By Kirby Neumann-Rea, courtesy of the News-Register
Mistakes are being made over the Ukraine-Russia war.
The mistakes are in public perception — false assumptions that start with the Russians’ claim that Ukraine sovereignty is itself an invention.
This is one conclusion from a panel with knowledge of Ukraine and Russia that presented cautionary views last week, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third year and rumblings are heard of an “endless, unwinnable war.”
The panel spoke Feb. 28 to about 75 people gathered in T.J. Day Hall at Linfield University.
“Make no mistake,” said Patrick Cottrell, Linfield University political science professor, “this act is not only morally reprehensible when you think of the humanitarian costs (and the) bravery of the Ukrainian people, but undermining vital U.S. national interests. All citizens should be disgusted.”
“The war in Ukraine is still happening,” said Cottrell’s colleague, Dr. Dawn Nowacki. “We don’t get to have Ukraine fatigue. It’s the Ukrainians who are fatigued.”
Nowacki declared as “all lies,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a real language or a separate culture, and that Ukrainians are suffering from a false consciousness. These notions are among a variety of “false narratives and assumptions” the speakers listed.
“It’s how he justifies invading them,” said Nowacki (no-VOTS-ki) a political science professor at Linfield.
The invasion, she said, “is an existential threat, not only to the Ukraine but also to the rest of the world.”
Evidence of Ukrainian culture prefaced the panel talk as Anton Belov, Linfield music professor who is Ukrainian, sang folk songs and introduced Valenteyn Lisenko, a virtuoso harp player from Ukraine who was part of the next night’s “Songs of Love and Freedom” concert at Linfield, celebrating Ukrainian music and culture.
Linfield Professor Eric Schuck, an economics professor, also spoke on the current situation with food exports from Ukraine and the failures of sanctions against Russia, as well as insights into the war from his perspective as a Naval Reserve Captain.
Speakers registered concerns over recalcitrance in Congress to provide military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine — support that has been held up in the protracted U.S. budget approval process on Capitol Hill. The European Union last week ordered a new set of sanctions against Russia in response to its attack.
“Make no mistake: Ukraine is a fulcrum for the future of contemporary world order that can rely on American leadership and one that our country has benefited from for decades,” Cottrell said, “History will judge our actions.”
This view was amplified by a fourth speaker, who is herself Ukrainian: psychologist Yulia Brockdorf, who lives in Hillsboro and has made repeated trips to her homeland in the past two years. She returns this week in her work with the nonprofit DAWN, which has delivered four airplanes filled with medical supplies to Ukraine, survival supplies and evacuation aid. Brockdorf provides psychotherapy to front-line fighters and training to Ukrainian psychiatrists and mental health clinicians.
“It is a global and national security risk not to help Ukraine,” Brockdorf said.
The Linfield events focusing on Ukraine made her feel “really inspired and encouraged.
“It was very gratifying and validating to see professors at Linfield so eloquently articulating counterpoints to Russian propaganda that is so ubiquitous to our environment, and to see such solid, clearly thought-out interpretations of the faculty.”
Brockdorf emphasized that there are many ways to help Ukraine.
“Ukraine needs to get a lot more help. There are so many broken lives.”
According to Brockdorf. DAWN facilitates donation and collection of medical and other humanitarian aid, but needs places to store it. Any American citizen with space in their home or business can help by providing storage. Trucks are dispatched to collect the goods. “A loading dock is really helpful,” Brockdorf said. Details can be found at dawnus.org.
“Call legislators to win support for Budapest referendum pledge,” Brockdorf urged. (The 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances” prohibited signatories, including Russia and the U.S., from using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. As a result of the memorandum and other agreements, the three former Soviet republics gave up their nuclear weapons.)
On the subject of a proposed Ukraine ceasefire, she asked, “Why would any country disarm if all the agreements can be erased?”
To Cottrell, the global implications are stark. Via email, he called the invasion “the defining challenge of rules-based order that U.S. has anchored and upheld.
“China and other issues are bound up in it. (It is) the litmus test for U.S. and other states that value freedom, peace, and security. The future of European security and NATO, our closest allies … U.S. credibility hangs in the balance.”
The speakers noted that Ukrainian political leaders have avoided further conscription, and that defense of the country depends on volunteers. Brockdorf said the majority of Ukrainian defenders “are engineers, teachers, journalists, professors, or clerks who never held a gun in their hands but with our nation invaded it is all hands on deck and many are without capacity to see their families. It has a very high toll on their quality of life. It is a very sad.
“This war could be ended so quickly if we had the equipment to do the job, and still can because the people are confident and know what to do, even though we have indecisiveness, when (the West) will not provide even humanitarian needs, such as medical goods, which are essential to saving lives. That should be provided in abundance.”
“Despite a very difficult two years, Ukrainians by and large believe they can achieve victory, and the major factor in determining if it wins or loses is support from the West, especially the U.S.,” Nowacki said.
“They are struggling for their survival as a country, with having their own territory and their own independent state, and not only that, they are oriented to the West in a way Russia is not.
“The message for lawmakers in the U.S., of both parties, is that our Ukraine fatigue is dangerous not just for Ukraine but for ourselves. Ukrainians are bearing the burden of defending not just their freedom but ours, and an enemy whose murder of a jailed (Russian) opposition leader, Navalny, only shows how despotic (Putin) is. Ukraine has never asked that we send our men and women, but they need our weapons desperately.
“They have earned our support. A delay in Congress is increasingly demoralizing to Ukraine as well as deadly. By passing additional assistance would be a huge moral boost and a blow to the Russians, who have told them, ‘(The West) will abandon you.’ We must prove them wrong.”
