Almost three weeks into the Ukrainian nightmare. I seem to get used to it. What else can you do?
Truth? Who knows. There is a documentary about Donbass, made by a French journalist, Anne-Laure Bonnel, whose work is currently used by right-wing sympathizers of the Russian aggression. Basically, she went to Donbass in 2016, and she talked to people, Russian speakers, under the attack of Ukrainian artillery. So, that’s what Putin means by genocide against ethnic Russians.
You can view it on YouTube. It’s in French, but subtitles in a few languages are available, English among them.
Truth? Is that how it began? Ukrainians shelling Russians on their own territory? Ethnic cleansing? Is that it?
I forgot how it all began, and I doubt that it could have been clarified, at a time when it was not yet in focus of people like me.
Wikipedia’s War in Donbass page roots the conflict in 2014, when the Maidan protests, the Orange Revolution, toppled the elected government.
I remember that time. There were a lot of concerning things, and the protagonists of the protests looked much like irresponsible adventure-seekers. Was that the truth?
One of the most interesting actors in Ukraine was Yulia Tymoshenko. I remember her as charismatic, but in a disturbing way radical and deeply divisive. Well, and that was before I looked into the Wikipedia page. Look for yourself: what can you learn? Was her influence positive? Did it directly lead to the current situation? Did she act responsible or was she reckless? Honest or corrupt? Perpetrator or victim? I can’t tell.
History is a mess. Blaming other people always succeeds, because there is always something unjust in the past, and never ever is every wrong made right. The very question of how that all did start is wrong. In reality nothing ever really started. Everything developed from something that already was, and in an imperfect world, in every phase along the way, someone took advantage of someone else, creating a reason for future hate.