The blame game
The knives are out, competing versions of the narrative re why Ukraine's counteroffensive did not produce the results expected. Expectations being the key word. More importantly, now what?
This morning I received a forwarded news article from a Ukrainian Telegram channel about Belgium supposedly promising Ukraine fighter jets by 2025, along with the sarcastic caption, “what is the hurry…it is not as if it is an important issue…”. To which I replied with a sad face. As one does.
Since March 2022, I have been primarily focused on the humanitarian response, and as such, I have tried to stay in my lane. I share from time to time articles and podcasts which I found useful in broadening my own understanding of the bigger picture, including what I am hearing from inside Russia. It is totally surreal to think of old friends in Russia who lived for decades as openly gay, and now wonder what their thought processes are. The walls have been shutting for years around them, and yet many, perhaps due to their age (like mine), or relatively influential jobs, convinced themselves they could stay in their bubbles. War or no war. I completely understand the temptation. Just talking on the phone with a friend this week in Moscow, I was overcome with nostalgia. Despite everything I have seen and heard, my first instinct was to tell her how badly I want to get on a plane right now and be there too.
Home is home. It is the ultimate pain when it is ripped out from under you.
I watched a very powerful film last night as part of the this human world film festival: We Will Not Fade Away. The Ukrainian documentary began filming in 2019 in coal-mining small towns of Luhansk oblast, near the then front lines of the war with Russia. It follows a group of teens around. It is eerie in showing the before and we now know the after. As I search for the town name via Google, I am reminded that this area of Luhansk oblast is actually the region named “happiness”. I knew this once. A refugee must have told me. This NPR report was written from Stanitsya Luhanska just weeks before Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. Already in 2019, the region looks like it is waiting for a slow death, despite the uplifting cinematography. There are coal mines and chickens and not much else. And now you stop and think that what would have been a slow economic death has now accelerated into a fast, bloody one. The towns shown in the film are now under Russian occupation. Russia destroys everything in its path. For what? Every single kid in the film speaks Russian, not Ukrainian. They are proud Ukrainians speaking Russian. Something which is still difficult for many to understand.
So in this context, with all this in my head, I started to look through the news. The internet is talking about these huge reporting effort by the Washington Post (I don’t have a subscription so I have only read parts where I can see them online) to describe on the basis of what seem to be a lot of off the record, anonymous U.S. sources what “went wrong” with Ukraine’s counteroffensive, from the American perspective.
Part 1: Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine
Part 2: In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls
Several seasoned journalists are praising WP’s reporting. Some war commentators (for lack of a better term) are upset, arguing some of the most critical aspects (e.g. lack of air power) which contributed to the failures are brushed over.
I would read this thoughtful (if emotional) commentary for a different perspective:
Others within the Ukrainian armed forces plant the blame on their own leadership.
But mostly, to be honest, I find myself thinking about those Ukrainians who from day one when the war began, they left, they came to Europe, they didn’t look back, they set to building new lives for themselves, and I wonder, did they know something we didn’t back then? For a period of time I really believed a victory was possible, just wasn’t sure of the timing, and of course the looming issue of who is in the Kremlin, something Ukraine has zero control over. Now, it really does feel like Europe and U.S. will not get their collective acts together, plus the I suppose inevitable infighting and issues which developed within Ukraine. Ukraine also wasn’t going to become a totally changed country overnight just because it was under attack.
This BBC interview with a Ukrainian soldier from the east bank of the Dnipro is incredibly telling.
Ukraine war: Soldier tells BBC of front-line 'hell'
I cannot imagine how they got access, and I hope the soldiers is ok after speaking so candidly. This is exactly the kind of reporting many of those in charge in Ukraine do not want coming out. I have zero military expertise, but I believe it comes down to a combination of failures — of the west asking Ukraine to do with relatively untrained troops what it would not ask of itself, along with operational mistakes along the way, drag this out over time, over harsh conditions, and a high rate of losses and of course morale goes down the toilet. How could it not?
I am afraid to ask the Ukrainians in my group what they think. It is the kind of question you are afraid to hear the answer to. There are a few friends I can ask such questions, and I do it delicately, but as one said, “you read the news and you feel even worse…you read and think that’s it, the war is lost…but I have already felt that twice before, and I was wrong.” So I think this Ukrainian is not alone in being afraid to make any kind of predictions right now. There are some “bloggers” already pointing to signs of a peace agreement to be signed sooner rather than later, but frankly, I think it is a lot of hot air. I honestly don’t know if anyone knows. Jake Sullivan spoke at a press conference yesterday about what will happen if Congress doesn’t give Ukraine what it needs:
Honestly, that is not the kind of a statement a betting girl puts her money onto. That sounds a lot like “we tried our best, blame those guys”.
I am more baffled by Europe. By Europe who continues to live and act like the war is a million miles away and does not affect us. But thinking back to the film yesterday, in which children grew up on the literal front lines, and didn’t even flinch away from their smartphone video games when shells landed, you can live even next door to a war and get used to it. Just look what the Polish (and Hungarian and Slovakian) truckers blockade of Ukrainians in recent weeks. Like, for what? The flag waving and hot tea and soup at the border for refugees fleeing bombs feels like something out of the very distant past. Now the tea and soup is for EU truckers who feel like their protected market has just been messed up.
US and EU struggle to agree on funding for Ukraine
I’ll just leave these headlines here. This is not even beginning to touch on the multitude of challenges within Ukraine.
I sound like a stuck record but I try to focus what I can and cannot do. Yesterday I got a bit impatient with yet another text message about a bureaucratic issue I am in no position to fix. Two huge NGOs with two huge budgets apparently do not speak to each other and now some elderly Ukrainian man received a bill for €400. I very politely told his daughter this is not a problem I can solve, and I now very fluidly pass on an email address of the federal government, and their hotline number. They, unlike me, actually receive a salary to help.
I am happy to spend time to continue to distribute direct aid like our supermarket gift cards. Mario just sent me a photo of “returns”, cards sent to addresses from which people have already moved on, and I will put those to good use, targeting elderly and families struggling with kids. I am able to easily reach out (thanks to Telegram) and quickly build lists of families and individuals in need. Yesterday a woman wrote me. Her husband died. It was expensive to go home for the funeral. She lost her payments for the days she was out of the country. Could I help? I can send you a €50 card for food is my standard reply, along with my condolences, of course. It is not fixing anything but it is a sign that someone out there cares and it is a temporary measure, a bridge of sorts. I am happy to spend my time on that. Less so on all the other noise created by dysfunctional bureaucracies who employ people to supposedly help.
Setting boundaries. It is so hard.
I know many readers are probably itching for more personal stories. While I understand that, I do not feel like this is a good moment, with the holidays and stress and general depression over the direction everything is going.
I opened “X” for a second. See a tweet from a young woman in Kharkiv. “I want to fall into a coma until the end of the war”.
That is the mood.
That is all I feel comfortable writing.
I have no idea what to do about any of this.
I stopped believing in major miracles some time ago. Minor ones? Sure, they still happen.
Every time I see a film about war: Napoleon, 20 Days in Mariupol, the documentary yesterday…I cannot understand why humanity has not found some other way of solving our problems. Why if you shoot a man you go to prison for life, but if a country shoots lots of men, that is somehow ok as long as the other guys get to fire back too. I will never understand it. Imagine if we all went around raging, throwing plates at the heads of those who upset us, firing into our neighbour’s gardens to get the better view. Why is something deemed civilised when carried out by nations, and yet barbaric when performed by individuals.
I don’t wish to fall into a coma, but I do wish to live in a world where women are for once given the chance to rid us of the collective violence. The men have had their thousands of years. We are still back where we started. Hunting and gathering.