Maidan Square, Kyiv, Ukraine, February 24, 2024. A slender young woman stood in a long black coat silently staring at the little yellow and blue flags representing fallen Ukrainian and international soldiers for half an hour or more, as others came and left. When she turned to leave, her cheeks glistened with tears.
Today is two years after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. That fateful day, February 24, 2022, found me in Moscow, where I had been desperately hoping that there would be no invasion. Surely, someone (the UN, NATO, BRICS?) would come up with a plan — perhaps to hold internationally-overseen elections in the areas of Ukraine that Russia had annexed in 2014, including the massive numbers of refugees from those areas — to defuse the situation. But I knew in my heart of hearts that the religio-fascist “Russki Mir” ideology so well expressed by Russian “traditionalists” like Alexandr Dugin and being put into force by Putin demanded a bloody Russian occupation of all the lands the empire had once held, and that Ukraine was next on the list.
I fled Russia shortly (and hastily) after the invasion, half-believing the Russian propaganda that the invasion would be swift and successful, but also believing that a persistent Ukrainian insurgency would keep Russia off-balance for years — and eventually win back Ukraine. And as with many insurgencies I had covered in the past as a journalist, that was something I knew I had to cover. As I soon found out, I was wrong about the swift invasion and Russian victory. Very surprisingly and very efficiently, Russia was repulsed from the Kyiv area by April of 2022, and this allowed me to travel there soon after.
In Kyiv, in the spring and the late summer of 2022, I found a country embodying a great spirit of resistance, something I had seen nowhere on this scale before. People would sing patriotic ditties in unison in the restaurants and subways as air raid alarms sounded. Ukraine was a country with values totally unlike those of Russia. The Ukraine I found was a European democratic country with its own unique language and cultural mix, willing to fight and bleed to protect that identity. And just as important, willing to bleed to protect Western Europe from the menace that threatened and still threatens much, much more than Ukraine.
But fighting the Russian army would not be easy. A trip to the front lines in September 2022 showed how difficult it was to take back territory. On the front between Mykolayiv and Kherson in the southeast of the country, things appeared stalemated. A few kilometers deep and hundreds of kilometers wide in front of me was a no-man’s land. Much of it had been land-mined, but worse was the Russians’ ability to deny access to vast areas of the front through a continual aerial bombardment using weapons that included cluster munitions — which can cover huge areas – denying access to any living thing that is not armor protected or underground. Neither side had dominance of the air over the “no-man’s” land in front of me — something that Ukrainian ground-based tanks, APCs and personnel needed in order to advance. Worse, the Russians had a huge advantage in that they were able to launch missiles from planes high over their vast adjacent country — the largest in the world. Russia also had a greater supply of potential troops: Russia’s population is about 140 million, whereas Ukraine’s is only about 40 million. Just do the math! Retaking land was and is an incredibly slow, difficult, and bloody operation. And the Russian army was learning fast from its early mistakes. But even so, just four months after being sure that this front was stalemated and an advance was impossible, the following January I was drinking flat whites at an espresso shop in newly liberated Kherson, and it appeared that the rest of 2023 would bring much more freed land. Or so it seemed.
Indeed, last year on February 24, 2023, things looked quite upbeat. A “spring offensive” was on its way, and in spite of the cold and occasional rocket or drone attack followed by a power blackout, people seemed quite confident. And I felt that way, too. That is until later that night, when by accident I stumbled onto the wrong train platform while waiting for a train to the Polish border. In the dark, there was a ghastly sight of dozens of groaning bandaged wounded soldiers being offloaded a train in gurneys into ambulances. I aimed my phone to take a picture, but a soldier stopped me — resulting in a bad but spooky exposure.
The spring and then summer offensive of 2023 not only failed but led to some ties on the battlefield (accompanied by huge losses of life), a few additions of land and some serious strategic losses. In other words, a “stalemate.” A huge part of the problem, soldiers and officials complained (off the record), was that military supplies promised by the NATO countries and others were slow in coming and no one could say exactly when a given supply would be where. This made for extremely difficult military planning and impossible execution.
In Washington, D.C., throughout 2023, journalists and the talking heads on TV were complaining about the length of the war. It “had lasted too long,” they whined! At this point, the war wasn’t even two years old! Just to compare, the war in Afghanistan had lasted over two decades and similar complaints had been only heard at the end of the war — even though nothing had really being gained at any point of the war there (what was gained was in Pakistan, and by a small Special Forces team). The Iraq wars were even longer, and unwelcome U.S. troops remain in Iraq today — but there are no complaints heard in Washington. Both of these wars were unnecessary offensive wars waged by the U.S. and both required massive amounts of U.S. money, materiel and blood. In comparison, the Ukraine war is truly a necessary defensive war against an enemy aggressor and does not require the expenditure of American blood, only some materiel and money. And much less than either Afghanistan or Iraq. From whence did this newfound American impatience come? U.S. troops are not being mauled. The U.S. was living up to its best commitments to democracy and standing up to an invading autocracy. In fact, the Ukraine war may be the only legitimate defensive war the US has supported since WWII. Comparatively very little money was being spent. So what is the problem? Go figure! The American mindset is an enigma.
Tonight, February 24, 2024, in Kyiv, things are cold, damp and a misty gray. Gone is the uplifting spirit of this time last year, but people are resolved to fight on. They have no other choice but to fight for what is theirs or flee. Putin has been very clear about what will happen to Ukraine and Ukrainians if he wins. He will just repeat what the Russian imperial empire did and the Communists repeated later: steal the grain from the country, kill off its intelligentsia and attempt to eliminate Ukrainian language and culture. How many more weeping women in black are we willing to tolerate?
This article was kindly edited by Cynthia Rubin.
Thanks for the view on the ground.