the plane will fly. What we need are reforms to Ukraine’s institutions, which nurture the corruption. We need to bring in the ministers and their deputies, the mid-level decision-makers who have the vision, reputation, and the guts to say no to the oligarchs and to the daily seductions of the public service. Once this happens, things will improve drastically and precipitously. Later on, I demonstrate in more detail how this can be done.
We Ukrainians know our sins. No one is more critical of Ukraine than we are. Yet, sometimes we deny our country even the credit she deserves. Sometimes we are blind to how much power and potential we have inside. That is why we are the “surprise nation”. We have surprised ourselves and the outside world in the past. And we are not done yet, far from it. I don’t only mean the two Maidans that changed the run of history in our region.
Most importantly, Ukraine is the bulwark in Putin’s way to reconquering what he deems as rightfully and historically his. If he can’t control Ukraine, all his other accomplishments are, if not completely worthless, then at least not as inspirational for future generations as he wants them to be. Without Ukraine, his whole legacy would be questionable. Without Ukraine, his entire organization, this horde of KGB/FSB orcs, war-mongering “girkins” and “borodais,”4 who stand behind him and look up to him, would question whether the boss got too old and lost his grip.
Ukraine and Russia have much in common. That is why the Ukrainian revolution is, to some extent, the Russian revolution too. It’s not like bringing a revolution to Russia, and changing it from the ground up must be the West’s goal. Far from it. Yet the line in the sand must be drawn: the world must make sure that neither Russia nor anyone else messes with other nations’ free will. International law must be respected again. At least, if we want to live in a world that is not 100% hypocritical.
On the other hand, no matter where you draw the line and how high or low you put the new plank of “international rules” in the post-Crimea reality, in every case, Ukraine is the West’s indispensable partner in the region, its “Israel” in the post-Soviet space. So, don’t look away when Ukraine gets assaulted. Don’t buy into Putin’s narrative that Ukraine and Russia are the same. They are not.
As Putin has shown in the last two decades, it’s not only about how wealthy, successful, and militarily advanced you are in today’s world, but also the sheer cunning and audacity of your plans and actions. In his case, it was the audacity of the destruction of the collective West. The destruction was his plan from the moment he entered the Kremlin in 2000. He took his sweet time. Stashing the necessary funds while the oil price was soaring during his first two presidential terms, crushing any dissent, making Russian oligarchs a mere extension of the FSB-controlled government, taking Russian media under full control during the 2000s—and only then coming down to the business of putting the ex-captive nations back into Russia’s captivity. The months after the Sochi Olympics were supposed to be a kind of a “D-Day”, after which Putin’s FSB/KGB would go on the offensive in erecting a USSR 2.0. Ukraine’s resistance slowed them down but didn’t swart this plan altogether.
If the West wants to stop the Russia-induced decay of the free world, it must summon the courage to stand up for what it believes in. But … what is that exactly?
I can’t get rid of the feeling that at some point between the 1990s and the 2010s, the West lost something important: faith. When a Ukrainian soldier fulfills his duty in Donbas and looks death in the eye, he fights for his freedom, and he believes in what he does. When a Russian invader takes him in a crosshair of his sniper rifle—he believes in his mad cocktail of propaganda lies, too. Like the Bible says, “the demons also believe and shudder”. But what is it that the West believes in?
In the last five years, I kept telling, writing, tweeting out the story of Albert Pavenko, Ruvim Pavenko, Viktor Bradarskiy, and Volodymyr Velychko—the four Ukrainian evangelicals, sadistically murdered by the militants from “Russian Orthodox Army” in Donbas in 2014 for merely going to a “wrong” church. I rang the bell. I contacted and met with religious leaders. I tagged religious organizations in my tweets and postings. Their public response was: silence.
These four young men, brethren of millions of evangelicals worldwide, were tortured and murdered for their faith. Thousands more were harassed and forced to flee—while the spiritual leaders of the West and their faithful followers … did what? Looked with admiration at Putin’s “conservative values”?
Years have passed since Albert, Ruvim, Viktor, and Volodymyr were kidnapped in front of their families as they were leaving their prayer house after the God Service. On a Sunday. On the Day of the Pentecost. It was the last time their kids and wives saw them. The burnt, tormented bodies of these modern days’ Christian martyrs were found in a collective grave when Ukraine liberated Slovyansk. Ever since, more and more churches have been shut in occupied Ukraine. The whole religious groups (like Jehovah Witnesses) were prohibited and outlawed. Where is the outrage? Where is the moral leadership? At a time when the evil has no shortage in leaders, it appears as if the good is utterly leaderless in today’s world.
What you fight for is what you believe in. And what you believe in is who you really are. No, it’s not about dragging America and the EU into yet another costly war. It’s about where your heart is. Where is it?
When freedom is outlawed in Ukraine’s occupied parts—it’s outlawed in Europe, in your world. As you sit in your comfortable cafes in Washington, Berlin, Paris, and Vienna, your world, the world of freedom is being eroded. One prayer house at a time. One human life at a time. One free mind at a time. Are you sure that eventually, the unfreedom won’t knock on your doors physically? I write “physically” because virtually it’s already there—as “Russia Today” in your television, as the growing volume of pro-Russia voices in your political discourse, as the hordes of the Russian trolls in your social media, as the hate that slowly, but surely fills your societies. I know you are convinced they will never come for you physically. “They won’t dare!”. Well, you are probably right at this moment, but who knows what comes next.
“They won’t dare!”—that’s what we Ukrainians kept telling ourselves till we saw: there is nothing Russia “won’t dare” if it sees an ample opportunity. Right now, Putin is busy taking control of Russia’s “near abroad”, i.e., the post-Soviet neighborhood, which also happens to be EU’s neighborhood, too. Once he is done with it, once his “lean, mean annexation machine” is up and running, once the Western societies are split up, weakened and hateful of each other—oh, it will be a different story then.
Barack Obama once said Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was one of his favorite books. Boy, was it a good time when the president of America actually read books! I hope though that President Obama had enough time to reread the novel. And most importantly—how do we get the collective West, the decision-makers of today, to reread Hemingway’s timeless classic? Because, sorry for the pathos, but—“Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for you”!
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Post-American_World
2 https://cepa.org/wrong-map/
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html
4 Igor Girkin, Alexander Borodai—the Moscow-born founding fathers of “Ukrainian separatism”, who were instrumental in the occupation of Crimea and Donbas.
Reconfiguring Europe’s Mental Map
When
