Dispatches from Ukraine - A Year In Reporting
Dispatches from Ukraine - A Year In Reporting
War is hell, but people are wonderful
In one form or another, I have been reporting on the war in Ukraine. Everything that has happened in Ukraine in the past eight years has foreshadowed the attacks on the West. As I wrote yesterday in Once Upon a Time in the West - Brexit and Trump Were Russian Attacks, a quick study of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and you find all the same bad actors here in America, and many in the UK.
War is hell, but people are wonderful.
In the lead up to the war, RadPod financial correspondent Martin Sheil said if Ukraine falls so does the democratic world order. That is how critical the fight is.
On the eve of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine I reached out to my friend, Michael MacKay, a brilliant Canadian academic who taught in Ukraine and who has been documenting Putin’s aggression daily since 2014. I didn’t know what else I could do to be helpful other than the one thing I knew how to do - report. I reached out to my editor at Byline Times Peter Jukes and told him to stand by for my copy.
I wrote through the night and on Feburary 24, 2022, this story landed:
I chose the words carefully. I wanted to show how decrepit Putin’s army was - dictators steal resources, and I knew his soldiers would be ill-equipped. I also knew that his goal would be total annihilation.
MacKay gave me an incredible interview on that night.
Below are some select passages:
“What we’re looking at now is the offensive that we’ve been saying is coming with certainty for eight years, since Russia first invaded Ukraine. It is just heartbreaking that all these long years of suffering by the Ukrainian people, defending themselves, defending Europe, defending all of us in the West, has been wasted. That we’re as unprepared now as we were eight years ago.”
According to MacKay, the West could and should have faced Putin down in Ukraine back in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. This was the moment when it was “just the little green men stage of the invasion, the fake separatists stage of the invasion”.
“We could have stopped this invasion by Russia, when it was this little occupation of Crimea with a bunch of special forces soldiers and a few mercenaries. We could have stopped it when it was in Luhansk and Donetsk. We could easily have stopped it when it was just a few pathetic locals, some mercenaries and a handful of Russian officers. We could have stopped it there. And now we face a multi-front war. I’m just heartbroken today.”
The outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, MacKay argues, has been “enormously” enabled by the West and of “elite capture” of Western political forces.
“Russia’s been quite open about it. There’s no secret in this, it’s not like in a spy movie. It stated: ‘We will buy off journalists, we will buy newspapers and media empires, we will buy the press in Britain to ensure the Brexit campaign will be successful’.
“Then in the US, it waged its most successful operation: the elite capture of the Republican Party… and large segments of the press. He just needs Tucker Carlson. And he’s got ’em.”
Despite debate on the right and left about what kind of war this is – with some on the hard left arguing for solidarity with Russia against an ‘imperialist’ America – MacKay is adamant that this is an imperial war for the “decrepit” modern-day Russian empire.
“This isn’t an ideological war, like we had in the 20th Century,” he said. “It’s an imperial war. Western leaders should act, and they should act fast. Putin is so much more agile because he has no moral limits.”
The Russian President has given himself away with his comments about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, MacKay insists, with the rhetoric revealing his true motivation.
“When he talks about de-Nazification, he means it is a threat,” said MacKay. “What he is really saying is, ‘I’m going to do to you, Ukraine, what we did to Germany. I am going to rock your capital city like the Soviet Red Army did to Berlin until it is rubble.’ I will enslave your people… I will go on a rampage of mass killing, mass rape, and deportation, exactly as the Soviet Union. That is what de-Nazification means to them… This is not about an ideological reorientation, it means a war of annihilation that we have not seen since the Red Army or since ancient times.”
“I just think it’s an unbelievable tragedy. In the Ukrainian people, we have the greatest asset we could possibly have to defeat Russia. And we’re not standing behind them the way we should.
“I’ve been engaged with Ukraine since independence and I see people who stand up for themselves, who fight for a better future, who stand up because they believe in the principles of democracy and want a future for their children.
“We have to convince ourselves that it’s never too late. At any stage, you can stand up and fight and do something. We can still stand with the Ukrainian people. You can always save what can still be saved. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
Here is a clip from that interview from February 23, 2022:
‘Reporting from Ukraine’
I feel as sad today, reflecting on his words, as I did that night, writing them. It is nothing short of madness that the West has not done more to stop Putin, and has in fact, enabled his rise to transnational terrorist.
I am grateful for Joe Biden’s resolve.
It is my hope that what I wrote in Once Upon a Time In the West holds true - and that Putin is a desperate man with no way out - a cornered rat who ran out of escape routes.
In interview after interview on Radicalized Truth Survives podcast, we brought war correspondents from Ukraine to speak to our audience.
Among the most profoundly moving interviews came from war reporters John Sweeney, Zarina Zabrisky, and Paul Niland, as well as Ukrainian soldier Volodymyr Demchenko - one of the most brilliant interviews to ever take place on RadPod. Volodymyr is immune to cognitive warfare because he reads books. I would like to think American soldiers can quote Aristotle and Dante with ease, but I am not so sure.
He is the one who explained how our freedoms are seen as weaknesses to be exploited by countries that have no freedom. He also said Russia’s lies are ruining the world and explained why Dante put lying traitors in the worst place in hell—because they’re creating a world that doesn’t exist and forcing people to live in it.
If you can find the time to listen to each of their stories, I think you will be profoundly moved by the spirit and heart of the Ukrainian people and to those who are fighting for democratic freedoms in a time where authoritarianism is well financed and filled with lying traitors who are reserving their place in the ninth circle of hell.
Each of our interviews that took place with guests from Ukraine revealed a good deal about the people who are holding the line in their country.
I am glad I am part of a community of allies who understand that fascism needs to be defeated.
I would like to leave you with this today: war is hell, but people are wonderful.
I have often said it is the duty of the artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets, and scribes to continue creating beauty as we fight the fascist creep.
Let the beauty of cellist Patrick Dexter’s tribute to the people of Ukraine from his location on the West coast of Ireland be the soundtrack to your reflections on this somber and very important day.
(Follow Patrick Dexter on Twitter @patrickdextervc and if you can, support his music here: patrickdexter.com; new album out today.)
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Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you, as well, to those who support my work with coffee tips and who buy my ebooks. My reflection, Confessions of a ‘Fox Blonde’ was recently published in Byline Supplement. In a review of my latest ebook, the erotic novella Fox Undercover, author Greg Olear called it “The Big Sleep 2.0” except with “not so much sleep happening.”
Save the date - the next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Feb. 26, 4 pm, and will feature filmmaker Jen Senko of “The Brainwashing of My Dad,” about how her father was radicalized by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
(Image above: Banksy mural on a shelled building in Ukraine's liberated town of Borodyanka.)
(Above image, Zarina reporting from Ukraine. You can support her work directly via PayPal at artsresistance@gmail.com)