February 24th 2022
February 24th, may this day live in infamy forever: The start of the largest war in Europe in 70 years. Towns and cities, so much like those I remembered from my childhood, reduced from places of peaceful habitation to places of brutal conquest. I am safe across the Atlantic, and yet I could not just sit quietly. When wrong things happen, too often people just sit quietly — thinking it’s not their place to speak up; and of course, silence is consent.
I had been dreading this day for months. Every couple of days, the Washington Post would publish updates on Russian troop movements. A ghoulish play by play: Here they are in the north of Crimea, ready to attack from the south. Here they are outside of Kharkiv, Here they are north of Kyiv. About one hundred and fifty thousand troops. My coworkers would ask me: will Putin invade? I would say, I’m not sure, but more and more it felt like I was lying to myself.
A few days before invading, Putin gave a speech, a couple speeches, actually. He talked about how Ukraine was only a country thanks to the communists, how the dissolution of the USSR was a tragedy. Some last ditch diplomacy was underway, some wrangling about whether Ukraine could join NATO, whether they would be allowed to purchase modern weapons systems. But the outcome was pre-determined by virtue of 150,000 troops already deployed and ready.
February 24th. I cried at the horror of peace shattered. I tried talking to other Russians: “Don’t worry, it will be over soon”; “this is just a minor operation”, “radical elements are being neutralized”. That’s when I realized that I was no longer part of Russia’s information sphere. I viewed Ukraine as it’s own country, but my fellowes viewed her as somehow contingent on Russia, existing only with permission.
Ukraine herself was caught by surprise. I read an interview with a general who described a country full of civilian officials unwilling to take the threat of invasion seriously. I say this not to mock Ukraine. I say this because even the country directly in the crosshairs could not believe that such an attack could take place, so impossibly nihilistic and brutal it seemed.
Here we are. The impossible has become reality. The frail glamor of modernity and peace vanishes, and the bloody machinery of colonial Europe is revealed. Eastern Europe is once again invaded from the East — a situation for which Poland and the Baltics have been busily preparing ever since the fall of the iron curtain. And we Russians are once again faced with the brutality of our deeply held habits and beliefs. What will happen next depends on whether we decide to continue clinging to our ideas of righteousness or decide to face the evil within and find a way to be happy without constant war.