Remember Ukraine?

When Trump is destroying the American Constitution and the world economy, it's all too easy to forget Ukraine and its vital place in the current moment. Catherine Merridale has not forgotten and >has written an essay on Ukraine past and Ukraine now. Her historical survey ends rather optomistically:

It is all the more impressive, then, that Ukraine’s citizens, knowing their past, should seek and find paths out of it. This outcome was not guaranteed in 1991, the time of the country’s independence. The young state was divided along multiple deep faults. In some regions — the Donbas in particular — allegiance to Russia remained high, Russian-speakers dominated (resenting the imposition of the Ukrainian language in schools), and Soviet political traditions endured. Ukrainian-speaking cities like Lviv might have seemed foreign, even sinister, if you came from the East. A political culture steeped in corruption — again inherited from Soviet times — brought Kyiv into disrepute. But all that changed in 2014. The loss of Crimea played a part, uniting people in outrage, but the mass of citizens had made their choice already months before. Whatever their land used to be (and whatever their own ethnic origins), the Maidan protesters agreed. They wanted a new country and they’d all call it Ukraine. Their novel form of nationhood demands no mist-wreathed past. To focus on pre-history is to sink into a trance. Since Putin’s long essay appeared, I have caught myself checking the dates of the medieval Grand Duchy of Volhynia and laughed at the absurdity. Independence and democracy are concepts that address the present, not the legacies of hate. Kyiv has asked for patriotic service, true, but only on behalf of a free, confident community. Addressing the liberal West, President Zelensky’s call is for democracies to think and act; the courage that Ukraine has shown has put NATO to shame. But Ukraine is bilingual so it speaks to Russia, too. Though Putin’s clique blocks out the sound, one day it will get through. A peaceful state, and democratic, sworn to heal old wounds? ‘Everything is Ukraine.’ It shouldn’t need another war for that to resonate.

IMAGE: St Vladimir's Ortthodox Cathedral, Windsor, Ontario ;