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The Situation: A View From Kyiv -- Benjamin Wittes - Lawfare
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-situation--a-view-from-kyivThat ridiculous feeling of coming from a society that is endeavoring to destroy itself to visit a society that is working to preserve itself.
. . .
On Saturday I got on an airplane, and on then another airplane, then on a train, and then an overnight train, to come to a country whose situation depends pervasively on The Situation.
I arrived in Ukraine on Monday morning and will be here for a couple of weeks: meeting with people, learning about the war, visiting friends, and getting a window on a society which I have only seen through a series of keyholes.
The Situation here is very far away--and yet very close.
Far away in the sense that ICE raids are far less salient than the air raids that regularly knock out power and heating to millions of people; in the sense that the buffoonery the President gets up to in Davos operates as a kind of distant dark comedy playing in the background, not an up-close horror show transfixing people. There is a very different horror show playing close up.
And yet close in the sense that few countries' fates are more indelibly tied up with The Situation than Ukraine's. Ever since Trump's perfect phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky during Trump's first term in office, Ukraine's ability to defend itself--and I mean that in the most literal, physical, existential, day-to-day sense of the phrase--has been tied to Trump's political fortunes and whims. Whether the country receives robust American support, whether and to what extent America embraces the foe that is trying to destroy Ukraine, whether Ukraine is subject to extortion from its patron over mineral rights or capitulative peace plans, whether the United States blows up the larger alliances Ukraine aspires to join to secure its future are all functions of The Situation, after all. And Ukrainians watch American developments not merely with the horrified fascination of the rest of the world but with the immediate sense that these developments may directly affect their lives.
. . .
On Saturday I got on an airplane, and on then another airplane, then on a train, and then an overnight train, to come to a country whose situation depends pervasively on The Situation.
I arrived in Ukraine on Monday morning and will be here for a couple of weeks: meeting with people, learning about the war, visiting friends, and getting a window on a society which I have only seen through a series of keyholes.
The Situation here is very far away--and yet very close.
Far away in the sense that ICE raids are far less salient than the air raids that regularly knock out power and heating to millions of people; in the sense that the buffoonery the President gets up to in Davos operates as a kind of distant dark comedy playing in the background, not an up-close horror show transfixing people. There is a very different horror show playing close up.
And yet close in the sense that few countries' fates are more indelibly tied up with The Situation than Ukraine's. Ever since Trump's perfect phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky during Trump's first term in office, Ukraine's ability to defend itself--and I mean that in the most literal, physical, existential, day-to-day sense of the phrase--has been tied to Trump's political fortunes and whims. Whether the country receives robust American support, whether and to what extent America embraces the foe that is trying to destroy Ukraine, whether Ukraine is subject to extortion from its patron over mineral rights or capitulative peace plans, whether the United States blows up the larger alliances Ukraine aspires to join to secure its future are all functions of The Situation, after all. And Ukrainians watch American developments not merely with the horrified fascination of the rest of the world but with the immediate sense that these developments may directly affect their lives.
. . .