Ukrainians Are Not Afraid of “Poking the Bear”
By Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed
In November, Christiane Amanpour, a CNN chief international anchor, interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska. By the end of the conversation, Christiane Amanpour says she knows that the Ukrainians are not afraid of “poking the bear” while others are afraid of Russia and of what Russia might do. In his response, President Zelensky points out that Russia feeds off these fears and this is a mistake that has not been corrected for decades. Olena Zelenska adds that Ukraine has been under Russia’s pressure for so long: the centuries of the Russian Empire and then the decades of the Soviet Union—it has ceased to be scary.
How did the Ukrainians learn not to be afraid of “poking the bear”?
The Ukrainians know the Russians too well to be scared and to tiptoe today around potential clashes not to provoke Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin successfully reintegrated into today’s Russia the imperialist and colonial rhetoric of the Russian Empire. Not only does he play the card of Russians and Ukrainians “being one people” that builds on the narratives perpetuated since the Russian Empire, but also rejects Ukraine’s sovereignty which was internationally recognized in 1991. In his recent statements, he reiterates that Ukraine gave up its sovereignty to NATO and the West. As always, Ukraine, in Putin’s rhetoric, is never a real political player; being artificially created, it had always remained under the control of external forces. According to Putin, after Ukraine got confused and turned away from Moscow, it became ruled by “the collective West.” With these statements, Putin attempts to impose on Ukraine the worldviews that became deeply entrenched in Russia: Russia is under a constant attack emanating from other countries in the West; therefore, it has to protect itself. If Ukraine, according to Putin, finally understands that it is being manipulated by the West, it will be able to see Russia as a true friend and savior and will welcome the Russian presence and protection. The people of Ukraine, however, have experienced Russia’s “friendly grip” long enough and they will not be misled by this decoy.
Ninety years ago, Stalin and his supporters approved the decisions that led to the death of millions in Ukraine. The 1932-1933 Holodomor (“death by starvation”) is a nationwide atrocity that the Soviet regime tried to silence and erase, precluding any possibility of making it public in both national and international communities. Until today, Russia does not recognize the Holodomor as a man-made famine organized by Stalin and his collaborators against the Ukrainians.
Today, as Russia terrorizes the civilians in Ukraine by repeated massive missile attacks targeting critical infrastructure, the Ukrainians turn the word “Holodomor” (death by starvation) into “Kholodomor” (death by freezing). As a result of the barrage of missile strikes, millions of
Ukrainians are left without electricity, water, and communication services.
The Holodomor in Ukraine was followed by the Great Terror which resulted in the physical extermination of many representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. In Ukraine, the 1930s are marked with the “Executed Renaissance” which aborted the cultural revival in Ukraine after the suffocating policies imposed by the Russian Empire. The Soviet Union was falsely based on the idea of equality—the Soviet regime imposed the superiority of Russia, its language and culture on all Soviet republics.
Russia continues to conduct mass deportations in the areas which are still occupied by Russian troops. Children are transported to Russia under the disguise of rehabilitation and medical care. Russia has engaged in mass deportations in the past: the 1944 deportation of Crimean Tatars, organized by Stalin, led to the death of many Tatars and resulted in a drastic change in the population composition in Crimea. The same tactic can be observed today: not only does Russia attempt to depopulate the occupied areas but assimilate the deported residents into Russians. After Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, Russians were encouraged to move to the peninsula.
So, what do the people of Ukraine know about their northeastern neighbor that keeps their defiance against the aggressor unfaltering? Russia has long-standing authoritarian tendencies and chauvinistic sentiments leading to both cultural and territorial expansionism. The sense of superiority, which covers its inferiority complex, keeps maintaining Russia’s desire to force the neighboring countries into the world of the past in which the legacy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union dominates and dictates the presence. And to satisfy this desire, Russia will embrace the utmost violence, including mass murders, rapes, torturing, intimidation, deception and mass deportations that Ukraine experiences firsthand today again, and which Ukraine keeps resisting as it did in the past.