Tag: war

The War Is Not Over

Just a day before that happened, I talked to my friend who was in Chicago for the Christmas break. We were very happy to get together and talk about everything in our lives, but not all of the conversation topics were happy. She expressed her frustration, which I seconded, with people around us being “fatigued” with the war and “moving forward.” The conversation she had with her colleagues really struck me. She related that when the holiday season started, many people asked her whether she was going home for the holidays, and when she replied that she couldn’t because her country was at war, people looked startled: which war? with Ukraine? Isn’t it over yet? I can only imagine how she felt, but I couldn’t agree more: one of the biggest frustrations at the end of the year was that the war was largely forgotten.

And then came the airstrikes.

Yes, for the past two days, each news broadcast starts with the Ukrainian war news. I wish there would be a different reason for that. Those lives that were taken won’t be back. But maybe, hopefully, these horrible events would make people think. I hope that what happened was a clear reminder for those who think that this war will never affect their lives. I hope that more aid for Ukraine is coming (and I am going to make it a part of my end-of-the-year donations as well). Aggressors never stop. They should be stopped. Using as much force as needed.

From Time Magazine: Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight

(Copying the text for those who do not have access to the site)

‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight
BY SIMON SHUSTER/KYIV

Volodymyr Zelensky was running late.

The invitation to his speech at the National Archives in Washington had gone out to several hundred guests, including congressional leaders and top officials from the Biden Administration. Billed as the main event of his visit in late September, it would give him a chance to inspire U.S. support against Russia with the kind of oratory the world has come to expect from Ukraine’s wartime President. It did not go as planned.

That afternoon, Zelensky’s meetings at the White House and the Pentagon delayed him by more than an hour, and when he finally arrived to begin his speech at 6:41 p.m., he looked distant and agitated. He relied on his wife, First Lady Olena Zelenska, to carry his message of resilience on the stage beside him, while his own delivery felt stilted, as though he wanted to get it over with. At one point, while handing out medals after the speech, he urged the organizer to hurry things along.

The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. Instilling that belief in his allies, he said, “takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything.”

It is only getting harder. Twenty months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory remains under Russian occupation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. “The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” he says. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”

Continue reading “From Time Magazine: Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight” →

No Title…

My friend from Saint Petersburg told me this horror story. She was talking to her friend in Germany on her landline (there is some huge discount on landline calls from Germany, as she explained). Since it was almost free for her friend, they talked for a long time – over forty minutes. While they were still talking, she heard the buzzer from downstairs: Open, police!

Frightened, she buzzed them in, and two policemen in full gear entered her apartment. They asked her whom she was talking to, and whether she was sure it was her friend, not a scummer, and what city she was calling from. They said that they “wanted to protect her” from possible scum(?!). All looked like they came to arrest my friend, and it took her a while to talk them into leaving her alone.

Later, she started to question her other friends, and it turned out that others had similar situations (all conversations were on landlines and calls coming from Germany).

I don’t know what else to add…

In The Loop Yesterday

There were Palestinian rallies in the Loop for several days. Yesterday, Boris and I ran into a bigger rally on Michigan Avenue when we went to see the Camille Claudel exhibit at the Art Institute. I already read in the news about how violent the protesters have been, including attacking the City Council members, and that’s how yesterday’s rally felt. And it was way bigger than the biggest Ukrainian rally we ever had in Chicago.

The Tribune front page article talks about Palestinian and Muslim people in general feeling frightened and unsafe these days, especially with several hate crimes, and they compare their feelings with how they felt after 9/11. I think there is a big difference – I remember the feelings in society after 9/11. I understand that Palestinian Americans want to be safe, but that was not the narrative of yesterday’s rallies and all the rallies of the past week. The signs people carried were not about their personal safety. And not even about humanitarian aid to Gaza. And their chants were not about their safety.

Unfortunately, the ideology can’t be destroyed with shelling or any other means of brutal force. Same as it was not the German surrender that put an end to fascism destroying the terrorists won’t put an end to the terrorist ideology.

“In The Rear View” Documentary

Chicago International Film Festival is in progress, and I had absolutely no time to see anything. Except for when I saw that documentary in the list of participating films, I knew I would find a non-existent time.

It was not even in the Siskel Center, but fortunately, on my way from work to home (I had to leave about an hour earlier to make it, but there were only two screenings of this film!).

It’s an unimaginably difficult film to watch. Even though there is no fighting, no shooting, no explosions, and even though we’ve seen footage of buildings damaged by Russian shells, you feel it differently watching from inside an evacuation minibus. Most of the people whom Maciek was evacuating were Russian speakers, and it was especially horrible to hear them referring to the “Russian tanks” as enemy tanks. About twenty minutes into the documentary, I started to cross my heart and didn’t stop till the end.

Maciek Hamela was there! The funniest thing is that he entered the building right before me, and like I, he was a little bit uncertain about where theater 13 was, where the screening was about to take place. And I heard him talking in Polish on the phone, and I thought that he might be going to the same screening, but I could never imagine it was a filmmaker!
He talked a little bit before the screening and after (he answered many of the same questions in the interview below), and then he answered questions from the audience. And then people started to thank him and started to come down and hug him, and then I left.
May those who brought this war to the land of Ukraine burn in hell!

Official trailer

An interview with Maciek Hamela:

***

Last week, Boris was in Barcelona for his conference, and sure, there were many conversations about the war, about Russia, the world, aid for Ukraine, and all related. Since this conference was very European and initially Eastern European, the conversations were deep and serious, not like the casual conversation with “preset” opinions we (unfortunately) often have here in the US.

One thing that surprised me was that people asked him, “Why does Putin keep fighting despite massive manpower losses?” Naturally, Boris answered, “Because, at least for the past thousand years, Russia never counted men’s losses when fighting.” I was still surprised that those who asked didn’t know the answer as if Russia ever gave any reason to doubt it. Still, they asked why people in Russia do not protest when the losses are so massive and why they don’t protest in general.

Again, I could at least partially understand such questions at the beginning of the war, but I am surprised people are still asking them.

Also, when replying to somebody about a “peaceful solution,” Boris cited our friend with whom we had this discussion in Berlin last fall: If not for Ukraine, Russian tanks would already be in Berlin. Not in Estonia. In Berlin.

The positive thing is that in Europe, the war didn’t move to the background…

Girl’s Weekend – Saturday

We planned this last August weekend as a “summer in Chicago” thing because, last summer, things ended up so busy that we didn’t have a single beach day together. Also, we wanted to go together to Chalk Howard and create a picture on asphalt together.

We had that and much more, and it was overall a very happy weekend without which the summer would be incomplete.

Initially, we wanted to go to Chalk Howard twice: to draw our own thing in the beginning and then to see what other people had created in the evening, but we ended up doing just the afternoon because everybody was tired by that time.

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Mega March Unbreakable Nation

Good News!

Yesterday, I spoke to an old colleague of mine with whom I do not speak so often. Even when we speak, that’s usually a quick exchange on our careers. Yesterday, I spoke to him for longer than three minutes, and I asked him whether he would attend my next meetup, which will feature Bruce Momjian. He replied: It would be great, but I will be in Ukraine! My jaw dropped. I know his wife, and I know she’s Ukrainian, but as I said, we do not talk much recently. Sensing my unspoken question, he continued: You probably don’t know that N. (his wife) quit her job as a lawyer and now runs a non-for-profit. They supply all sorts of equipment to Ukraine, and she was going there every two to three months. They are opening a new distribution center, and this time, I am going to accompany her.

I can’t even describe how good it made me feel (and how inadequate I feel myself, trying to be everywhere and not committed enough to anything; at least, that’s how I feel sometimes.

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!

Anti-Putin Rally

I am sure that Igor will post about today’s event in more detail, but I still want to post a couple of his pictures. He reports that the meeting went really well, and the participants were especially ecstatic seeing Putin jailed.