In my
previous article, I wrote about relics of the Soviet years that still litter
Ukraine. And without knowing the interlocked history of the two countries, it
is difficult to understand the current conflict. In truth, both sides see it as
the latest chapter in a long-standing crisis. Compare it to the
Northern Ireland conflict, simplistically painted as Protestants versus Catholics, when in
fact many heroes of Catholic liberation – Wolfe Tone, Napper Tandy, Bold Robert
Emmett, Countess Constance Booth-Gore Markievicz, who led the charge across St
Stephen's Green on Easter Monday, 1916 – were actually Protestants. Many
Catholics served and still serve in the British army, and there was even a part
of the Irish Republican Army called the “Prod Squad,” consisting, as you can
guess, of Protestants, mostly Presbyterians. And there were divisions that cut
deeply through both Republican and Loyalist. It takes years of study to really
understand.
Do Muslims
and Christians join the Israeli Army? Impossible, except for the Druse Muslim
units, fiercely loyal to Israel, and the Maronite Christians, who serve with
equal vigor and honor alongside their Jewish countrymen.
It is
never simple. The poet Terence, brought to Rome as a slave, said, “I am human,
therefore nothing human is alien to me.” Wasn't HE on to something? And he
never came to Ukraine.
If numbers
alone were what counted, given the force differential between Russia and
Ukraine, there should be no question as to the winner. Russia ranks as the
second military power in the world. Ukraine comes in around 25-26. Russian
forces often outnumber the Ukrainians by a factor of ten, if not more. And yet
the Russians are not winning, and they even are being stopped in a piecemeal fashion.
If I was to hazard a guess, I would say the most likely outcome is a gradual
decline into a war of attrition that heats up whenever materiel arrives, either
from the West for Ukraine, or from the post-Soviet factories of Russia when
enough workers come to work sober.
When U.S.
forces reached Baghdad, the statue of Saddam Hussein came down as quickly as
engineers could throw a proper assortment of ropes over it. One would think
that as soon as Ukraine declared itself free of the moribund Soviet Union in
1991, all signs of Moscow, Lenin, and hammers and sickles would have been burned.
Not so. Post-Soviet lassitude seems to infect everywhere it exercised its
influence, and reminders of the Soviet Union remain on bridges, city centers
and municipal buildings throughout Ukraine. In Kyiv, a beautiful bridge over
the Dnieper River, not dissimilar to the one that spans the Charles River in
Boston, still bears the Hammer and Sickle of the USSR. I like to think my
friends and I would have scaled that bridge with a hacksaw…but there it stays,
as do monuments to Soviet victory over the National Socialists and to heroes of
that war, both Russian and Ukrainian. Even the complicated and overengineered
radio masts that jut from public buildings seem to be broadcasting Lenin's
speeches, at least when one looks at them, even if no one listen to radio
anymore.
By way of
analog, consider the bureaucratic circus of my induction into the Ukrainian
Army, which has deigned to elevate me to the rank of captain, and my commander,
a mid-30's Liverpudlian, to major. First we went to a hospital in an airport
town. There, we underwent a battery of tests…except we didn't. What really
happened was an interpreter asked us if we had high blood pressure, what our weight
and height were, and a few questions that differed from man to man and
seemingly were not tied to any characteristic we can divine. Since I am
definitely the old man of the bunch, this rough crew of soldiers, mostly from
Britain and Commonwealth countries, all wanted to know if I had been asked
about a particular dysfunction that can affect men in their forties and up. A
22-year-old Scot yelled the question in grating Glaswegian across the waiting
room as I came out of the exam room. Not a single Ukrainian understood it, but
my men all collapsed into paroxysms of laughter at my expense.
It truly
was a Soviet experience. I have never undergone so thorough an examination; nor
have I ever undergone such a useless examination, because the point was not to
see if I was well enough to serve but to provide me with the requisite stamps
on the paper. After dealing with six foreigners, and seeing three more waiting
in the wings, none of whom he could understand, the Russian speaking doctor,
who also could barely understand our Ukrainian escort, despite being Ukrainian
himself, got all bent out of shape, told me I had lordosis, which I do not, and
stamped all of the remaining papers with obvious vim. Yet it was not for show;
people who lived under Soviet control understand that bureaucracy is a
necessary cog in the social machine. Except it isn't. It is inefficient,
unpleasant and time consuming…yet ultimately human, in the sense Terence meant.
Please
refer to the pictures that accompany this article. These are of an American,
some Brits and a South African swearing into the Ukrainian army. Of course, the
military notary administering the oath can't speak English, and we can't speak
Ukrainian, yet, so it is a formality. But this one is necessary and is the last
in a long line of bureaucratic steps understood and accepted by the Ukrainians but
totally alien to a Westerner.
Many
Ukrainians are looking increasingly west; European Union membership is coming,
and likely membership in NATO. But every inch Ukraine moves away from Russia
makes the Kremlin more nervous. And making Putin nervous is dangerous. Perhaps
as soldiers of Ukraine and of our home allied countries, we can continue the
work on the gap between us. But there are so many little things to think of and
do, so many unexpected problems that crop up, that only a Westerner with
experience in Kyiv can help. So maybe Kyiv will give back to us once the
Russians are driven out, as they will be one day.
Until
then, take heart: despite things going Full Ukrainian jacket at the drop of a
hat, we are still pushing the billygoats (a Ukrainian pejorative for Russians)
back to Moscow. And my people and others like us are the ones who can help
Ukraine truly shake off the reins of Russia…but it is no small task, for years
of domination from the east have soaked in to the bones of this great country.
But they
haven't reckoned on John Bull and Uncle Sam.
The writer is a former military man, now researching and writing about the Ukrainian Conflict. Questions can be sent directly to lhaesten@gmail.com.
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