Ukraine Russia borderland war: Russian villians and saintly Ukrainians

How the World sees Ukraine above. A new Israel fighting for its survival and Zelenskyy as a David against Goliath. 

Blood brothers

Given the ongoing war in Ukraine with Russia, there is no telling when it will end of if the world might get dragged unwittingly into World War III. Let's hope the latter doesn't happen. The whole world condemns the ongoing war and civilian deaths to the tenth degree. Russia and Ukraine are not only neighbors but are brother nations; similar to Argentina and Uruguay, Ethiopia and Eritrea or US and Mexico. The family ties are being pulled in both directions by both sides of the war. You have both Ukrainians and Russians who live within both countries' borders and have intermarried. Historically, Ukraine before the 1900s was known as Ruthenia in the English speaking world. Chicken Kiev is one of the well known Russia and Ukrainian cutlets. Ukrainians are often mistaken for Russians and the Ukrainian language is often seen as the same as Russian despite being two different languages. Ukrainians including Russian Ukrainians speak and understand Russian as well especially in the Donbas region. The names Russia and Belarus have their origins in the medieval state of Kievan Rus which composed of modern day Western portion of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Kievan Rus is considered the first modern state of the three mentioned countries and created Eastern Europe's golden age during the medieval age. The name Ukraine or the Ukraine means borderlands, the country has been balancing itself between East and West for centuries. Many empires have ruled Ukraine among them the Byzantines, Ottomans (Turkey is directly south of Ukraine separated from it by the Black Sea), Tsarist Russia, Austro-Hungary until World War I. Even the Mongol Empire conquered Southern Ukraine along with other Turkic tribes where the Crimean Tatars emerged from. There was also the Crimean war from 1853-1856 that was fought between Britain, Russia, Turkey and maybe United States. It appears 170 years later, that history has come full circle. Nazi Germany occupied the country in 1940s and many Ukrainians Jews, Christians, ethnic minorities and resistance fighters were killed during the Holocaust. Than there was the Soviet Union that ruled Ukraine from 1920s until 1991. As part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the breadbasket of the massive country producing as it still does today, a large bulk of world's exported grains, wheats and rice. Josef Stalin (1928-1953) who was responsible for 1931-1932 Holodomar in Ukraine the man made grand famine that killed over a million Ukrainians from 1931-1932 and also killed citizens of Kazakhstan and other parts of then Soviet Russia. The Holodomar still haunts Ukrainians to this day, regarded as the Ukrainian Holocaust and played a large role in anti Soviet and current anti-Russian sentiments of ordinary Ukrainians. Also keep in mind the memories of decades of Soviet rule, particularly Stalin's brutal repression, local KGB detainment, denial of unique Ukrainian identity over an all encompassing Soviet one and crushing of anti-Soviet resistance in Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary still pushes fears in these countries to absurdist levels of paranoa of all things Russian. It's not surprising that the Baltic states, Poland and the wider Europe sympathize with Ukrainians. Which makes the current war a modern Cain and Abel tragedy. 

The Russian government threatened Ukrainian government with war over NATO expansion into Ukraine.  Russia has long feared NATO bases, weapons and soldiers surrounding its borders including the exclave Kalingrad. Which is why, Sweden and Findland's quest to join NATO has been opposed not only by Russia but by Turkey as well, another NATO member. But today it is a regional and nuclear power that can hold its own against the U.S. and other Western powers. Russia is still viewed by the West as an adversary in need of control before it beats the West to become a world power again as the world moves back into a multipolar from the US dominated hegemony. It is a former super power that was a political and economic force that served as a long standing alternative and challenge to the United States and the NATO countries. Still does for good reason, Russia has balanced the multipolar world while clashing diplomatic, internationally and at times close to physically at sporting events with the United States particularly the Winter Olympics. 

Russia as the eternal bad guy of the West

Considering the Soviet Union collapsed some thirty years ago, Russia is still seen in the West (particularly in the US) as a neo Soviet Union seeking to recreate the 19th century Russian Empire. There are some Americans who still think Russia is Communist despite the fact that the country has moved on from the command economy and the political system. By extension, Russia is subconsciously blamed for the sins and crimes of the former Soviet Union. Putin is portrayed as the new Josef Stalin in some reports and others as the new Hitler "Putler," the recycled personification of evil. It should be worth mentioning that the American and European media has been priming the ordinary citizens to not only to fear Russia and Russian people but for a possible future war with Russia. The caricaturization has been churning for decades. During the Cold War, it was spy novels and James Bond movies (still popular) such as To Russia with Love, action movies with memorable villians such as Ivan Kushonov in Air Force One, Colonel Podovsky in Rambo, the Russian army in 1986 film Red Dawn, the Rocky movies featuring the Russian/Soviet heavy weight boxer Drago, Rocky Balboa's recurring arch rival  and even cartoons that warned and scared the audience about the dangers of communism, how horrific life was in the Soviet Union and to be weary of socialist leaders. There is the comical 1966 movie the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming, showing how unchecked fear spins society into unusual frenzy against normal civilians from enemy countries. The USSR was always the villian with no questions asked or even a glimpse into the life of ordinary Soviet citizens. Now the old red scare has shifted to unofficial Russiaphobia across the entertainment and news world. Russiaphobia existed long before the Ukraine Russia war. It goes beyond the scary Russian Mafia and corrupt oligarchs tropes. Both exists inside the US and Western and Eastern Europe but that is a discussion for another day. Whether it is fictional or real, some of the most popular video games of the last several years have portrayed Russia as an evil nation and one dimensional villians hell bent on ushering in an apocyloptic world war. 

As mentioned in a previous post, the famed Call of Duty series Modern Warfare 1, 2 and 3 and the remade Modern warfare 2019, all posited a megalomaniac Russian baddie named Vladimir Makarov and later the Russian military commander Roman Bartov (2019 Modern warfare version) and the larger faceless government as an omnipresent threat to the world. Throughout the popular video games, Russia as a country is either ignored or seen to be ruled by ultranationalists which is controlled by the mentioned antagonists. It is a heavily militarized country. The Russian people and society are invisible. There is little sympathy or empathy shown for the Russian civilians shown in an infamous episode of Modern warfare 2. In the Modern warfare 2019 version, which is based on the War on terrorism, not only are Russians diabolical antagonists but are single handily blamed for the brutal war and terrorism in the fictional country of Urzikstan which is a hodgepodge of Syria and Iraq and their respective wars. Russian soldiers take the place of real ISIS terrorists attacking civilians in the game and is even suggested to be working with local terrorist groups. Of course, the Anglo American alliance is seen as heroes whereas in real life geopolitics and the ongoing wars in the Middle East, the NATO countries are perpetrators of societal breakdowns and balkanizing nations while insisting they are the heroes of Democracy. 

The few video games that do show players and viewers a more realistic Russia with its complexities is Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future soldier where the player works with US special forces to stop a coup in Moscow against President Volodin supported by the US. Sound familiar? The player gets to experience Moscow as they would in reality, an important geopolitical yet normal capital city with civilians going about their daily lives that is abruptly interrupted by the events in the tense level without the old Soviet union tropes serving as comic relief for the player. 

Another impending NATO war in Europe?

It has been over four months since the war in Ukraine began. While the ongoing destruction of infrastructure, Ukrainian society and social cohesion is devastating, the Russian invasion and now proxy war between Ukrainians and Russian has revealed the long standing double standards of how the NATO countries has dealt with wars and war victims outside its realm in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and especially in Palestine. It has mostly been a media war at least in the United States and other European countries as the mainstream media was literally trying to predict when and where the Russian military would launch its push into neighboring country prior to February 24th when the war officially began in the eyes of the Western media. The war in Eastern Ukraine's Donbass region of Donetsk Republic and Luhansk Republic have been ongoing since 2014. The media wasn't crying and saying "Slava Ukraine" or "Glory to Ukraine," when the Ukrainian Army was bombing and chasing Russian Ukrainians and Novorossiya separatists in the Donbass region. There was no worldwide appeal to protect Russian Ukrainian rights or even empathy shown for Donbass suffering. Only a few international organizations protested against the Poroshenko Goverment's 2018 language law passed by the Ukrainian Rada (parliament) that promoted Ukrainian in all aspects of daily life as the state language for national unity while denying the use of Russian but makes exception for other minority languages particularly Crimean Tatar. The Lvov region in Western Ukraine outright banned the Russian language in media including news stations, radios, songs and films in 2018. The people of the Donbass had appealed to Russia, apolitically, to protect them from the Ukrainian army's eight year long bombardments. When a US back coup (as usual) toppled the pro Russian president Viktor Yushchenko. He was immediately replaced by chocolatier Poroschenko and in 2019 Ukrainians brought in the current Ukrainian President Vladmir Zelanskyy. As you will remember Yushchenko survived being poisoned but with permanent facial disfigurement. Poroschenko is currently playing military commander and was originally planning to run in the next national elections in Ukraine. 

Ukraine as the new Israel and Saintly Vladomir Zelenskyy

Zelenskyy won the 2019 elections as Ukrainian president, mimicking his television character who became president after a viral rant against the previous government helps him win the support of the people on the  satirical political TV series Servant of the People. It is the only known instance of life imitating art in a non figurative sense. Zelenskyy has been fawned over by the pundits, journalists, politicians from US, Europe and Australia as an almost angelic bulwark against the Russian boogeyman military and Putin. Ukraine is seen as a new Israel fighting against a Russian horde (almost Attila the Hun) Reminisce of Israel's victories in the 1948 war to the Six Day war in June 1967 against a coalition of Arab states including Palestine. The analogy is not lost on the Israelis either. Israelis' perspectives toward the war in Ukraine is complicated by the history of Ukrainian Jews pre World War II who formed one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe. And the Soviet Jews in Israel who arrived in the country to escape the collapse of the Soviet Union.