Ukraine Fights for Its Truth
Roger Cohen, NYT
MARCH 6, 2014
BOSTON — Let’s sweep away Vladimir Putin’s mind games — the supposedly threatened Russian bases, the supposedly threatened ethnic Russians, the supposed humanitarian crisis, the supposed illegitimacy of the government in Kiev (with its 82 percent parliamentary backing) — and be clear that the fight in Crimea is about a simple issue: the freedom of Ukraine to set its course as a European democracy governed by laws rather than an authoritarian, undemocratic, lawless society of Moscow-backed oligarchs in the “fraternal” grasp of Russia.
That would be the fraternity of Budapest (1956), Prague (1968), Kabul (1979) and Grozny (1999).
Ukraine shares with the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia the fate — eloquently described by the historian Timothy Snyder in his powerful book “Bloodlands” — of being among the worst killing fields of World War II, bounced back and forth between Stalin and Hitler. Now the spread eastward of NATO and the European Union — the greatest of post-Cold-War achievements — has allowed the Baltic states to begin disentangling truth from lies in the carnage of their histories.
That is what westward-gazing Ukrainians are fighting for at the most basic level: truth over lies. They want a life based on facts rather than fabrications, institutions rather than provocations, laws rather than cash-filled envelopes.
(More here.)
MARCH 6, 2014
BOSTON — Let’s sweep away Vladimir Putin’s mind games — the supposedly threatened Russian bases, the supposedly threatened ethnic Russians, the supposed humanitarian crisis, the supposed illegitimacy of the government in Kiev (with its 82 percent parliamentary backing) — and be clear that the fight in Crimea is about a simple issue: the freedom of Ukraine to set its course as a European democracy governed by laws rather than an authoritarian, undemocratic, lawless society of Moscow-backed oligarchs in the “fraternal” grasp of Russia.
That would be the fraternity of Budapest (1956), Prague (1968), Kabul (1979) and Grozny (1999).
Ukraine shares with the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia the fate — eloquently described by the historian Timothy Snyder in his powerful book “Bloodlands” — of being among the worst killing fields of World War II, bounced back and forth between Stalin and Hitler. Now the spread eastward of NATO and the European Union — the greatest of post-Cold-War achievements — has allowed the Baltic states to begin disentangling truth from lies in the carnage of their histories.
That is what westward-gazing Ukrainians are fighting for at the most basic level: truth over lies. They want a life based on facts rather than fabrications, institutions rather than provocations, laws rather than cash-filled envelopes.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home