It is fitting that on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine the skies in Los Angeles are weeping - a storm rages full of sound and fury, nature acting in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
I spent the day reflecting on a year in reporting, compiling Dispatches from Ukraine, highlighting some of my work to try to help make sense of the war and to try to be helpful to our understanding of it. We are engaged in the existential fight of our lifetime - democracy vs. autocracy - the people of Ukraine are on the frontlines. Here in America, we are also engaged in war - and as I have been painstakingly reporting, it is all part of the same war.
As I noted in Dispatches, I spent the eve of the war writing Putin’s War of Annihilation - A Decrepit Empire’s Last Stand - an interview with Canadian academic Michael MacKay who taught in Ukraine and has been closely documenting the war for nine years.
I asked Michael MacKay to offer his thoughts with our community on this profoundly important day, and here is what he shared…