Just as I was about to sit down and write this, I clicked on a fresh podcast, which could not be even more relevant. This is a great historical background onto how we got here:
What Happens if America Turns its Back on its Allies in Europe
I would also add that the feeling here in Europe, amongst ordinary people, to the extent that can be measured, does not reflect the anxiety felt amongst the security “thinkers” who produce such journalism and crowd the hallways of a hotel in Munich. What scares me so much is I remember exactly how Kyiv felt just before Russian invaded, and believe me, it is hard to imagine your country being invaded up to the very point when you see the tanks roll by and hear the bombs dropping.
I did feel on my last visit to America, late 2023, very clearly, that America is focused on itself. That slapped me across the face. It was immediately recognisable. But here in Europe, I do not have the impression that ordinary citizens really believe a land war, beyond Ukraine of course, to be even a remote possibility. I can imagine official Europe is terrified, but this has not filtered down to mass media messaging.
The war in Ukraine feels, as it has for the past nearly two years, as far away as ever. And if there was at least empathy at the beginning for women, children, elderly, pets who had to flee their homes with only their clothes on their backs, that has nearly dried up.
The Ukrainian leadership are no longer saying the generous “thank yous” for all your military and financial support. Instead, they are pointing the blame directly on the west for failing to secure ongoing, critical funding and weapons (most notably, ammunition; as the podcast notes, the production of which was not ramped up two years ago in Europe as it should have been), and explaining that Ukrainian withdrawals and loss of territory and lives can be directly tied to a lack of funding from the west. It is almost as if the west was so pleasantly surprised by how well Ukraine managed to fight against Russia for so long that it decided western aid was only “optional”. Biden cannot make Congress act. Congress seems to have decided it is not in American interests to help Ukraine. Europe is having an “oh shit” moment but one thing about Europe — it is not fast. Nothing happens fast in an alliance of 27 countries, some of whom still declare themselves “neutral”, whatever the heck that still means.
I wrote ages ago that Russia would not have to use any tanks to invade Austria. It would simply takeover by installing a pro-Moscow government. No shots fired. Such a scary scenario could even technically be possible this fall. Autocracies use the tools of democracies to install their own, and then only dismantle democratic institutions once they control them, having been “elected” in the first place.
I completely understand how nervous the Baltics, Finland, and Poland must be right now. Every time official Russia says “we will definitely not do X” there is a historical track record of such public denials and then the event itself happens without fail just a few years later. Russia seems to be emboldened at the moment. And yet so incredibly ridiculous at the same time. An official Russian state media account tweeted out today a photo with a caption, “Putin, Shoigu, and helicopters”. For real. If that isn’t going North Korea, I don’t know what is. Men who bought flowers to mourn Navalny were immediately handed draft notices. Just when you think it cannot get worse, it inevitably does. Russia at the moment is continually taking it to the next level. Like a toddler, searching for boundaries, and not coming up against any. Yet.
I have been reading a lot of the powerful texts which emerged in the days since Navalny was killed by those who knew him. I would recommend this interview with the fiery Yevgenia Albats, who never bites her tongue. I would also recommend this by Julia Ioffe, which is so well written yet I think, because of her proximity to Navalny’s inner circle, because she knew him personally, misses a little bit the forest through the trees. Navalny did not mean anything for the majority of Russians who are brainwashed with Kremlin TV and propaganda, who have been told the “west” is the enemy, who have been sold the trade-off between personal freedom and Russian capitalism the late Putin era version: improved city infrastructure and parks, a decent salary, a chance to provide a better life for your family than you would have had 20, 30 years ago. This compromise is more than ok for the average Russian. This even despite the hundreds of thousands of men who have died in Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine. Navalny was a powerful figure for an urban, young, educated minority of voters. He will be deeply missed by this group. But he was never going to be elected president of Russia, in a mathematical sense, if a fair election would have been theoretically possible.
Therefore, I was a little surprised and stunned to see his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, announcing she would carry his flag. As a mother, I wanted to see her with her kids who just lost their dad rather than on stage in front of a bunch of politicians who had not paid such a high price with their own families. I can imagine she figured it was the only right thing to do to preserve her husband’s legacy and prevent the inevitable infighting when an organization loses its founder. But the infighting had started long ago. The entire Russian opposition, except for those behind bars, is abroad. They became irrelevant as they are not even in Russia. They themselves do not know what life is like inside Russia 2024 right now. It will be interesting to see if Yulia dares go back to Russia, provided the authorities eventually hand over Navalny’s body for burial. So far, they have refused.
Navalny was very brave, but he was just one man. Ukraine has lost so many. This is a very powerful photo project published earlier this week with interviews with wives who lost their husbands defending Ukraine. The wounds of war have not been distributed equitably amongst the Ukrainian population. There are families who remained in Ukraine and lost husbands and fathers, brothers and sons. There are families who left during the first weeks of the war and by now have already built new lives in Europe, and cannot imagine going back to Ukraine now. I think one word sums up every Ukrainian right now: exhaustion. I am hearing more conversations about making really long-term plans abroad. I was told yesterday about a couple who sold everything they could just to make a down-payment on an apartment in Spain (falling apart, desperately in need of renovation, but a roof over their heads), and take out a mortgage, now that they have jobs in Spain. That is a much longer-term commitment than the three-year “temporary protection” the EU is offering.
You ask Ukrainians about the political situation in their country, and one explained to me recently that the change of commander-in-chief (firing of Zaluzhny, promotion of Syrsky) is supposedly related to some detail in the fine print of what happens under martial law when a presidential election cannot be held, the leader of the armed forces, per this theory, can also at some point be seen as leader of the country, and therefore, per this argument, Zelensky needed someone who was 100% loyal to him. There are no polls, but I don’t have the impression that the Ukrainians I speak with are thrilled with Zelensky’s leadership nor these changes. The word “tsar” is thrown around in casual conversation. And don’t even dare bring up what is happening on the battlefield. The anecdotal tales of the horrors of the “retreat” from Avdiivka are…there are no words. You can understand why at this moment no sane man or woman would sign up to go to a front line and be cannon fodder when you are fighting an army that outpowers you several times in ammunition and you have no perspective for that to change anytime soon. Plus lack of adequate training.
I am no military expert, but expect to see Ukraine lost more territory, and quickly, while Russia takes advantage of this moment militarily.
Putin must look around and be rather pleased with himself. He has the entire west in knots about the fate of Ukraine and Navalny’s murder and yet no one can apparently do anything meaningful in response. There are useful idiots like Trump and “Moscow Mike” who seem to see Putin’s Russia as a more loyal ally than “leftists and liberals”, their own fellow Americans.
Sometimes if you stop for a moment, you think, how did we actually get here in the first place? The answer is, slowly, step by step. By watching and observing and sharing lots of thoughts and prayers but not enough action. That is how we got here. Through indifference. That too plays a role.
I do not like to think about what comes next. Today, the FT (the FT!) literally wrote an actual business article about Danone reportedly selling its Russia business to Chechen-linked businessmen. As I observed on X earlier today, this was not even a choice on the bingo cards back in the heyday of consumer goods FDI in Russia. Sometimes you stop just for a second and ask yourself how one old man and a few of his courtyard childhood buddies managed to hijack the direction of an entire country. Or is that Russia’s fate? To always be hijacked by one tsar or the other? And will it always be the fate of Russia’s neighbours to resist and/or co-exist in whatever manner they think most agreeable? As one Ukrainian said once (I think it was in a TikTok), “As a nation, you don’t get to choose your neighbours, just like we don’t get to choose your parents.”
This may not make any sense, but I find myself subconsciously grabbing onto little things and little pleasures a little tighter these days, precisely because of the feeling that you do not know how much longer we in “Europe” will enjoy this “predictable” life.
I would recommend to listen to this (in German) excellent Austrian radio report about Ukrainians here. It summarises the key issues very well. 30 minutes well worth your time.
I would also recommend this interview (in English!) with Evgenia Kara-Murza, wife of Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, which she gave to Armin Wolf of ORF yesterday.
Finally, I would love to read this, but…paywall. It should be clear to most people that the bravest and most patriotic Ukrainian men immediately volunteered for the army when the war began. Since then, many of them have lost their lives. At the moment, men know they are essentially trapped inside Ukraine, and many are indeed looking for ways to leave. I would only say that the question is not as black and white as do you wish to fight and die for your country or are you a coward who wants to be safe in Europe or Canada. There are nuances which are often not even thought about. For example, those men who grew up in now occupied territories, whose relatives stayed behind, would you really expect them to take up arms against their own families now sitting in what is self-proclaimed “Russian” territory?
There was a recent poll about Austria’s infamous “neutrality” which few even know what that actually means or stands for anymore, and a whopping nearly half of respondents said that if Austria were to be invaded, they would not be willing to take up arms to defend it.
41 Prozent würden Österreich jedoch im Ernstfall "auf keinen Fall" mit einer Waffe verteidigen.
In other words, I would think twice before passing any kind of judgment. I think it is helpful in these situations to think like a mother. And I fully understand every mother who says her primary goal, above all else, is to keep her son alive. Because those sitting around conference tables in places like Munich, they have one thing in common: it is rarely their sons and daughters sleeping in bunkers in the freezing cold, battling rats and mice and non-stop Russian artillery.