Zelenksyy : Mensch

A piece I wrote 2 days after invasion in 2022

Water keeps leaking out of my eyes. It’s not tears, it’s really not. I am recovering from an eye operation – quite brilliant – but that is for another day. It just means that I have been in bed watching the war in Ukraine, pretty much non-stop.

Sometimes the water coming out of my eyes may be actual tears because who cannot be moved by what we are seeing? But even these tears are hard to evaluate as they are sometimes of sadness, sometimes awe, sometimes fear, sometimes just gratitude for the way that ordinary people can be.

I am no expert in Ukrainian history or military strategy. Like everyone else I simply hope . This is a conflict in which it is not hard to pick a side and that is why both the Hard Right and Hard Left Russian symps from the Stop The War simpletons to Farage et al now look so pathetic. All the Right Side of History Boys tweeting about buffer zones and NATO evil and ‘what about Yemen?’ look ever more dumb.

If everything is the fault of “the West” then at some point you have to answer the question “ How do you deal with  Vladamir Putin?”

Of course Putin saw we would not intervene in Syria. We were loath to intervene because of Iraq.  Of course he saw the absolute moral void that meant “the West” scrambled out of Afghanistan  leaving women and girls especially, to the fate that we had at one stage promised to save them from . Of course, war in Europe is not so new. Remember Bosnia? It is abundantly clear that somehow a generation born in the late 80s just doesn’t. I certainly do through both work and personal contacts. The trauma of the Balkans should never be minimised, but it has been already, somehow.

I have heard people saying we only care about Ukraine because it is white people.  Or Christians. Not so. We cared about Muslims, too late perhaps in the Balkans but maybe they were the wrong type of Muslims for the Stop the War crew as they just didn’t fit the stereotype some have . So please people if you don’t know , just go away and read about Srebrenica .

What is emerging from this current invasion are the big things: tectonic plates shifting in the new world order.  The old rules are now being contested. Is America in decline as Russia and China rise? Always remember how actually small the Russian economy is ,though. Germany had changed its mind and is now supplying weaponry to Ukraine.  The idea that war would not be hand to hand, street to street but only ever a video game . Really? All is change. All is uncertain. The lines drawn in the sand are blowing away.

But who would have thought out of all this that we suddenly see leadership that is so impressive, one would have thought it from a movie? I am talking about Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  (There are arguments over the spelling. This is his preferred spelling and what it says in his passport. )

His story is too improbable to be true. He was a comic actor who  played the part of a history teacher in a TV series Servant of The People. His character was always ranting about corruption, the rants went viral and somehow he becomes President. This actor, who was not a professional politician was then elected and became actual President.  Fiction became reality.

Ruth is Stranger than Richard ,as Robert Wyatt put it.

Zelenskyy had already , in retrospect put his money where his mouth was and donated money  to the Ukrainian army in 2014 , the last time Putin staged an invasion. His production company was in Kyiv. He speaks Russian and Ukrainian. He is a Jew. This makes Putin’s remarks about Nazi’s running the Ukraine government even more disgusting. Zelenskyy  not only saw a future for Ukraine that encompassed all these identities, he embodied it. He hasn’t always been popular and as troops massed on the  borders he was still shrugging off the threat of invasion.

Now, it’s happening and my god he struts his “hour upon the stage” in a way that is quite magnificent.  America offered him an exit for he will undoubtedly be executed by Putin. We are used to watching leaders flee. Long before the Taliban reached Kabul the Afghan president was on a helicopter out of the hell he knew was coming.  Zelenskyy was offered safe passage but  asked not for a ride but “ammunition”. “The fight is here” he told the Americans. He is said to have told European leaders they will probably never see him again.

His speeches are extraordinary. Yes, they are speeches of resistance. But also heart. He is addressing ordinary Russians. He pops up on social media, exhausted but defiant. No ,he had not fled. Here he is. His people do him proud . For all the tanks and all the poor Russian boys sent to fight a war in which they had been told they would be welcomed as liberators, the Ukrainian people are organising themselves into an incredible resistance.

A bank manager I saw, enlisting herself into the army said she had not a lot of experience of weaponry but was a quick learner.  The people huddled in stations, some fleeing, others leaning how to make Molotov cocktails : an old woman praying alone in front of church ignoring the sirens: the giving of sunflower seeds to Russian solders so that when they die sunflowers will grow on Ukrainian soil . What mettle. The man kneeling in front of tanks, the young soldier giving his life to blow up a bridge or those men  telling the Russians to go “fuck themselves” rather than surrender. This is something.

I am in awe at the bravery of these people and their love for their land.  For it is their land.

There are huge global issues here and then there is one man who with authentic  eloquence captures something so essential.

Zelenskyy : "They tell you that we hate Russian culture. How can one hate a culture? Any culture? Neighbours always enrich each other’s cultures. However, we are not part of one whole. You cannot swallow us up. We are different. But this difference is not a reason for enmity. We want to determine our own course and build our own history: peacefully, calmly, and honestly.”

And there he is on the streets. And where is Putin? Hiding from Covid? Hiding from fear of being poisoned by one of his own? Ordering more protestors in his own country be locked up. Many ordinary Russians do not want this war. Much of their social media has been cut off but let us hope they hear Zelenskyy talking to them in their shared language.

When I was singing his praises on Twitter ,a gay mate of mine said maybe it would inappropriate to say it but Zelenskyy “is hot”. He certainly is.

How can it be inappropriate ever to say courage is hot? Because it is. So I am saying it loud and clear now while he is still here.

God knows how long he has got but Zelenkyy what a mensch you are.

A total mensch.