We were at the casino when it was five a.m. My friend and I sat in the basement of our hotel in Lviv, waiting for the air raid to end, because it was filled with card tables, slot machines, and a full-sized roulette wheel. We commented on the absurdity of sitting through an air raid at a roulette wheel on our first night. After another sleepless night, we silently watched the news on a large flat screen. In the good old days, this television broadcasted horse races, soccer, boxing, and any other contest on which a person might gamble. It was the news today. The Russian journalist who interrupted a government sponsored broadcast to hold up a sign protesting the war in Ukraine was the lead. I watched three or four segments that mentioned Marina. The air raid app on our phones stopped the all-clear. We went up the stairs to our rooms.
My companion on this trip, Matt, is a serial entrepreneur who has started businesses in Turkey, Syria, and Afghanistan. He drove a trailer from Germany to Iraq at the height of the war to deliver sculls to the Iraqi rowing team. He was accused of espionage by the Iranian authorities and imprisoned for 41 days in 2015, but he failed to complete his exchange program at Tehran University. He was released as a concession to the Obama Administration. After the air raid, Matt suggested we meet Andrii, a tech entrepreneur and friend, so we walked around the corner from our hotel for a coffee.
Andrii lookedhaggard. Like a parent with a newborn, he calculated the days since he'd had a good night's sleep. We reached the front of the line, and he settled on a number around twenty. As we settled at our table, Andrii ordered coffee and Matt spoke a decent Russian, but he was afraid that he would get a Russian word or phrase if he ordered with the little Ukrainian. With Ukrainians actively hunting for Russian saboteurs, I could empathise with his concern.
If you get into trouble, Andrii said, "just say: rusni-pyzda." He repeated the idea that whoever is bothering you should leave you alone. He said that a correct pronunciation would be hard for the native Russian tongue. I asked Andrii what rusni-pyzda meant, and he said it was a kind of flat bread.
I chuckled, but Andrii didn't seem amused. It seemed like a funny way to round up Russian saboteurs, I apologized. Some Russians had chosen to stand with the Ukrainian people, so perhaps this was counter-productive. I mentioned Marina's interruption of the nightly news. I was cut off by Andrii.
I think she's brave.
She was fined less than 300 dollars. She was released immediately. We should applaud her even though she was happy to ignore propaganda while Russia was fighting.
The war was only a few weeks old, and I said that sometimes it takes people time to find their conscience. Andrii could not contain himself. A few weeks old? The war has been going on since Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea in 2008 and then took the Donbas in the same year. Is it possible to find one's conscience in eight years?
For Andrii, a narrative that categorized the Ukrainian and Russian peoples as victims of Putin's war absolved Russian citizens of decades of complicity. They always complain that they have no future in Russia, not that a genocide is happening inside Ukraine. They want to stop the war. Don't say Save Ukraine. They would be happy to see Russia take over Ukraine. It is only the means of annexation that they object to, a method of war that has made them pariahs. The end in Ukraine is fine with them, just as it was in Georgia and Chechnya. Did they leave Russia after those successful invasions? Absolutely not. There is a difference between failed wars they are against, not Ukraine.
The atmosphere between us became tense.
Matt was trying again with great effort.
Andrii was relaxed with a smile.
We sat at the roulette wheel waiting for the air raid to end. I was troubled by the word genocide, which Andrii had used the day before, because the attack on the airport had 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 888-349-8884 I was taught that people who live in autocratic regimes are not the enemy, but the regime itself. The Western strategy of sanctions was designed to place domestic pressure on Putin and possibly even split the Russian people away from him. The resolve of the Ukrainian people to endure and fight and the resolve of the Russian people to resist and reject Putin seemed to be the key variables in our Western strategy. The Ukrainian people would be subjected to genocide if either of them failed, a term that is often used in hyperbole, but which is defined as the deliberate and systemic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
A photographer documents the invasion of his country.
In a lengthy essay published by the Kremlin, Putin denied the existence of an independent Ukrainian nationality and claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. If Putin is engaging in genocide, are everyday Russians involved? Independent polls show strong majority Russian support for the war in Ukraine, even though polling inside Russia is unreliable. If a majority of Russians support the war, is it a Western strategy that relies on internal Russian pressure against Putin flawed?
Time will tell.
It would seem that we are projecting our feelings onto the Russians. We should think of Russia like we thought of Germany in the 1940s if the liberal Western order succeeds in this war. Americans and the West seem more interested in removing the Russian people from the regime that acts in their name than they are in getting the Ukrainians to accept territorial concessions to include the Donbas. If the pronunciation session of rusni-pyzda with Andrii didn't hit home this point, one can only see the front of any currency exchange in Lviv.
We waited in the Vienna Coffee House for Yaroslav Hrytsak, a history professor at Ukrainian Catholic University and author of the book Global History of Ukraine. Hrytsak adjusted his chair as if he was about to deliver a lecture. He wore a mask under his chin to protect his beard. It is a good first lesson in eastern European politics and culture.
It wasn't possible to separate the war in Ukraine from the Russians. When I asked if he could explain why, he peered over his reading glasses and took a breath; it was as if I'd arrived in the last fifteen minutes of a three-hour movie and asked him what it was about. He said that no one feels Russian identity more than Ukrainians. The Russian identity is a spiritual one, in which Russia believes it is the salvation of the world. Putin isn't fighting Ukraine right now. The fight against Nazis and Nazism is synonymous with the West. In Putin's mind, Ukraine is a fiction created by the West and he must destroy it. Russian identity has a belief that it has a special mission to fight the West. Russia is the one that saves the world from the West's fascist tendencies. Russia defeated Napoleon. Russia defeated Hitler. Obama and Biden will be defeated by Putin.
Matt asked if Obama was in office.
This isn't a rational war, it's a spiritual one, Hrytsak said as he sipped his coffee. A ruthless autocrat collapses every attempt. Why did the Russian people choose not to be free? Russian culture is the answer. It would mean that Russia's suffering is synonymous with its piety if it is true that it is the world's salvation. The sanctions won't work because of that. Is it possible to convince a Christian to become godless? His suffering draws him closer to God. Russia has had periods of freedom, but always comes back to this condition of suffering. Russia gave itself to Putin and he has used Russia's history of suffering to consolidate his power.
Volodymyr Zelensky United the World.
Hrytsak folded his arms. The Poles have a strong claim on Lviv, but their culture is different than Russia's. Russian culture has a tendency to relive the past, while they have the ability to rethink it. It's like driving a car with a small mirror. It's like driving a car coated in mud. All you can do is look out the window.
Hrytsak said that the Third World War had begun. At the end of the Cold War, Russia was humiliated like Germany at the end of the First World War. He used the term "Weimar" to describe Russia's post-Cold War government. He pointed out how Putin used a flawed interpretation of history to make up grievances and then used his power to sell the story that Russia would liberate the Ukrainians from the Nazis.
Hrytsak told me that the Russian people have made a bargain with Putin and that it could break the spell. They have allowed a dictator to take away their freedom, but he has offered them glory.
Andrii arranged for us to have coffee with Melaniya Podolyak, a political consultant who runs a warehouse where she sends supplies to Ukrainian soldiers on the front. As we sat, she scrolled photos on her phone: body armor, body armor, tactical vests, and then the coup de grace. She said that she bought the truck that towed the howitzer. She leaned across the table, revealing a half-sleeve tattoo.
She told me I was correct when I guessed zero, and then recounted the story of Volodymyr Senyshyn, who tried to build one in Tula, outside Moscow. He was murdered in front of his home on a well-lit street. There were stab wounds to the right temple and skull injuries. The police did not find the perpetrators. Natalya Kovalyova, who was a member of the organization Ukrainians in Russia, was attacked and beaten so badly that she ended up in intensive care. The police never found the perpetrators in her case.
The reason the Russians are here is that we succeeded in getting our freedom after the Maidan. They don't like us for it.
What about the possibility of a colored revolution in Russia, what about acts of resistance like Marina Ovsyannikova, and what about Russian opposition leaders like Alexi Navalny?
She spat the word from her mouth. If Putin killed Ukrainian civilians and destroyed life-critical infrastructure with full approval from the Russian citizens, it's one thing, Navalny wrote on her phone. If Putin's bloody venture is not supported by the society, it will be a different story. Navalny understands that every day of Russian silence is catastrophic. They don't care about the Ukrainian victims.
Melaniya distrusted Navalny because he was a Russian nationalist. She thought that he could be worse than Putin because the West would celebrate him.
Did she really believe that? Is Navalny worse than Putin?
It's already too late for a colored revolution or Navalny. The crimes against us can't be undone by a protest movement. The Russian people have done nothing over the last eight years.
I mentioned Marina again.
So what? We are supposed to thank the propagandist with a sign. Melaniya worked at Channel One for eight years. Maybe you can understand that I'm bitter toward Russians, or that I'm unfair to them. I'm not. I don't feel hate towards Russians, it's indifference. I think the world should feel that way as well. Maybe you can understand that you are an American. The pursuit of happiness is what life is about in your country. We don't live that way here. Our life has always been about survival, and that is the fault of one country.
The mothers are returning to rescue their children.
The air raid sirens whined. The sound was mimicked by our phones with the app we downloaded. As we sat in the coffeeshop, Melaniya told us that it had good and thick old walls. She joked that she was a different kind of political consultant now that she was. This message was also coming from my pocket, where an app blared an air siren raid.
I was going to meet Dmytro Potekhin, a journalist and one of the organizers of the 2004 Orange Revolution, which overturned the corrupt result of that year's presidential election. Dmytro participated in a color revolution when he was in Russia. Dmytro was on the phone with me from Kyiv, and he was not optimistic. Maybe. Russia could be a democratic country, though it hasn't happened in the past.
In 2005 and 2006 Dmytro traveled to Russia and trained their dissidents in the strategies and tactics of non-violent resistance. The problem is cultural, he said. Other societies are not as nice. They are not like Russia. Every time the Russians create a movement it becomes a vertical organization with a boss on top. Look at Navalny. He could have created a great anti-corruption movement, but he was surrounded by a vertical organization. I tried to teach Russians how to build their own networks, but they always built corporations with their bosses in the regions. The organization is stopped once the guy on the top is arrested and the regional offices are raided.
Dmytro could see some green shoots. The world now knows who he is. I was thrown in a concentration camp when I was working as a journalist. They call us Nazi but they are the ones running concentration camps. It was eight years ago. Did the world care that they had concentration camps? The world didn't care. They want to control all of Ukraine, after starting the war to control the peninsula of Crimea. Will the world allow Russia to set up concentration camps?
What about the Russian people over the years? The hope for others like her, and figures like her, is something that so much of the West's strategy seems to depend on.
She helped start the war and many Ukrainians don't trust her. It will take a lot of people like her to stop it. The point is not to make heroes or villains of these people, but to stop Putin.
We can be reached at letters@time.com.
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