Ukraine: Yes, it is about civilization. Or not.

In this block of flats lived 160 people. Nine of them are now dead, killed by Russian bombs. Putin decided to kill them - because they wanted to live in freedom.

(the bloc of flats in Sumy, northeastern Ukraine, where 9 people were killed on Jan 30 2025)

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

It happens every night. No, sorry, let me drop the journalist-neutral jargon: It doesn’t “happen” every night. Bombs, drones and missiles don’t fly of their own accord. They fly and kill people when somebody decides that they should fly and kill people. Yesterday early morning, the Russians hit Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine, with their drones and bombs. They hit a block of flats where 160 people live - they killed nine and wounded many more, including children.

On purpose. While they were sleeping. Amongst the killed are three married couples in their 60s and 70s. Hardly military threats to Russia, but political threats to Putin yes; they were murdered because they wanted to live in freedom.

Their daughter found out from photos on social media - she recognised the wallpaper in their bombed-out flat. Just imagine that.

This war is about civilization: It is about allowing people and countries to decide their own direction, how they want to live. It is about respecting and upholding internationally recognised borders. It is about not sliding backwards in history to a time when “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (as the Greek historian and general Thucydides said).

Vladimir Putin grabbed a piece of Georgia in 2008 – and nobody did anything. Then he grabbed a piece of Ukraine in 2014 – Donbas and Crimea – and nobody did anything. Then he tried to invade the whole country in 2022 – and the West did help Ukraine not to be completely overrun, but we will likely soon accept that Putin and his crooks keep 20% of Ukraine.

A peaceful international system can only work on the basis of respect and solidarity. Until recently, this would have seemed a superfluous, self-evident thing to state. But in 2025 it is no longer that. It needs to be said, understood, repeated, taught.

Such a system – such a civilization – has existed and been extremely successful in Europe and North America for 80 years by now. Historians and political scientists such as myself can tell you that this system – NATO and the EU – has been the most successful political-military-economic system in world history – ever, anywhere – when it comes to securing peaceful co-existence between countries that had a very long, brutal history of going to war with each other. And allowing and helping these countries to develop democracies and market economies.

This is a good club to be a member of. Membership in that club - and democracy - was also what Ukrainians demonstrated for all the way back in 2013 - that’s why they called their demonstrations ‘Euro-Maidan’.

EU and NATO are based on solidarity and respect for agreed rules and norms. And insight and collective intelligence. And seeing as this system has been so unbelievably successful, who in their right mind would challenge it, want to ruin it?

Well, nobody in their right mind would - but leaders who don’t like rule of law, solidarity and democracy; leaders who see political power and the privilege of ruling a country first and foremost as an opportunity to enrich themselves and their families and clans.

Today, both the leaders of Russia and the U.S. are challenging our civilization. Yes, of course, in different ways. However much we dislike Donald Trump, he is not Vladimir Putin - even though he sometimes seems to want to be(come) and certainly admires the Russian dictator a lot and can’t hide that fact.

But, although they are different, if either Putin or Trump are successful in their attacks on our civilization, the result may be the same: their victory would call into question the whole basis upon which we have built the Western world after 1945.

One month ago I wrote a piece – I must admit it was more of an angry rant – called “Yes, the war in Ukraine is about civilization.” Have a look, please, it lays out the above argument in much deeper historical detail.

Only one month has gone past since then but it is amazing (today in international politics, ‘amazing’ invariably means frightening) how much the world can change in just one month. Or rather, how much more strongly and strikingly our choices are now drawn up:

One, Putin has continued his daily, militarily-meaningless attacks on civilians in Ukraine. The West has, as we have done for almost three years, condemned him, of course. But we keep buying his gas, and we are fully aware that our sanctions really are no more than ‘kind-of-sanctions’.

Two, Putin’s soldiers keep executing Ukrainian prisoners of war. In cold blood and while filming and enjoying their uncivilized deeds.

Three - but what I had not imagined, however much I disliked him from his first term in office – was that the new U.S. President would immediately challenge our world order, our way of living together, our civilization. But he is. They are.

I wrote a frightened piece about that - I called it “Trump's grim Putinesque speech”. It focuses on the tone of the incoming president during his Inauguration Speech - so full of hate, so emptied of grace and … civilization:

“Trump’s emboldened demeanor (in contrast to his first inauguration) reminds me of Vladimir Putin, who also grew from a zero to being all-powerful - because nobody dared to say stop and because there was too big a loot to share if you keep close to the capo.”

But even I had not imagined that within three days after their capo took power, Republican members of Congress would have introduced a bill to allow Trump to stay on for a third term - explicitly because he “is restoring America to greatness.” It’s called doing ‘a Putin’ or ‘a Lukashenko’, if you prefer; it is a set move by any tinpot dictator - ‘the people are asking me to stay on, despite the constitution.’

And of course - Greenland, Mexico, Guantánamo, Panama, Canada, you name it.

I apologize for ranting. Actually, I don’t. My Danish grandmother – who lived through the 1920s, 30s and 40s when also Denmark struggled with poverty and occupation (by Nazi Germany) – must have repeated to me 100 times: “You can never talk too much or too loudly about how bad it was, because hopefully that will make people think.”