This is your political update. Let us first acknowledge that we are all afraid of what may happen in the coming days, weeks and months, and that this is a perfectly rational response to the unpredictable future actions of an irrational dictator with almost unlimited power at his disposal.
We do not know what is going to happen in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and there are a lot of things for which we can not logically prepare and to which there is no adequate personal or familial response: we are not technically in a war zone, but we share vicariously the sense of helplessness and terror of those who are. The war is not in our streets, but we all feel a lot less safe.
It is very important that we acknowledge our fears, that we hold them up to the light and examine them critically. Fear serves a purpose: it sharpens our survival instinct. Faced with a situation that causes terror, animals have three responses: fight, flight or freeze. We’re probably running through an alternating cycle of all of them now. We want to run away – but from what, and where to? We want to fight – but adrenaline is exhausting and what enemy do we attack? We want to freeze, paralysed by our fear, but what then?
I want to stress again that these are all natural responses to an unnatural situation. Our responses themselves are nothing to be afraid of: like the pains of labour (sorry, men, this analogy will mean nothing to you) we need to breathe through the waves, and hold on until it’s over.
Then we need to focus on what we can affect about this situation, and what we can’t.
We can’t affect whether Putin uses nuclear weapons. That is our ultimate fear, isn’t it, that this will unleash World War III and end in a nuclear holocaust? We cannot affect that – but we can trust, and believe that there is a lot of work going on to avoid that eventuality, and that Russia as a whole does not want it. Ultimately, Putin is only one man. There are people who can, and will, decide to stop him, and judging from the expressions on the faces of General Shogyu, head of the Russian Ministry of Defence, and General Gerasimov, the Russian Armed Forces Chief who were both present when Putin was televised giving the order to move to a heightened state of nuclear alert, those people are not far away. The situation is not without hope, and we must not give up hope and slide into despair.
No, we cannot affect this situation, but we have to understand that there are people close to Putin who can. Not everyone in Russia is an insane dictator, and I strongly doubt if the generals themselves have a death wish. It’s one thing to order green recruits into a hopeless situation while you’re sitting safely on your office, it’s quite another to be sitting in Moscow understanding that a nuclear attack on Ukraine would involve their own deaths.
And just especially for those of you whom I already know are going to use the “ah, but they’re all fiercely loyal to Putin, he has them by the short and curlies, they’ll never go against him, we’re all doomed” argument, I remind you that beautiful and unlikely and hopeful things do happen. One of those things is a man who voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian version of the film becoming Ukraine’s president and turning out to be an unlikely hero. Another is the young, scared, Russian POWs captured by Ukraine being treated in Ukraine’s hospitals, and given mobile phones so that they can call their frantic mother’s back in Russia who had no idea that their sons had been sent to die. Ukraine has, in fact, set up a website so Russian mothers can find out if their sons are alive or dead. Russia has blocked it, but I’m sure the Ukrainians are resourceful enough to set it up again soon.
There is still much good in the world. There is still much hope. Let us not add to entropy by allowing ourselves to despair.
So what can we affect?
We can prepare ourselves as well as we can. We can carry out our small duties in a dutiful and steadfast way so that around ourselves and our friends and families, we create an oasis of peace. We can speak to our families, friends and neighbours, so they are informed, and we can correct misconceptions and misinformation where we find them. We can act politically through our elected representatives: even though many of them are useless and spineless, it does not excuse us from raising our voices to let them know how we feel. We can support Ukrainians we know and charities that aid Ukraine. And we can care for ourselves so that we remain strong to care for others when it is needed.
Other than that, there is nothing we can do, except to take each day as it comes, to be thankful for small mercies, and mindful of small joys, and to wait while this theatre plays out to an ending we cannot predict. In other words, we can do exactly what all small people everywhere throughout the centuries have done in the face of the threats of war: we can hang in there, hope to survive another day, and if our end comes, meet it with what dignity and courage we may.
There is no point in wasting energy on useless “what ifs”. Doing so saps our strength, and diminishes our courage and paralyses us from doing what we need to do. There is no point endlessly wondering what will happen next, or doom scrolling social media, or fretting about what may happen or may not. We can keep informed, prepare what we can, and not give the aggressor the satisfaction of robbing us of living our best lives before we die. Which, when you think about it, since all lives come to an end, is what we do most of the time, anyway.
And now, about that news: here’s a quick update from the Guardian:
“Russia-Ukraine talks on border began at 9am GMT.
Russia is interested in coming to an agreement that is in the interests of both sides at talks with Ukraine, Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky claimed on Monday, as officials prepare to meet near the border.
Medinsky said talks were expected to begin at 12pm local time (9am GMT).
Ukraine had agreed to talks with Russia “without preconditions”, the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday.
Zelenskiy did not sound hopeful of success, but said: “Let them try so that later not a single citizen of Ukraine has any doubt that I, as president, tried to stop the war.”
Recent British intelligence appears to corroborate with a recent report from Ukraine’s military that Russia had “slowed down” its offensive. Britain’s defence ministry has said Russia’s advance on Kyiv has been slowed by logistical failures and fierce Ukrainian resistance.
The Russian central bank has increased interest rates to 20% from 9.5% after the rouble plunged up to 40% on Monday in the wake of western sanctions.
The UK government announced a slew of measures “to prohibit any UK natural or legal persons from undertaking financial transactions involving the Russian central bank, the Russian national wealth fund, and the country’s ministry of finance”.
Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook, said a hacking group used Facebook to target a handful of public figures in Ukraine, including prominent military officials, politicians and a journalist.
The Russian rouble plunged nearly 30% to an all-time low versus the US dollar on Monday as markets opened for trading on the first day after western nations announced punishing economic sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The US stepped up the flow of weapons to Ukraine, announcing on Sunday it will send Stinger missiles as part of a package approved by the White House.
A referendum in Belarus on Sunday reportedly approved a new constitution renouncing the country’s non-nuclear status at a time when the former Soviet republic has become a launchpad for Russian troops invading Ukraine, Russian news agencies report.
A US official believes Belarus is preparing to send soldiers into Ukraine in support of the Russian invasion. The Washington Post spoke to an unnamed US administration official on Sunday evening who said the deployment could begin as soon as Monday.
An update from Ukraine’s interior ministry late last night said 352 Ukrainian civilians have so far been killed during Russia’s invasion, including 14 children.The ministry said a further 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded.
Blasts were heard in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and in the major city of Kharkiv early on Monday morning, Ukraine’s state service of special communications reported. Meanwhile, about 150km north-east of Kyiv in Chernihiv, a missile reportedly hit a residential building in the centre of the city, causing a fire to break out, the agency added.”
And a little further evidence that Putin may end up being toppled from within. (Guardian)
“As Moscow’s economy appears to be going into meltdown, all European airspace is closed to Russian airlines, sanctions are proliferating, and Russian oligarchs are moving their superyachts out the harm’s way, it’s worth recalling a key theory of how authoritarian leaders hold on to power.
This theory – known as “coup-proofing” – was popularised by Edward Luttwak in his book Coup D’Etat: A Practical Handbook.
The essence of Luttwak’s argument is that non-democratic leaders require other tools than simply coercion to coup-proof their regimes. Crucially that includes securing broader support among financial, political and security elites by sharing the spoils and prestige.
In the Russian context it’s always been clear that there are enormous financial benefits to supporting Putin for a small circle. But the benefits that a lot of other individuals lower down the food chain have enjoyed are now seriously under threat.”
Greed has been a critical motivator for those who have supported Putin. Paradoxically, it may be our best hope.
Don’t despair. Let’s keep on keeping on, and support each other kindly: we’ll all be the better for it.