The article below appeared in The Irish Times yesterday. It is by Lara Marlowe. It is one of the finest pieces this writer has read on the war in Ukraine.
Two weeks in Ukraine have not answered what an army officer called “the dumb questions”: How long will the war last? How and when will it end?
These questions are not “dumb”, merely unfathomable. The different perspectives of Ukraine and its allies make it more difficult to address them.
Westerners think the war started on February 24th, 2022. For Ukrainians, it started with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and has been going on for nine years, as long as the first and second World Wars combined. The term “full-scale invasion” papers over the gap in our perceptions.
A few days ago, in president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, journalists lost interest in a memorial service held by mothers of fallen soldiers when it transpired that the soldiers had died in Donbas in 2014.
If we focus only on the latest missile or drone attack, we cannot grasp the weight of 300 years of Soviet and Russian imperialism, and the way Ukraine has been torn back and forth between Moscow and the West since independence in 1991.
Impatience is the corollary of our ignorance. The idea that Ukrainians ought to wrap up their brave little show of resistance so we can put our economies in order, stanch the flow of military and humanitarian aid and forget fears of escalation is increasingly mainstream.
The US threatens Ukraine with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. “If you don’t speed up your counteroffensive and grab your occupied land back, Trump may come back and shaft you,” is the message. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate from Ohio, wants to stop all aid to Ukraine, abandon sanctions against Russia and give Putin the occupied territories. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
One of the few dissonant voices I heard was a working- class, middle-aged man in Kryvyi Rih. He voted for Zelenskiy in 2019 because Zelenskiy promised to make peace with Russia. “A bad peace is better than a good war,” the man told me.
Irreconcilable
When I put the question to a university professor and old friend of Zelenskiy’s a few hours later, he solemnly replied that Zelenskiy will make peace with Russia. These two residents of Kryvyi Rih also held irreconcilable visions of what peace should look like.
With few exceptions, the Ukrainians I met were determined, united and amazingly resilient, including several who have been badly wounded in the war. This war must be won once and for all, they told me. Any compromise with Putin would simply allow him to regroup, rearm and attack again later. Forcing Ukraine into a bad peace would prepare the ground for future wars and permanently damage Ukraine’s relations with the West.
Some Western politicians, such as the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, urge Ukraine to make concessions. To stop the Georgian war in 2008, Sarkozy gave Abkhazia and North Ossetia to Putin on a platter. A French financial prosecutor is investigating his €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company, and the €300,000 he received for a lecture in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has labelled the eagerness of some westerners to end the war at Ukraine’s expense the Munich syndrome, after Chamberlain and Daladier’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
“Why are there cynical calls by the leaders of the free world to pull the plug on Ukrainians in order to reach an agreement with evil?” Podolyak asked this week.
For the US and Europe, Putin is the devil they know, clearly evil, but less dangerous than a nuclear-armed, anarchical Russia. The Ukrainians have seen Putin up close and are willing to plunge into the unknown.
Ukrainians believe the fate of the free world hangs on their struggle. One officer compared the dilemma facing the West to the scene in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix where the hero is asked to choose between two pills. One will allow him to continue living as before. The other will reveal the truth but alter his life forever.
A psychologist in Kyiv told me that Ukrainian civilians who flee often suffer greater stress and PTSD than those who remain, because they consume a high concentration of anxiety- inducing news on social media.
Apart from the combat zones, life continues almost normally. A Patriot missile defence system has all but ended civilian casualties in Kyiv. Across the country, Ukrainians get on with their lives, not unlike the French people who braved Jihadist attacks in the late 2010s.
The common wisdom at the moment is that Zelenskiy has six months to take back as much territory as he can, after which the US and Europe will exercise maximum pressure on him to make peace. In exchange for this, he would be offered an open-ended commitment of military aid, like Israel.
Personally, I don’t buy it. If the extraordinary saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin taught us anything, it is the potential of this conflict to produce unexpected consequences. It may be wishful thinking, but another quotation from Podolyak rings true to me: “In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.”
No easy answers to conflict in Ukraine
Two weeks in Ukraine have not answered what an army officer called “the dumb questions”: How long will the war last? How and when will it end?
These questions are not “dumb”, merely unfathomable. The different perspectives of Ukraine and its allies make it more difficult to address them.
Westerners think the war started on February 24th, 2022. For Ukrainians, it started with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and has been going on for nine years, as long as the first and second World Wars combined. The term “full-scale invasion” papers over the gap in our perceptions.
A few days ago, in president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, journalists lost interest in a memorial service held by mothers of fallen soldiers when it transpired that the soldiers had died in Donbas in 2014.
If we focus only on the latest missile or drone attack, we cannot grasp the weight of 300 years of Soviet and Russian imperialism, and the way Ukraine has been torn back and forth between Moscow and the West since independence in 1991.
Impatience is the corollary of our ignorance. The idea that Ukrainians ought to wrap up their brave little show of resistance so we can put our economies in order, stanch the flow of military and humanitarian aid and forget fears of escalation is increasingly mainstream.
The US threatens Ukraine with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. “If you don’t speed up your counteroffensive and grab your occupied land back, Trump may come back and shaft you,” is the message. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate from Ohio, wants to stop all aid to Ukraine, abandon sanctions against Russia and give Putin the occupied territories. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
One of the few dissonant voices I heard was a working- class, middle-aged man in Kryvyi Rih. He voted for Zelenskiy in 2019 because Zelenskiy promised to make peace with Russia. “A bad peace is better than a good war,” the man told me.
Irreconcilable
When I put the question to a university professor and old friend of Zelenskiy’s a few hours later, he solemnly replied that Zelenskiy will make peace with Russia. These two residents of Kryvyi Rih also held irreconcilable visions of what peace should look like.
With few exceptions, the Ukrainians I met were determined, united and amazingly resilient, including several who have been badly wounded in the war. This war must be won once and for all, they told me. Any compromise with Putin would simply allow him to regroup, rearm and attack again later. Forcing Ukraine into a bad peace would prepare the ground for future wars and permanently damage Ukraine’s relations with the West.
Some Western politicians, such as the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, urge Ukraine to make concessions. To stop the Georgian war in 2008, Sarkozy gave Abkhazia and North Ossetia to Putin on a platter. A French financial prosecutor is investigating his €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company, and the €300,000 he received for a lecture in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has labelled the eagerness of some westerners to end the war at Ukraine’s expense the Munich syndrome, after Chamberlain and Daladier’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
“Why are there cynical calls by the leaders of the free world to pull the plug on Ukrainians in order to reach an agreement with evil?” Podolyak asked this week.
For the US and Europe, Putin is the devil they know, clearly evil, but less dangerous than a nuclear-armed, anarchical Russia. The Ukrainians have seen Putin up close and are willing to plunge into the unknown.
Ukrainians believe the fate of the free world hangs on their struggle. One officer compared the dilemma facing the West to the scene in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix where the hero is asked to choose between two pills. One will allow him to continue living as before. The other will reveal the truth but alter his life forever.
A psychologist in Kyiv told me that Ukrainian civilians who flee often suffer greater stress and PTSD than those who remain, because they consume a high concentration of anxiety- inducing news on social media.
Apart from the combat zones, life continues almost normally. A Patriot missile defence system has all but ended civilian casualties in Kyiv. Across the country, Ukrainians get on with their lives, not unlike the French people who braved Jihadist attacks in the late 2010s.
The common wisdom at the moment is that Zelenskiy has six months to take back as much territory as he can, after which the US and Europe will exercise maximum pressure on him to make peace. In exchange for this, he would be offered an open-ended commitment of military aid, like Israel.
Personally, I don’t buy it. If the extraordinary saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin taught us anything, it is the potential of this conflict to produce unexpected consequences. It may be wishful thinking, but another quotation from Podolyak rings true to me: “In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.”
No easy answers to conflict in Ukraine
Two weeks in Ukraine have not answered what an army officer called “the dumb questions”: How long will the war last? How and when will it end?
These questions are not “dumb”, merely unfathomable. The different perspectives of Ukraine and its allies make it more difficult to address them.
Westerners think the war started on February 24th, 2022. For Ukrainians, it started with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and has been going on for nine years, as long as the first and second World Wars combined. The term “full-scale invasion” papers over the gap in our perceptions.
A few days ago, in president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, journalists lost interest in a memorial service held by mothers of fallen soldiers when it transpired that the soldiers had died in Donbas in 2014.
If we focus only on the latest missile or drone attack, we cannot grasp the weight of 300 years of Soviet and Russian imperialism, and the way Ukraine has been torn back and forth between Moscow and the West since independence in 1991.
Impatience is the corollary of our ignorance. The idea that Ukrainians ought to wrap up their brave little show of resistance so we can put our economies in order, stanch the flow of military and humanitarian aid and forget fears of escalation is increasingly mainstream.
The US threatens Ukraine with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. “If you don’t speed up your counteroffensive and grab your occupied land back, Trump may come back and shaft you,” is the message. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate from Ohio, wants to stop all aid to Ukraine, abandon sanctions against Russia and give Putin the occupied territories. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
One of the few dissonant voices I heard was a working- class, middle-aged man in Kryvyi Rih. He voted for Zelenskiy in 2019 because Zelenskiy promised to make peace with Russia. “A bad peace is better than a good war,” the man told me.
Irreconcilable
When I put the question to a university professor and old friend of Zelenskiy’s a few hours later, he solemnly replied that Zelenskiy will make peace with Russia. These two residents of Kryvyi Rih also held irreconcilable visions of what peace should look like.
With few exceptions, the Ukrainians I met were determined, united and amazingly resilient, including several who have been badly wounded in the war. This war must be won once and for all, they told me. Any compromise with Putin would simply allow him to regroup, rearm and attack again later. Forcing Ukraine into a bad peace would prepare the ground for future wars and permanently damage Ukraine’s relations with the West.
Some Western politicians, such as the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, urge Ukraine to make concessions. To stop the Georgian war in 2008, Sarkozy gave Abkhazia and North Ossetia to Putin on a platter. A French financial prosecutor is investigating his €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company, and the €300,000 he received for a lecture in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has labelled the eagerness of some westerners to end the war at Ukraine’s expense the Munich syndrome, after Chamberlain and Daladier’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
“Why are there cynical calls by the leaders of the free world to pull the plug on Ukrainians in order to reach an agreement with evil?” Podolyak asked this week.
For the US and Europe, Putin is the devil they know, clearly evil, but less dangerous than a nuclear-armed, anarchical Russia. The Ukrainians have seen Putin up close and are willing to plunge into the unknown.
Ukrainians believe the fate of the free world hangs on their struggle. One officer compared the dilemma facing the West to the scene in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix where the hero is asked to choose between two pills. One will allow him to continue living as before. The other will reveal the truth but alter his life forever.
A psychologist in Kyiv told me that Ukrainian civilians who flee often suffer greater stress and PTSD than those who remain, because they consume a high concentration of anxiety- inducing news on social media.
Apart from the combat zones, life continues almost normally. A Patriot missile defence system has all but ended civilian casualties in Kyiv. Across the country, Ukrainians get on with their lives, not unlike the French people who braved Jihadist attacks in the late 2010s.
The common wisdom at the moment is that Zelenskiy has six months to take back as much territory as he can, after which the US and Europe will exercise maximum pressure on him to make peace. In exchange for this, he would be offered an open-ended commitment of military aid, like Israel.
Personally, I don’t buy it. If the extraordinary saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin taught us anything, it is the potential of this conflict to produce unexpected consequences. It may be wishful thinking, but another quotation from Podolyak rings true to me: “In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.”
No easy answers to conflict in Ukraine
Two weeks in Ukraine have not answered what an army officer called “the dumb questions”: How long will the war last? How and when will it end?
These questions are not “dumb”, merely unfathomable. The different perspectives of Ukraine and its allies make it more difficult to address them.
Westerners think the war started on February 24th, 2022. For Ukrainians, it started with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and has been going on for nine years, as long as the first and second World Wars combined. The term “full-scale invasion” papers over the gap in our perceptions.
A few days ago, in president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, journalists lost interest in a memorial service held by mothers of fallen soldiers when it transpired that the soldiers had died in Donbas in 2014.
If we focus only on the latest missile or drone attack, we cannot grasp the weight of 300 years of Soviet and Russian imperialism, and the way Ukraine has been torn back and forth between Moscow and the West since independence in 1991.
Impatience is the corollary of our ignorance. The idea that Ukrainians ought to wrap up their brave little show of resistance so we can put our economies in order, stanch the flow of military and humanitarian aid and forget fears of escalation is increasingly mainstream.
The US threatens Ukraine with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. “If you don’t speed up your counteroffensive and grab your occupied land back, Trump may come back and shaft you,” is the message. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate from Ohio, wants to stop all aid to Ukraine, abandon sanctions against Russia and give Putin the occupied territories. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
One of the few dissonant voices I heard was a working- class, middle-aged man in Kryvyi Rih. He voted for Zelenskiy in 2019 because Zelenskiy promised to make peace with Russia. “A bad peace is better than a good war,” the man told me.
Irreconcilable
When I put the question to a university professor and old friend of Zelenskiy’s a few hours later, he solemnly replied that Zelenskiy will make peace with Russia. These two residents of Kryvyi Rih also held irreconcilable visions of what peace should look like.
With few exceptions, the Ukrainians I met were determined, united and amazingly resilient, including several who have been badly wounded in the war. This war must be won once and for all, they told me. Any compromise with Putin would simply allow him to regroup, rearm and attack again later. Forcing Ukraine into a bad peace would prepare the ground for future wars and permanently damage Ukraine’s relations with the West.
Some Western politicians, such as the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, urge Ukraine to make concessions. To stop the Georgian war in 2008, Sarkozy gave Abkhazia and North Ossetia to Putin on a platter. A French financial prosecutor is investigating his €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company, and the €300,000 he received for a lecture in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has labelled the eagerness of some westerners to end the war at Ukraine’s expense the Munich syndrome, after Chamberlain and Daladier’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
“Why are there cynical calls by the leaders of the free world to pull the plug on Ukrainians in order to reach an agreement with evil?” Podolyak asked this week.
For the US and Europe, Putin is the devil they know, clearly evil, but less dangerous than a nuclear-armed, anarchical Russia. The Ukrainians have seen Putin up close and are willing to plunge into the unknown.
Ukrainians believe the fate of the free world hangs on their struggle. One officer compared the dilemma facing the West to the scene in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix where the hero is asked to choose between two pills. One will allow him to continue living as before. The other will reveal the truth but alter his life forever.
A psychologist in Kyiv told me that Ukrainian civilians who flee often suffer greater stress and PTSD than those who remain, because they consume a high concentration of anxiety- inducing news on social media.
Apart from the combat zones, life continues almost normally. A Patriot missile defence system has all but ended civilian casualties in Kyiv. Across the country, Ukrainians get on with their lives, not unlike the French people who braved Jihadist attacks in the late 2010s.
The common wisdom at the moment is that Zelenskiy has six months to take back as much territory as he can, after which the US and Europe will exercise maximum pressure on him to make peace. In exchange for this, he would be offered an open-ended commitment of military aid, like Israel.
Personally, I don’t buy it. If the extraordinary saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin taught us anything, it is the potential of this conflict to produce unexpected consequences. It may be wishful thinking, but another quotation from Podolyak rings true to me: “In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.”
No easy answers to conflict in Ukraine
Two weeks in Ukraine have not answered what an army officer called “the dumb questions”: How long will the war last? How and when will it end?
These questions are not “dumb”, merely unfathomable. The different perspectives of Ukraine and its allies make it more difficult to address them.
Westerners think the war started on February 24th, 2022. For Ukrainians, it started with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 and has been going on for nine years, as long as the first and second World Wars combined. The term “full-scale invasion” papers over the gap in our perceptions.
A few days ago, in president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih, journalists lost interest in a memorial service held by mothers of fallen soldiers when it transpired that the soldiers had died in Donbas in 2014.
If we focus only on the latest missile or drone attack, we cannot grasp the weight of 300 years of Soviet and Russian imperialism, and the way Ukraine has been torn back and forth between Moscow and the West since independence in 1991.
Impatience is the corollary of our ignorance. The idea that Ukrainians ought to wrap up their brave little show of resistance so we can put our economies in order, stanch the flow of military and humanitarian aid and forget fears of escalation is increasingly mainstream.
The US threatens Ukraine with the possibility of a second Trump presidency. “If you don’t speed up your counteroffensive and grab your occupied land back, Trump may come back and shaft you,” is the message. Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican candidate from Ohio, wants to stop all aid to Ukraine, abandon sanctions against Russia and give Putin the occupied territories. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave.
One of the few dissonant voices I heard was a working- class, middle-aged man in Kryvyi Rih. He voted for Zelenskiy in 2019 because Zelenskiy promised to make peace with Russia. “A bad peace is better than a good war,” the man told me.
Irreconcilable
When I put the question to a university professor and old friend of Zelenskiy’s a few hours later, he solemnly replied that Zelenskiy will make peace with Russia. These two residents of Kryvyi Rih also held irreconcilable visions of what peace should look like.
With few exceptions, the Ukrainians I met were determined, united and amazingly resilient, including several who have been badly wounded in the war. This war must be won once and for all, they told me. Any compromise with Putin would simply allow him to regroup, rearm and attack again later. Forcing Ukraine into a bad peace would prepare the ground for future wars and permanently damage Ukraine’s relations with the West.
Some Western politicians, such as the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, urge Ukraine to make concessions. To stop the Georgian war in 2008, Sarkozy gave Abkhazia and North Ossetia to Putin on a platter. A French financial prosecutor is investigating his €3 million contract with a Russian insurance company, and the €300,000 he received for a lecture in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has labelled the eagerness of some westerners to end the war at Ukraine’s expense the Munich syndrome, after Chamberlain and Daladier’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938.
“Why are there cynical calls by the leaders of the free world to pull the plug on Ukrainians in order to reach an agreement with evil?” Podolyak asked this week.
For the US and Europe, Putin is the devil they know, clearly evil, but less dangerous than a nuclear-armed, anarchical Russia. The Ukrainians have seen Putin up close and are willing to plunge into the unknown.
Ukrainians believe the fate of the free world hangs on their struggle. One officer compared the dilemma facing the West to the scene in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix where the hero is asked to choose between two pills. One will allow him to continue living as before. The other will reveal the truth but alter his life forever.
A psychologist in Kyiv told me that Ukrainian civilians who flee often suffer greater stress and PTSD than those who remain, because they consume a high concentration of anxiety- inducing news on social media.
Apart from the combat zones, life continues almost normally. A Patriot missile defence system has all but ended civilian casualties in Kyiv. Across the country, Ukrainians get on with their lives, not unlike the French people who braved Jihadist attacks in the late 2010s.
The common wisdom at the moment is that Zelenskiy has six months to take back as much territory as he can, after which the US and Europe will exercise maximum pressure on him to make peace. In exchange for this, he would be offered an open-ended commitment of military aid, like Israel.
Personally, I don’t buy it. If the extraordinary saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin taught us anything, it is the potential of this conflict to produce unexpected consequences. It may be wishful thinking, but another quotation from Podolyak rings true to me: “In the end, it will all end quickly and in an instant, just as it began.”
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