Tom's Thoughts and Ideas

I said that I would write something positive, I think that a good place to start is a good book I am reading at the moment, this is likely to become less happy in the near future. It is a book by Ukrainian journalist Stanislav Aseyev (Станіслав Асєєв in Ukrainian, which I had to google as it is rather different than Russian). It is the first of his two books which consist of articles he wrote in occupied Donbas from 2014 onwards. It is called In Isolation and has been a really interesting read so far. I have been fairly busy with school of late, so I have not gotten through a huge amount of it, but even the part that I am at presently is changing my view of the war. His other book The Torture Camp on Paradise Street was the one initially recommended to me by my Russian literature professor some months ago. The reason why I am reading this one rather than the other at the moment is that this book takes place chronologically first, which makes reading it first something of a no brainer.

This book covers his experiences of the conflict from Jan 2015 to May 2017 until the author was captured by the Russians and sent to a prison camp, hence the title of the other book. I am certainly not even close to an expert on the history of the war, but I like to think that I know a few things. In addition to it being good to learn about as a world citizen, as a Russian major and someone who wants to spend their life in this world, understanding the war feels like something that has to be done rather than something that one should do. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that Russo-Ukrainian-American relations, especially since 2014, have been the site of some of the most heinous journalistic malpractice of this century. I think that it is certainly on par with the leadup to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003. This is for many many reasons that people smarter than me have written papers about.

The reasons for this malpractice that I think is most important are that: the last time the Western media cared about Eastern Europe was the wars in the Balkans due to the breakup of Yugoslavia, and it is easy to be fooled by the Russian propaganda machine that the war in Ukraine is the result of some sort of ethnic conflict. And since people generally want to avoid a deep dive into things, the media bought that explanation and ran with it. This is an issue since that entire narrative is a lie. The other reason is that Western journalists have an idea that there are two sides to the war, I.E. Ukraine and the Kremlin. This is not the case. Everything that the Kremlin says and has said for as long as one can remember is a lie written to build a Russian narrative of ethnic superiority and mythological fraternity with the people of Ukraine. Putin writes essays that are thousands of words to that effect, which are utterly deranged. The corruption and lies go so deep in the Russian state that it is not a side of the story. Ukraine is the only real side of the story. Lies and facades are not journalism. Russia meddled in Ukraine, and started an offensive war in 2014 that they then turned into a full scale invasion in 2022. These are not facts in dispute by rational people, yet here we are… This is not to say that was no good coverage by the Western media, there is just not a lot. Ironically it takes knowledge on the topic to seek out good knowledge.

The point of this tangent is to say that finding really quality English language information about the war and Ukraine in general is not always an easy thing to do. Since it is incumbent upon me to learn as much as I can, I think this book is a really great source for people who want a good view of the war. Not only is it an on the ground source, but it is very contemplative in its views of the people on both sides. One of the main theses of the book is how Aseyev feels isolated in his life because he does not jump on the bandwagon of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic, the false state in the far east of Ukraine) and remains loyal to Ukraine while his friends and neighbors defect and get swept up in the craze. The book does a really good job of showing how insanity and evil can become normal in people’s lives. Aseyev says that hearing artillery fire and seeing parades of captured soldiers through the streets is a normal occurrence. That type of horror is not normal, but in Donetsk is became normal and stopped affecting people. A lot of the book follows this theme of normalizing horror and is really effective at showing how it dehumanizes and breaks people.

One story that sticks in my head is a story of a young child playing with grenades that his father hid in the wine cabinet, the father wants to kill several soldiers if they ever get into the cities, and his family thinks that that would be a heroic act on his part. Hearing that is such a deeply horrific thing that it sticks with one. But according to Aseyev that is a normal part of life in occupied Ukraine. This type of reporting, among many other things, shows the war in a new light for me. It can be easy to think of the people who fight for Russia to be nothing more than propagandized ghouls who love the god-emperor Putin, but that is a foolish idea. They are all people, who had the misfortune of living in a nation that does not care about them, and is weaponizing ethnicity and history to be imperialist in a pointless war. It follows the longstanding Russian tradition of not caring about human life in favor of political aims. It is just sad and deeply depressing. My Russian lit professor seems to think of me as her personal optimist, since my outlook on life is truly one of hope and faith in humanity, but it is hard sometimes. There is only so much death and violence a person can read about.

Most people do not even know enough to have these feelings. The prevailing sentiment among the average American seems to be one of uninformed support; which is good since support is what Ukraine needs, but uninformed is dangerous. The Russian propaganda machine now seems to be in our government, which is always a good thing clearly. I find that the level of misinformation and stupidity present in this nation is staggering. People just have no idea what is going on. It is unfair for me to ask everyone to read books, but knowing about what happened in 2014 and 2022 is important. it represents war in the modern age to an extent. The news called what the Russians did The Gerasimov Doctrine, and while there is an element of truth to that theory I think something more nefarious is at play. The Russians successfully weaponized indifference. Specifically the indifference of people in the West. They thought that if Ukraine devolved into a civil war and was swept up by the merciful Russian army, no one would notice or care. Clearly the whole civil war thing did not materialize the way Russia intended, but their campaign of misinformation in the West did succeed in making a lot of people not care about a European war in the 21st century.

I remember where I was in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. I was in Iceland in a hotel room with my father. It was snowing outside at the time and we were watching the news and saw the little green men march through Sevastopol. At the time I was ten, and not quite a geopolitical analyst, truly a failing on my part I think, but even as I grew up and started to become interested and informed about world I did not care. All I had ever heard about Ukraine, which was sparce to say the least, was that it was a complex civil war and did not matter to the West. This was clearly wrong, and when I started to learn what had happened I read a lot of stupid stuff that I believed for a small part of my life. The more I looked, mostly in the leadup to the actual full scale invasion, the more I saw that the war was actually really really important for everything in our world. Fundamentally I think that it is a war to see how strong democracy in the face of conflict is. The Ukrainian democracy has proved to be strong in the face of adversity for its whole existence, and I have nothing but admiration for them. I just hope that we can follow suit here in the US.

This book puts yet another layer of understanding in my head. Reading good journalism is good, but actually understanding the history can only really be done by rigorous study and reading primary sources. The book is visceral and powerful, even when just listing off the various warlord factions in the occupied republics. The fear, confusion, and horror drips off the page in a way that really hits home. I am lucky to have a really good department here that can help guide me down the right routes, but it is really incumbent upon me to do as much research and reading as I can, since in our lovely modern age the truth is variable.

This is all to say that I think the book is good. Forgive my rambling, but this is my platform. I think that everyone should learn as much as they can about the war because it is one of the most important things that has happened in our lifetimes and not being informed is a failure of the 4th estate, but we can take it into our own hands in order to actually have an informed opinion about the world. As much as I would love to have a happy ending to this section, I think that it is all depressing, but I still see hope. Hope for democracy and modernity to triumph against evil and fascism. We just need to fight for it.