'Putin, do I look like a Nazi?'
Two old Ukraine hands launch their blog on Ukraine and beyond because Ukrainian history did not start in February 2022.
We have chosen this photo as the first for our joint Substack blog because it illustrates what this blog is and will be about: Ukraine is not easy to understand. Not in 2014 and not in 2024.
This is where we – in all immodesty – come in. Between us, we have lived in and worked in Ukraine for 50+ years. Yup, we are THAT old.
In March 2014, I was making a documentary about the stereotypes in our coverage of Ukraine and how those stereotypes and our ignorance could lead to wrong policies. (Spoiler alert: It did.)
We were filming on the ‘Maidan’ – only a few weeks after the Viktor Yanukovych regime had killed more than 100 there, gunned down in cold blood – and I noticed the woman, her intent gaze and her sign. And her quiet but determined dignity.
“Putin, do I look like a Nazi?” (Literally, V. Putin, do I look like the brown plague? Soviet slang for Nazi.)
Olga was a former schoolteacher. With elegant sarcasm, she answered both Putin’s lies and the ignorance of many Western media and so-called experts.
Vladimir Putin’s nonsense about “neo-Nazis and fascists in Ukraine’’ was a cornerstone in his manipulation of people in the Donbas, and led to the “first war” in Ukraine which cost 15.000 lives in the years 2014-2022. (Yes, the war in Ukraine did not start in February 2022. In many ways, it’s been going on for centuries.)
Manipulated by the little KGBist’s lies and, possibly, the briefest of glances at a few history books, some Western media (among them even very reputable ones like the BBC) spent a lot of time warning their Western viewers about ‘neo-Nazis in Ukraine’ and their influence. Today everybody can see the nonsense in this. But even 10 years ago it was poor journalism.
This blog, written by a couple of old Ukraine hands, is an attempt to draw the longer lines and connect them to 2022 and 2024.
We make no bones about the fact that we are pro-Ukrainian. For us, it means trying to tell the truth about Ukraine, its people and the role of the West. Even when such truths are uncomfortable. We see this as the necessary basis for Ukraine finally taking its place in Europe.
We hope that our musings will make you think, (dis)agree and participate.
PS: We launch this blog on March 4, 2024: that is my grandmother’s birthday (born in 1908, so of course no longer with us). She grew up in Denmark at the start of the previous century and raised four kids during the Depression of the 1930s. She always said that to understand another person, you’d have to have walked in their shoes. Or at least imagine doing that. And that is as good a motto for a journalism blog about another country and its people as I can come up with.
Michael