasized that this statement was not meant in a pejorative way. Zelensky understood that he needs to fulfill the role of the “brave, wartime president” no matter how hard it may be. That the show must go on regardless of what it might cost him (up to and including his own life). Playing that role, and not breaking character, is his duty to his people.
A lot of people have compared Zelensky to Winston Churchill, and I think that comparison is apt in more ways than one. (Coincidentally, Applebaum also echoed this sentiment in a recent conversation.) Remember that the British people really looked up to Churchill’s leadership during WWII, but as soon as the war was over they voted him out of office. The British wanted a very different leader to oversee the peace than the one who had led them through the war – and I do think that could happen to Zelensky as well. Although, Churchill did later make a comeback as Prime Minister in 1951 – so who knows what the future holds.