Let’s cut to the chase: the Ukrainian War is politically and historically too complicated to be explained by citizens whose only credentials are being sympathetic to one side. It takes much more than that, with commitment and academic depth.
We’re talking about “Essays on the Russia-Ukraine War 2022”, with texts organized by Neide Jallageas and Bruno Gomide for Kinoruss publishing house. Twelve historians and specialists in Russian culture complete, with the book, a work of reflection started at a meeting at the University of São Paulo, even before the conflict entered its third month.
Neither text lends legitimacy to Russia’s territorial ambitions. But intelligent criticism satisfies curiosities and leads to intellectual satisfaction.
Let’s look at that of historian Daniel Aarão Reis. At one point he refers to the surprise of Russia and the Ukrainians themselves at the efficiency of the resistance collectives. They are not clandestine armed groups like the French resistance to the German occupation in World War II, but highly technological and geographically dispersed units, with cell phone exchanges of information about enemy mechanized movements, using applications created by the Americans.
The book also questions the accuracy of the reasons that led Russian President Vladimir Putin to trigger the conflict. He was widely supported by domestic public opinion — or whatever that means in a state close to a dictatorship — which feared the construction of NATO military bases on Ukrainian territory.
But texts by two specialists, Angelo Segrillo and Vicente Ferraro, argue that this is not the case. Kiev’s accession to the Western military alliance would have a long way to go, with the need for deep political and military reforms. It’s not for tomorrow. But NATO inspires deliberate confusion. It scared Russia by advancing in Eastern Europe with the accession of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, three countries from the former Soviet sphere, and then three former USSR republics, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
Even so, the war ends up working as a shot in the foot, as Finland and Sweden, previously neutral, entered the queue to join the military bloc, for fear of future Russian aggression.
Another reason cited by Moscow for triggering the invasion was the alleged embedding of neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s power structure. The Russians have two references to this. The first is the Azov Battalion, originally a radical right-wing militia later incorporated into the National Guard and thus operationally neutralized.
The second is Stepan Bandera, whom then-President Viktor Yushchenko posthumously declared, in 2010, “Ukraine’s hero”—a title that was revoked some time later. Bandera was in the 1940s a militia leader who fought for the independence of the country and who, to oppose the Soviets, allied himself with the Nazi Army.
But all this is secondary, argues the book, because the ultra-right coalition, in which the neo-Nazis are housed, received only 2.15% of the votes in the last legislative election, without exceeding the 5% that would allow the election of a deputy.
In short, radicals exist in Ukraine as in any and all European countries, and a war would be a delusional instrument to dislodge them from a power they do not occupy.
The third motivation cited by Moscow for the war was the alleged mistreatment that Ukraine would reserve its Russian-speaking and cultural minorities. But stick with the date 2014. That’s when Putin annexed Crimea and pushed for the independence of the Russian-speaking republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which became breakaway regions of the Ukrainian Donbass.
These three territorial divisions provoked a low-intensity civil war. But statistically, fewer civilians have died in these regions over the past eight years than after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war has been more deadly with a population that, due to ethnic affinities, it intended to protect.
In time: Russian-speaking Ukrainians did not join the invaders and most of them emigrated to avoid participating in the conflict.
One last topic among dozens of others relegated here was that raised by Martin Baña, for whom the conflict has revived in Europe and the US a prejudice against Russian culture. It is as if the war were decided by artists and intellectuals who are now unfairly excluded from the West, such as soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valeri Guérguiev, two magnificent names in universal opera and symphonic music.
In cancel culture by uninformed militants, it is not Putin, but the culture as a whole, that loses out.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
