There's No Good Time for Blind Love
While international solidarity with Ukraine must continue, unconditional support for its conduct in the war must be reevaluated.
The international uproar over Russia’s Feb. 24th invasion of Ukraine has been deafening. The European Union and United States have placed intense sanctions on Russia. President Joe Biden condemned it as “unprovoked and unjustified,” and has since gone on to deem Russian president Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” Emojis of Ukrainian flags and hashtags of #SlavaUkraini and #StandWithUkraine adorn Twitter bios and social media handles.
And so the outpouring of solidarity and support for Ukraine’s embattled comedian-turned-president Volodymyr Zelensky has, too, been overwhelming. New York Times contributor Bret Stephens spelled out the cultural zeitgeist in the boldest, reddest letters: “Why We Admire Zelensky,” a fawning 10-point profile of the Ukrainian leader that reads like Stephens’ earlier fanfiction-like characterizations of the “profoundly decent” Bush family.
Does our collective fetishization of Zelensky and the Ukrainian cause genuinely matter? Does it alleviate the human suffering in Kiev and Mariupol and Odessa? Obviously not, but the faults lie deeper still. Most problematic is how blind, unconditional hero-worship for Ukraine and its wartime helmsman have subdued legitimate criticisms of Ukrainian wartime misconduct and its antidemocratic tendencies.
Make no mistake about it–Russia’s invasion is illegal and warrants the fullest condemnation. But insofar as war crimes are war crimes, atrocities on both sides deserve equal coverage and criticism. In early April, the New York Times verified footage of a Russian prisoner of war being executed by forces belonging to the pro-Ukraine Georgian Legion southwest of Bucha, the site of a massacre by Russian forces this March. “These are not even humans,” a combatant was recorded saying. “He’s still alive. Film these marauders. Look, he’s still alive. He’s gasping,” one soldier added, before another soldier shot the wounded Russian three times. The corpse was one of four apparently finished the same way.
But, the refrain goes, this is war. Wars are ugly. No kidding. But does that justify, on any patriotic or ethical grounds, the extrajudicial executions of unarmed captives? Absolutely not. But does one documented and verified instance of war crimes cast Ukraine on the same moral level as a foreign invader that has launched an unprovoked war of aggression? Not at all. Nonetheless, to entirely dismiss incidents of wartime misconduct when culpability lies on “our side” is disingenuous at best and depraved at worst.
Commentators like Stephens claim this war is one of diametrically opposing values: the “liberal and democratic inheritance” of Zelensky’s Ukraine on one hand and the “totalitarian ethos” of Putin on the other. Not one person can dispute Putin’s well-documented antidemocratic behavior, from forcefully cracking down on anti-war protests to harassing political opponents such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny and oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. To unflinchingly accept the notion that Zelensky and Ukraine represent some sort of lone bastion of democracy, however, is a fanciful one when Zelensky’s administration suspended eleven opposition parties for supposed “links with Russia,” including the Opposition Platform for Life, the runner-up in the 2019 parliamentary elections. While Zelensky claimed the suspensions were made in the name of national security, the mere label of “pro-Russia” has been bandied about in Ukrainian party politics leading up to the invasion, used to “discredit and silence sovereigntist, state-developmentalist, anti-Western, illiberal, populist, left-wing, and many other discourses,” according to Institute of East European Studies research associate Volodymyr Ishchenko. Ishchenko further attributes this Russia-baiting to the political hyperpolarization that has underpinned Ukrainian domestic tensions dating back to the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, a messy, tumultuous revolution championed by both the far right and pro-European integration liberals which resulted in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukyovich and an intense public backlash against cooperation with Russia. So if the suspensions were a product of political hyperpolarization—and they were—and were therefore a move to consolidate political power and authority in the hands of Zelensky’s government—and they were—then to unconditionally uphold the ideal of Ukraine as the side of liberal democracy is dubious to say the least.
Although unquestioningly accepting Ukraine’s cause through the same rose-colored, democratic glasses as Stephens is fallacious, so too is uncritically giving into the Kremlin’s laughable narrative of “denazifying” Ukraine. It is undeniable that Ukraine has a Nazi problem: the far-right Azov Battalion of Ukraine’s National Guard numbers almost 1,000, for one, and has gained notoriety for its open use of fascist symbolism and war crimes against civilians in the Donbas. But to cast the wide net of neo-Nazism over the entire Ukrainian cause devalues its raison d’être: namely, the right to national sovereignty. Whatever the relatively small proportion of far-right combatants has deemed their struggle does not, and ought not to, reflect on what the rest of the country has made clear is a campaign for self-determination.
This isn’t a conflict where there are “no good sides.” On the contrary, there is a clear aggressor and an equally distinct victim. But to simply leave our analysis to this black-and-white dichotomy is to do a grave disservice to a delicate conflict that deserves more nuance than it has been afforded. Ukraine has shown that it deserves solidarity from all corners of the globe, but this support must never be left unchallenged or unquestioned.