Freedom, fear and the next killing floor

 
It’s 5:00 am on the first Thursday in March and I can’t sleep. It’s warm and quiet in the house, I just fed the cat and let the dog out. I don’t know where to begin unpacking my thoughts. 

After two years the COVID pandemic is over but it’s not. In a few days the provincial mandates will be lifted. The so-called Freedom Convoy has been dispersed and the protesters have all gone home. No one close to me has died though hundreds of thousands have, but I do know a few people who have had adverse reactions to the vaccine. Somehow, most of us managed to get through this relatively unscathed. I can appreciate the masks and social distancing, and the federal government support cheques, but I remain skeptical of the widespread distribution of untested vaccines and suspicious of the profit motives driving the pharmaceutical industry.

I expect the effects of the pandemic will remain for years, much like the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still with us. I don’t know what those long tail impacts will be. It’s possible employment will be less secure as both employers and employees have learned to adjust to living without each other in close proximity. Relationships with family and friends may take on a higher priority. Other changes may be more insidious. Governments around the world have acquired expanded powers that will likely never be fully surrendered, and the public has become accustomed to relinquishing civil liberties to protect their immediate safety. This was true in a post-9/11 world and now even more true in a post-COVID world. 

These are systemic shifts and the effects are widespread. The twin dragons of rising prices and inflation threaten our retirement savings and our children’s futures. Rents and housing costs increase while wages stagnate at 1990 levels. Yet most of us persevere. But for an increasing number of us the question becomes, for how long?

Yes, all of this affects my sleep, and then there’s the war in Ukraine. Both of my maternal grandparents were Ukrainians. As the oldest grandchild I was close to them. I ate their food, learned to speak a few words of their language, adopted their work ethic and appreciated their gratitude for what our country had given them. And I listened to their stories. They married young. My grandmother was a singer. My grandfather had been a Cossack impressed into the Polish army not once but twice. After defecting the first time and almost dying of influenza he was saved by a farmer’s wife in Poland who hid him in a hayloft and nursed him back to health. I also learned how stubborn they could be, and how conservative; I share their history but we are not the same.

I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to understand the buildup to the war. For millennia Ukraine has been an envied and actively contested region. Before the Second World War Stalin’s agricultural reforms in the early 1930s ravaged Ukraine, the holodomor starved and killed 3.5 million Ukrainians. With the fall of the Soviet Union the country became independent in 1991, and the new government, seeing the country as more European rather than Eurasian, turned to the West.

The first two presidents, Kravchuk and Kuchma were pro-European. The third, Yanukovych, pivoted back to Russia which ultimately sparked public discontent, which led to a controversial election between Yanukovych and Yushchenko. Yushchenko’s followers took to the streets in the Orange Revolution (orange after Yushchenko’s campaign colours). Another election was called and Yushchenko was declared the winner and assumed the presidency in January of 2005. Under Yushchenko the country descended into political chaos. His government lasted a year before another election was called in early 2007. Yanukovych again won, but Yushchenko formed a coalition as president with the runner up, Tymoshenko, as prime minister. The coalition lasted a year before collapsing, then re-establishing with third party support, hanging on until 2009.

In 2010 Yanukovych retook the presidency. Following the political upheaval over the past few years, government corruption was rampant. Relations with Russia improved, resulting in the reduction of Russian gas transit fees through Ukraine, and the abandonment of the goal of joining NATO. In 2013, as the Ukrainian parliament was moving toward formalizing relationships with the EU, Yanukovych bowed to pressure from Moscow, stalling the process—while walking a fine line between building economic bridges to Europe and reassuring Russia. Ultimately, the situation unraveled, with help from American and Russian interference. Protests broke out, and the Maidan Revolution (aka Revolution of Dignity) ended in the ouster of Yanukovych.

The Obama-Biden administration, through Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, meddled in the 2014 election, trying to secure an anti-Russian president. When advised that the EU would not like her choice, her famously leaked response was “fuck the EU”. Her choice, the anti-Russian Yatsenyuk was installed.

It was at this point that Hunter Biden was hired at $1 million a year for consulting services and a seat on the board at Burisma Holdings (controlling Burisma energy). A year later US Vice President Joe Biden handling the Ukraine portfolio for the Obama administration would release $1 billion in funding to the Ukraine government.

Yatsenyuk took office just as separatist pro-Russians in the east began rebelling. The Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and Russia became actively repatriated Crimea—justified by a Russian-funded public referendum. The US responded by applying economic sanctions on Russia. The eastern states of Donetsk and Lugansk declared themselves independent republics.

In May, 2014 Ukrainian billionaire Petro Petroshenko won the next election in a landslide victory, pledging to build stronger connections to the EU. The US subsequently stepped up with a $5.4 billion commitment in aid and weapons to support the Ukraine government, along with another $3 billion in loan guarantees. Full civil war broke out in eastern Ukraine resulting in over 9,000 lives lost and 200,000 people displaced in the Donbass region. By 2018 the Ukrainian economy was in the tank.


Poroshenko continued Ukraine’s shift west. In 2019 the Ukrainian constitution was rewritten, enshrining the alignment with the EU. Soon after, in 2019, political novice and popular Ukrainian actor Volodymr Zelensky was elected president, and began formalizing membership in the EU and NATO, with strong support from the US.

The rest we all know. Putin, bristling at the possibility of NATO and missiles on Russia’s doorstep, amassed an army on the border, and when the Zelensky government refused to back down, ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Family fleeing to Poland from the Ukraine. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

This is not the story I wanted to write. The story I wanted to write would deal with the Russian gas pipeline through Ukraine, the conflicts between the two countries over transit fees, Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas, the US’s ongoing expansion of NATO towards Russian borders, Canada’s role, the militarized neo-Nazi element in Ukraine, including the Azov militia making up a significant portion of Ukraine’s military, and more. So much more.

A fuzzy black and grey junco has landed on a snowy branch outside my window.

Big questions hang over all of us. How will this invasion unfold? How will it affect our future? Is it still possible to negotiate a peace? What is Putin after?

Two things bear consideration: the recent past and the immediate future. The past Chechen War tells us a lot about Putin’s methods. He has little regard for the loss of lives, not for enemy combatants, civilians or his own troops. He is willing to press on despite lack of popular support in his own country. Once committed, he is not inclined to negotiate. And he is militarily cautious. He is willing to take whatever time he feels necessary to achieve a victory. On the other hand, at the end of a conflict he is willing to withdraw, and allow a reasonable amount of local autonomy, but always with reservations. These patterns may reapply themselves in Ukraine; time will tell. In the end the scale of devastation in Chechnya was shocking. Tens of thousands were killed including thousands of Russian soldiers, and almost half of the population displaced. Now, consider that the population of Chechnya is less than 2 percent of Ukraine’s total population—and picture the potential effects of this much larger new war.

China is the immediate future. Russia and China have just approved a 50 billion cubic meter gas pipeline from Russia through Mongolia to China to bypass Western sanctions. This gives Russia a back door lifeline, literally, but at what cost? China has been busy forging economic alliances around the globe, while Russia has become increasingly more isolated internationally. China also depends on its massive trade with the US and the West for its economic growth. In the short term China is unlikely to directly challenge the US’s military and economic hegemony, at least until it has fully established alternative markets. China is playing a long game. Russia does not have the resources or the staying power to play the long game. In the same way that the US and the EU are allowing the Ukraine to become the killing floor separating Russia and the West, Russia itself might become the ultimate killing floor separating China and the West—and my belief is China would not intervene.

These future projections are not reassuring. The potential collateral cost on lives and the environment is unimaginable. Nuclear war is an ever-present possibility. Perhaps war is a permanent feature of the collective human psyche. Perhaps this is just who and what we are. Wealth and power are the addictions that drive us, drive us into fighting each other to the death on the ground. For what? Just to repeat the cycle over again while the rich get richer and the poor even poorer?

It’s still dark outside. The water is calm on the bay in front of the house. For now.