Ukraine marks 82nd anniversary of Babyn Yar killings by Nazi forces

Reuters
Updated Fri, September 29, 2023 






Ukraine's President Zelenskiy commemorates victims of Nazi massacre in Kyiv

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine marked Friday's 82nd anniversary of a mass killing, mainly of Jews, in Nazi-occupied Kyiv with an appeal not to forget an event that it said provided the moral basis for opposition to "Russian aggression".

Nazi forces shot dead nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children on Sept. 29-30, 1941 at Babyn Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv, after occupying the Ukrainian capital - which was then part of the Soviet Union - during World War Two.

Over the next two years, many more people were killed at Babyn Yar. Most were Jews but the victims also included Roma and non-Jewish Ukrainians, Poles and Russians.

"It is very important to always remember history, not to forget. Because 'Never again!' are not empty words," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after leaving a candle at a monument of a Jewish menorah erected at the site to honour the victims.

He spoke with a small group of people gathered at the monument including relatives and descendants of the victims and rabbis from Ukrainian cities.

"All our days of commemoration have been made more emotional by the war. It has sharpened our feelings, opened up our wounds. We have become more sensitive to justice, to pain, to memory, to love," said a serviceman called Yurii with the call sign "Seff" as he took part in an annual march to monument.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry urged the world to prevent such killings happening again and drew attention to Russia's invasion of Ukraine 19 months ago.

"The memory of Babyn Yar and the slogan 'Never again' are the moral basis of humanism and opposition to any forms of aggressive-chauvinistic ideologies, in particular, Russian aggression against Ukraine," it said in a statement.

Zelenskiy is Ukraine's first ethnically Jewish president, although he is not publicly religious. Most of his grandfather's family was killed during World War Two.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022, saying the goal of the "special military operation" was to de-nazify and demilitarise its neighbour. Kyiv and its Western allies have accused Russia of an unprovoked land grab.

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka and Stefaniia Bern, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Philippa Fletcher)

The Truth about Ukraine and the Jews


Bernard-Henri Lévy
Thu, January 26, 2023

A rabbi walks past a monument commemorating the victims of Babyn Yar, one of the biggest single massacres of Jews during the Holocaust, in Kyiv on Sept. 29, 2022. 

Credit - Oleksii Chumachenko—SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

There’s a kind of background noise.

A nasty little music orchestrated by Putinist propaganda and its band of useful idiots.

It’s the idea, broadly, that Ukraine at war and martyred is also one of Europe’s most incorrigibly antisemitic countries.

So, once and for all: What’s the story with Ukraine and anti-Semitism?

The truth is, of course, that Ukraine in the ’30s and ’40s of the 20th century was a bloodland for Jews.

Soviet Ukraine, or Ukraine Sovietized, or, more precisely, Ukraine buffeted between Sovietism and Hitlerism, was one of the theaters of the Shoah by bullets, with, counting just the ravines of Babi Yar, 33,771 Jewish men, women, and children forced to dig the pits where their warm corpses would be piled, still shivering, not quite dead.

And when I say “Soviet” or “Sovietized” it’s not to minimize the part played in the massacre by compatriots, in the countryside or the cities—but it is to recall that there have been, and there are, two Ukraines.

One that was yet to exist as a free and sovereign nation; which the Ukrainian-born Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko depicted, in his requiem to the dead of Babi Yar, as that of the “barroom regulars” thirsting for the “blood of pogroms,” stinking “of vodka and onion,” and, when the victims, “kicked to the floor,” begged for mercy, encouraging the assassins to “Beat the Yids, Save Russia!”—yes, Russia…

And then another Ukraine; the one that liberated herself from that Russia; the one that, since the onset of the U.S.S.R., then the Maidan Revolution, and then the invasion of Putin’s army, refuses the status of vassal, of the humble twinned servant, of the Cinderella of the tundra, that the invaders, drunk on their Lebensraum, wished to relegate her to; and the one that, having become this young free country, having irrevocably fallen in line with the democracies of Europe, is now turning the page on its past.

This Ukraine knows that she is one of the four countries to have counted, along with Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky and many others, the greatest number of Righteous Among the Nations.

This is the Ukraine of Uman, the city of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, where I filmed, for my upcoming film, Slava Ukraini, a rav, in a kind of echo of the Righteous, recounting how it was in his synagogue that the peasants of Cherkasy Oblast came to find refuge on the first days of the Russian attack.

Hasidic pilgrims sing and dance during the annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman, Ukraine, on Sept. 27, 2022

.Pete Kiehart—Redux

It’s the only country in the world where, on December 17, first day of Hanukkah, on the Maidan, that historic revolutionary square representing dignity and resistance, one could see the following: Hasidim raising a giant menorah; a whole people, starting with the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, joining in on the lighting of this flame; and the flame shining brightly atop a city bombarded and deprived of electricity—“the Russians send us ballistic missiles,” joked a rabbi. “We’ll send back Kabbalistic missiles!”

It’s the country of the Azov regiment, one of whose commanders, Ilya Samoilenko, survivor of the hell of Azovstal and soldier of limitless audacity, is just back from Israel. He went to Masada to replenish his well of strength to return to combat; and the image of this brave soul treading the hot stones of that shrine to Jewish resistance while in cold Ukraine it snows, the idea of a Ukrainian zealot clambering over herbs and the rubble of the Judean fortress millenary twice over, carrying, in his head, the destruction of Mariupol, the bombs and the ruin that defiled the basements of the steel plant where he held out, he too, 40 days, are extraordinary. Is this visit not the most scathing retort against the idiots who promise, contra the winds of History, to return Ukraine to its demons?

And this Ukraine is also—we can never repeat it enough—the homeland of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Churchillian president elected in a landslide, who is, also, a Jewish hero: the story of this descendant of survivors of the Shoah who had, at the outset, neither tanks, nor apparatus, nor apparatchiks to take on the Giant, but just his country’s hard-won liberty. Doesn’t it seem straight out of a Biblical tale?

In the face of the return of Goliath the Philistine, isn’t this the rebirth of little David, master of truth and war chief, an artist who knows how to sing, and is also an incomparable strategist, who finds ways to use only the intelligence of his muscles and his guile to oppose the invasion?

Isn’t this the story of Abraham rising up alone, according to the Midrash, to battle the armies of the five kings who hold Lot hostage?

And isn’t this Judah Maccabee sealing the resounding victory of the weak over the strong, the humble over the proud, the few over the many, and, in the end, over the false brilliance of the desecrated temple, the victory of the tiny oil lamp whose light is not that of power, but of exception?

Rabbi David Goldich blesses the wine during sabbath prayer at the Great Choral Synagogue in Kyiv on Dec. 10, 2022.Anastasia Vlasova—The Washington Post/Getty Images

A cunning trick of reason.

An adventure of memory.

But the fact, whether we like or not, remains.

History is not always a curse.

It is not the eternal return of resentments and crimes.

If there was ever a place, in this crazy war in front of Russian neo-fascism, barbarism, and terrorism, where one can hear the echo of the Jewish soul, it’s in Ukraine.

PUTIN'S TOTAL WAR
18 journalists killed so far during Russia's war on Ukraine

Local, foreign journalists continue to risk their lives to report from ground zero of war amid Russian attacks

News Service

April 06, 2022

AA

File photo

Local journalists and press members who flooded into Ukraine from around the world are risking their lives at every turn to report on the latest developments on the ground in the war-torn country.

Since Feb. 24, the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine, 18 journalists have been killed and 13 injured, Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said on Tuesday. During the war, it added, three journalists went missing, and eight journalists, including four women, were kidnapped.

Russia committed at least 148 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine in the first month of the war along, according to the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), an independent NGO backing the interests of civil society of Ukraine and, in particular, responsible journalists.

At least 10 TV towers were targeted by Russian forces, causing complete or temporary disruption of TV and radio broadcasting in eight regions of Ukraine, it said.

In addition, some 70 regional media outlets were forced to shut down across the country due to war-related threats, the institute said.

Last month, Russian troops attacked a team of Sky News reporters in their car. Several team members sustained bullet injuries but survived thanks to bulletproof vests.


- Maksim Levin

On April 2, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced on Twitter that photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Maksim Levin was found dead near the capital Kyiv where he was documenting "Russian war crimes." It said that unarmed Max, according to investigators, was killed by Russian troops with "two shots from firearms."

"He is survived by his wife and four children," the ministry added.

Levin, 40, who went missing on March 13 while working on the frontlines near the capital city, was found dead near the village of Huta-Mezhyhirska on April 1, according to Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser and former deputy interior minister, also confirmed on Telegram that the Ukrainian journalist went missing over two weeks ago when reporting in the Vishgorod district, an area of intense fighting.

Levin, accompanied by Oleksiy Chernyshov, a serviceman and former photographer, went to Huta-Mezhyhirska on March 13 "to document the consequences of the Russian aggression," said LB.ua, a Ukrainian media outlet Levin worked with for over a decade.

"They left the car and went in the direction of the village of Moshchun. Since then, there has been no contact with either man. Later, it became known that intense combat started in the area where Maksim Levin was going to work. The location and fate of Oleksiy Chernyshov are currently unknown," it added.

Levin was also working with the international media, with most of his documentaries concerning the war in Ukraine.


- Oksana Baulina

Russian journalist Oksana Baulina of investigative website The Insider was killed in Russian shelling of Kyiv on March 23 in the line of duty.

The outlet said in a statement that Baulina was reporting from Kyiv and the western city of Lviv, and she was killed when Russian troops shelled a residential area of Kyiv called Podil while she was filming the destruction.

She died "during a bombardment while carrying out an editorial assignment," it added.

The Insider, whose editorial offices are based in the Baltic nation of Latvia, said that another civilian also died in the shelling, while two others who were with Baulina were wounded and admitted to hospital.

Baulina was known for previously working for Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation.

She left Russia last year after authorities added Navalny's foundation to a list of extremist groups.


- Oleksandra Kuvshinova and Pierre Zakrzewski

Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshinova, 24, a Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist, died on March 14 together with Irish journalist Pierre Zakrzewski, 55, a cameraman for Fox News, when their car was struck by gunfire from Russian troops in the village of Horenka in the northwestern outskirts of the Kyiv region.

British correspondent Benjamin Hall, 39, was also injured in the attack.

Zakrzewski, a veteran cameraman, covered conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria for Fox News.

Kuvshynova had served as an on-the-ground consultant for Fox News.



- Brent Renaud

Another foreign journalist who was killed while covering the Russian war in Ukraine was Brent Renaud, an award-winning filmmaker and journalist.

The American journalist, 50, was killed near the Russian checkpoint in the town of Irpinin in the Kyiv region on March 13, according to police.

Renaud, a former New York Times contributor, was shot dead when, along with a colleague, he went to report the situation of refugees fleeing the region.

Brent was in the region to work for a TIME Studios project on the global refugee crisis.

Kyiv police chief Andriy Nebytov said the journalist was targeted by Russian soldiers, while his two colleagues were injured and taken to hospital by Ukrainian rescuers.

One of the injured journalists was identified as Colombian-American reporter Juan Arredondo.




- Viktor Dudar

Viktor Dudar, a 44-year-old journalist from the Lviv region, was shot dead in Mykolaiv, Ukraine's southern strategic port city on the Black Sea, on March 4.

He was a crime correspondent for Express, Ukraine's weekly newspaper, until he volunteered for the 2014-2015 war in the eastern Donbas region.

After becoming a reservist and returning from the war, the Ukrainian journalist took the paper's defense correspondent position.

Dudar, who in peacetime was a journalist, again joined the army to fight the advancing Russian forces with the start of Moscow's war.




- Yevhenii Sakun

Ukrainian cameraman Yevhenii Sakun, 49, who was working for LIVE TV, was killed on March 1 during a Russian rocket attack on the TV tower in Kyiv's Babyn Yar area.

When the missile hit the building, Sakun was working with his colleagues there.

His body was identified by his press card only.

Besides Sakun, four more people were killed and five others injured in a strike on a TV tower in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi district.




- Dilerbek Shakiro

Shakirov Dilerbek Shukurovych, a journalist for the information weekly Navkolo Tebe (Around You), was killed on Feb. 26, just two days after the war began.

He was shot dead from a car with an automatic weapon near the village of Zelenivka, a suburb of the southern city of Kherson.

The International Federation of Journalists on Twitter condemned the killing of the Ukrainian journalist.

The Russian war against Ukraine, which started on Feb. 24, has drawn international outrage, with the EU, US, and Britain, among others, implementing tough financial sanctions on Moscow.

At least 1,417 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 2,038 injured, according to UN estimates, with the true figure feared to be far higher.

More than 4.17 million Ukrainians have fled to other countries, with millions more internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency.

ISRAEL AGREES WITH PUTIN UKRAINE FULL OF NAZI'S

My Word: Zelensky’s misfired speech

The vast majority of Israelis watching Zelensky’s address understood where he was coming from, just not where he was going. Perhaps desperation and frustration overtook him.

By LIAT COLLINS
Published: MARCH 24, 2022 
Jerusalem Post

People in Tel Aviv’s Habima Square watch Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s video address to the Knesset on March 20.
(photo credit: CHEN LEOPOLD/FLASH90)


When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Knesset by Zoom on Sunday, he opened his mouth and shot himself in the foot. In his 12-minute impassioned speech, instead of wooing more Israeli support, Zelensky seemed to be turning Israel into the enemy. “Apathy kills,” he told the parliamentarians and the general public. But Israelis are far from apathetic. They’re sympathetic. Empathetic, even.

Very few Israelis have never run for shelter in a rocket attack. We look at the images of refugees streaming across borders, seeking safety, and we easily imagine how that feels. We don’t need a history lesson from Zelensky. And we don’t need false comparisons to the Holocaust. Or a reminder that when Israel has been attacked by would-be invading armies, we have nowhere to run. MKs from the mainly Arab Joint List, by the way, boycotted Zelenksy’s speech because of the longstanding ties to Russia of the communist-affiliated Hadash faction.

Zelensky wanted to address the Knesset, even though it was in recess and the plenum is undergoing renovations. Risking the wrath of Russia – with whom Israel does now effectively share a border, given its entrenchment in Syria – the government and Knesset Speaker Micky Levy agreed, after some deliberations. The speech was delivered via Zoom and broadcast live on television and radio, as well as to a large group of supporters gathered in front of a screen at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square. Thankfully, the MKs were muted. I have no doubt they would have had what to say. Watching in my living room, I also found myself at times infuriated by the tone and words of the Ukrainian leader and was talking back at him.

Let me repeat here, as I wrote in a column earlier this month, one thing is clear in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, are the bad guys, who launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign country. And Ukrainians, led heroically by Volodymyr Zelensky, are the victims, fighting for their freedom.

Zelensky is trapped between the devil and the deep Black Sea. He is literally fighting for his life and for his country. He is courageous. And he has chutzpah. Fighting back at Russia is more than justified, attacking Israel – even verbally – is not. Israel is overwhelmingly on his side, offering tons of humanitarian aid, setting up a field hospital, helping refugees cross borders to safety in neighboring countries and offering a safe haven here, particularly for Jews and those eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses Israeli Knesset, public, in this image from Tel Aviv's Habima Square, March 20, 2022. (credit: NOAM MOSKOVITZ/KNESSET)

The vast majority of Israelis watching Zelensky’s address understood where he was coming from, just not where he was going. Perhaps desperation and frustration overtook him.

Quoting Kyiv-born Golda Meir saying: “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise” was smart, although not for the first time, I wondered why Ukrainian-born former prime minister Levi Eshkol is so overlooked in comparison to Golda.

Mentioning Babyn Yar, the site where Nazis murdered at least 33,770 Jews over a two-day period, with the support of antisemitic Ukrainian collaborators, was less smart. And comparing the threat to Ukraine today to the Nazi actions against the Jews was simply wrong. Altogether, Zelensky, who is Jewish, seems to have misread where Israel stands on Holocaust analogies. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be compared to the Shoah. Russia is carrying out a barbaric atrocity; it is not committing systematic genocide aimed at killing every single Ukrainian.

Comparing the Russian invasion to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, while the West stood back, makes sense, but World War II and the Holocaust should not be considered synonymous. Incidentally, Zelensky earlier accused the Russians of deliberately attacking and destroying the Babyn Yar memorial, although this turned out to be incorrect.

“Ukrainians have made their choice 80 years ago. They rescued Jews. That is why the Righteous Among the Nations are among us. People of Israel, now you have such a choice,” Zelensky said. He should have rewritten his speech, rather than tried to rewrite history. Saying that the Ukrainian people helped save the Jews in the Shoah is not Holocaust denial, but Holocaust perversion, as a friend put it.

Making a direct plea for weapons, Zelensky said: “Everyone in Israel knows that your missile defense is the best... And you can definitely help us protect our lives, the lives of Ukrainians, the lives of Ukrainian Jews.”

It’s something I’ve heard and read many times since the start of the war last month. There is an expectation that Israel should provide Ukraine with the Iron Dome system. The Ukrainian ambassador in Israel has also turned that request into an outright demand.

It’s an emotional plea but not a practical one. Israel does not have Iron Dome systems to spare. Nor does it have spare stocks of missiles for it, particularly following the war last May when Hamas in Gaza launched thousands of rockets on Israeli civilians. The sophisticated systems do not operate themselves: They are only as good as the soldiers who activate them. Is Israel meant to place IDF soldiers on Ukrainian soil during the war? And how much protection could the Iron Dome provide the vast expanses of Ukraine, compared to tiny Israel? Also, Israel cannot risk an Iron Dome falling into Russian hands. Once they had finished analyzing exactly how it works, none of us would be safe again. Israel could not lend Ukraine the Iron Dome without explicit US approval but the US could choose to place Patriot missiles there without the permission of any other country. These are questions that should be put to Joe Biden and the rest of the West.

NO ONE should remain unmoved by the tragic plight of the refugees. The subject is also very much on Israeli minds, although opinion is divided. There are those like Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked who want to focus on the Jewish immigrants and people eligible under the Law of Return (with at least one Jewish grandparent). Others, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai, favor opening Israel’s borders to any Ukrainian who wants to come.

At the risk of suffering a talkback backlash, I am willing to come out in support of the former approach. Israel is the Jewish state, the Jewish home; supporting the immigration of Jews is part of its raison d’etre. Of course there are humanitarian exceptions that should be made, and Israel should continue to take in the direct descendants of Ukrainian Righteous Gentiles, those moral, courageous people who saved Jews in the Holocaust and were far less numerous than Zelensky would have us believe.

The threat by the Ukrainian ambassador to petition the High Court to allow open immigration strayed far from a diplomat’s job. Israel does not have a border with Ukraine. Every Ukrainian who arrives here, reportedly more than 13,500 so far, has come from another European country where they can legitimately claim refugee status.

As the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon has pointed out “Jews count as refugees, too.”

Israel is preparing for a wave of immigrants not only from Ukraine. As the Post’s Zvika Klein noted this week, some 4,000 people from Ukraine have immigrated to Israel since the start of the war and the Jewish Agency has received over 25,000 aliyah inquiries from Ukraine and neighboring countries. Jews in Russia, Belarus and elsewhere are also looking to move to Israel as their lives grow more precarious.

One reason Israel needs to tread carefully with Russia, apart from security reasons relating to Syria and Iran, is that Putin could potentially hold thousands of Jews hostage.

My heart goes out to the Ukrainian people and their president, but he pressed the wrong emotional buttons when he addressed Knesset members. As appeals go, Zelenksy’s speech was not very appealing. He was correct when he said: “You can mediate between countries but not between good and evil.” We all need to remember that the villain in this senseless war is Putin.

Amid Ukraine war, Russian official says six more nations need to be de-nazified

Amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a Russian official suggested that six more countries - Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - should be 'denazified'. As per NEXTA news organisation, the remarks were made by Moscow City Duma deputy officer.

Putin’s not a fascist, totalitarian or revolutionary – he’s a reactionary tyrant

THE CONVERSATION
Published: March 17, 2022 

Talk of a “new cold war” in this century began in the time between the war in Iraq and the global recession of 2008. It roughly coincided with the attention focused on the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by polonium-210 poisoning at the hands of Russians in London.

Such talk was quietly forgotten while the consequences of global recession played out. Europe and the United States were distracted by dealing with their own – self-imposed – problems: Trump, Brexit and a general upturn in support for anti-system political movements. But with the invasion of Ukraine, the topic has returned glaringly.

What language is helpful for shaping the crucial judgements now necessary? Much damage has been done to common political vocabulary in recent years. “Enemies of the people” is a Stalinist phrase, but was used to push through Britain’s extrication from the European Union. The frequently relied-on “populism” is a vague, all-too-muted descriptor. “Imperialism” has been stretched thin by over-censure of humanitarian liberals.

Today we see similar harm being done. A Guardian editorial recently described a “slide into totalitarianism” in Russia. Likewise, The Daily Telegraph published a comment piece: “Russia’s war on journalism is another step towards the totalitarian”. But Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not totalitarian. Neither accurate political understanding, nor suitably directed moral criticism, is best served by this framing.

Ideologically, totalitarianism has three markers: utopia, exaggerated trust in science, and revolutionary violence. What Putin retains from the Soviet era is not its utopianism but its late-period security obsession, via his personal background in the KGB.

He does not carry his belief in science into dogma. He is not – like Marx and Lenin were – interested in science as a grand legitimiser of historical vision: he is only interested in technologies of communication for the purposes of control. And his belief in violence is utilitarian and calculating (even if miscalculated in practice), rather than revolutionary and geared towards social renewal.

Totalitarianism today in Russia would need to be a “post-totalitarian totalitarianism”. The legacy of the original totalitarianism – thanks to inherited trauma of the Soviet era – is a population not enthused into grand, confident collectivism but far more cowed into suspicion, “self-isolation” and “state paternalism”. Repression, which has increased, is not actually a very specific marker of totalitarianism.

Read more: Putin's Russia: how the ex-KGB strongman has gradually turned the clock back to Soviet repression

Using clear terminology to represent the experience of people living under toxic regimes is important for thinking about the possibilities of dissent balanced by the pressures to conformism. But this must be done accurately.
Not fascism

Neither is Putin’s regime “fascist” by ideology. The appearance since the start of the invasion of the swastika-looking “Z” symbol on posters and people’s clothing (but to begin with on Russian tanks) has been widely reported. Historians have noted the revival of previously overlooked Russian-born fascist thinkers, such as Ivan Ilyin, whose remains Putin repatriated and reburied in 2008.

Putin’s people: a souvenir ship in Moscow displays the ‘Z’ symbol so popular among supporters of the invasion, alongside its architect, Vladimir Putin. EPA-EFE/Maxim Shipenkov

The reason the issue is on the table is Putin’s own claim to freeing Ukraine by “denazification”. This is laughable in itself, but richly relevant to this question of what kind of past political language will prosper in the present. Putin meets only one of the three criteria for ideological fascism: strong, ethnic nationalism, which is the basis for the solidarity of self-styled white nationalists abroad when they promote the “Z”.

Two other criteria for fascism are absent entirely. Putin’s policies do not glorify the state over the individual. And, as opposed to compelling public participation, Putin cautions people to stay out of public life – even, as a rule, the oligarchs his rule has indulged. Neither do his policies express “transcendence” (or going beyond present limits) – whereas recognisably fascist movements aim at creating “new men”. Re-embracing Russian Orthodox Christianity is one ideological sign to the contrary, since it look forwards not back.
Putin’s reactionary regime

Putin is really a “reactionary tyrant”. This reflects the structure of rule he has evolved, and also the main lines of his legitimising discourse. This discourse may not have taken root deeply, but is nonetheless present in the regime’s rhetoric. Like totalitarianism, like fascism, reactionism has three main ideological themes.

The first is decrying decadence – evident in Putin’s explicit anti-westernism. So Ukraine’s west-oriented leadership are portrayed as “drug addicts”, or the west is described as weak because it is effeminate.

The second feature is inventing conspiracy theories. Among others targets, Putin fulminates at a homosexual lobby, which is accused – by conflation with paedophiles – of conspiring to steal children. This has been brilliantly highlighted by the journalist and activist Masha Gessen.

Such stances explain why Putin has been appealing, not just for extreme “manosphere” white supremacists, but also for more “mainstream” western reactionaries attracted by an unapologetic social conservatism. Hence, in France, the praise for Putin from two hard-right presidential contenders, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, each of whom now has hastily tried to retract previous positions.

Fellow travellers? Putin with French far-right politician Marine Le Pen. 

EPA/Michael Klimentyev/Sputkin/Kremlin pool

The third feature is the hardest to spot. This feature is the indignation of a population group: its righteous anger, hitherto suppressed, but now liberated – and politically tapped. In western countries, indignation has had a common, anti-immigrant wellspring. And politicians have prospered by alleging the unacceptability of expressing white working-class anger in a “politically correct” time.

Putin also understands that he can win a significant number of people’s loyalty by recognising and stressing shared humiliations. His message is that – unlike citizens of other countries – his fellow Russian nationals have been denied access to an acceptable historical memory. Thanks to Stalinism, cold war defeat and Soviet Russia’s chequered record of anti-fascism (the minimising of Jewish suffering in preference for a broader tale of Soviet sacrifice), many Russians are unable to look back in pride.

Anti-fascism is a record Putin’s leadership continues to blot, even against the background of this complaint about burdensome memories. Witness the destruction of the Holocaust monument at Babyn Yar in Ukraine.

Putin is a reactionary tyrant. The tyranny language is important. Inside Russia, the vocalisation of conscience against him has been brave and points to the noblest traditions of resisting tyrants. Any meaningful ideas lack root. So, like Caesar to the gladiators entering the arena, Putin is what people on both sides of the war are being asked to die for.

Author

Richard Shorten
Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of Birmingham

Babyn Yar was his backyard. Now this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor has escaped Ukraine after a harrowing ordeal.

BY DINAH SPRITZER MARCH 17, 2022 

Evgeny Pavlovskiy and his son, Mykhailo Pavlovskiy, reunited in Warsaw

 after he struggled to leave Ukraine. (Courtesy From the Depths Foundation)

(JTA) — Before this month, the last time Evgeny Pavlovskiy left the Kyiv area was during World War II, when his Jewish family hid from the Nazis in Russia’s Ural Mountains.

At 95 and suffering from several serious ailments, he was content living alone just two houses away from the entrance to Babyn Yar, where the Nazis killed and buried more than 33,000 Jews on two days in 1941. When his son moved to Israel earlier this year, he decided to stay in his native land.

And when rumors of war began to swirl earlier this year, he was unmoved, like so many other Ukrainians who could not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin would attack their country.

“My father did not want to leave Ukraine no matter how hard I pressed,” said Mykhailo Pavlovskiy, who also goes by Moshe. “By the time I finally persuaded him, no one was around to help.”

Evgeny Pavlovskiy ultimately made three solo attempts to flee the Russian shelling and artillery. His journey to Poland, a drive that would have normally taken eight hours, lasted three days.

Pavlovskiy’s great escape represents the wartime resilience of both Jews and Ukrainians, two groups he identifies with full-heartedly. It also makes him likely to be the oldest refugee to have fled the war in Ukraine on his own, rather than alongside younger family or friends.

“I would like my story to help people and to inspire them,” Pavlovskiy said. “And I have another message, I want Russians to stop killing Ukrainians.” he pleaded. “They started World World III without realizing it, and now they are destroying the homes and lives of peaceful people. They should stop!”

RELATED: All of our ongoing Jewish Ukraine coverage

After war erupted in February, Mykhailo persuaded his dad that Russian saboteurs might invade his home and murder him.

Pavlovskiy loved his life in Ukraine despite his family’s history of trauma in the country. (Courtesy From the Depths Foundation)

So Pavlovskiy made an 11-hour journey by train from Kiev to Lviv, a trip that normally takes roughly six and a half hours.

Evacuation train cars from Kiev intended for six people are typically packed with twice as many passengers, who wait for hours and sometimes days with the hopes of boarding. They only have the clothes on their backs and personal items they can stuff in a small backpack or purse.

“The most difficult and heroic thing, for which I thank him every day, is that my father got on that evacuation train,“ said Mykhailo. “Before the trip, my father tried not to drink or eat anything, because there was no toilet. He sat for 11 hours without moving.”

Then things got worse. Upon trying to leave Lviv for Poland, Pavlovskiy had to stand in a line for seven hours in the hopes of finding safe transport.

“He had a serious mental breakdown, ” said Mykhailo. “He felt that everyone had abandoned him; he was crying.”

The younger Pavlovskiy stayed in constant contact with his father as he tried to leave the country. “Really his only support was my voice on the cell phone,” Mykhailo said. “He didn’t meet anyone he knew during his entire journey.”

Mykhailo wanted to rescue his dad himself but could not easily leave Israel because he only recently immigrated there

“I am now going through the process of repatriation [or making aliyah]. This is only the second month for me, so I didn’t have a passport with which I could travel,” Mykhailo explained. “By the time I received permission to leave Israel, 15 days had passed since the start of the war. As soon as I had a passport, I immediately bought a ticket and flew to Poland to meet my dad.”

Meanwhile, strangers in Kyiv took pity on the ancient refugee and found him a hostel. He tried again to leave from Lviv to Poland via bus, but logistical obstacles and concerns about Russian shelling thwarted his journey.

Mykhailo was then able to reach friends who helped his father get on a bus to Poland that was operated by Caritas, a Catholic charity. When he crossed the border, he became one of nearly 3 million Ukrainians to leave their country since Feb. 24.

It took Pavlovskiy six hours to make it to Tomaszow Lubelski, a Polish border town. He stayed there for a day and was sent to Lublin, and then on to Warsaw to reunite with his son.

The father and son are among thousands of Jewish Ukrainian refugees in that city, where they are receiving support from multiple Jewish charities, including the From the Depths Foundation, a group focused on memorializing the Holocaust that says it has spent $25,000 on food, clothing and other supplies for refugees in Poland. Staying in hotel rooms paid for by Israel’s Jewish Agency, the Pavlovskiys plan to travel to Israel together in the next few days.

The move is one that many Ukrainian Jews have made in recent decades, but one that Pavlovskiy never considered despite the trauma he endured at home, first during the Holocaust and then during the Soviet era, when Jews were the target of state-sponsored discrimination that limited his educational and work opportunities.

While Pavlovskiy’s immediate family survived the Holocaust by fleeing to the Urals — “They didn’t know what a Jew was there,” he said — relatives and friends left behind were murdered.

“My aunt was betrayed by her husband, he personally drove her — she was disabled and could not walk — and handed over to the German authorities,” he said. “They killed her.”

Those traumas were in the past for Pavlovskiy before the outbreak of the war, before Russia dropped bombs across his country, including adjacent to Babyn Yar March 1 in a shelling that has come to be a symbol of Russian aggression.

“My father received a decent pension and help from the Hesed,” Mykhailo explained, referring to a Jewish charity. “A woman came to my father’s house four times a week to cook and clean. He loved his life in Ukraine and already misses it a lot.”

As for Mikhailo, a licensed psychotherapist, he is happy to be in Israel with his wife and children, and hopes he can help refugees process the trauma they are going through. But he also wishes to defend his native country. “I want to go back and fight,” he said. “But my family won’t let me.”

Alona Cei contributed reporting.

The Ukrainian Jew who saved Yiddish music from oblivion

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL / JTA 

© (photo credit: REUTERS/STRINGER) Local residents walk near residential buildings which were damaged during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 18, 2022.

Late last year, months before a Russian missile landed near the Babyn Yar memorial outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, the site’s foundation announced plans for a new museum to honor the 33,771 Jews slaughtered there by the Nazis in September 1941.

Natan Sharansky, chair of the memorial’s supervisory board, described Babyn Yar as a “symbol of attempts to destroy the memory of the Holocaust,” and that the new institution would be called the Museum of the History of Oblivion.

“The History of Oblivion” would make an appropriate alternative title for “Song Searcher,” a new documentary about Moyshe Beregovsky, the Jewish folklorist and ethnomusicologist who traveled his native Ukraine in the 1930s and ’40s collecting Yiddish folk music and klezmer songs. Before World War II, Beregovsky shlepped primitive recording equipment on his visits to then still vital shtetls throughout the region. During and after the war, he found and interviewed residents and survivors of ghettos in Chernivtsi and Vinnytsia.

The voices that he captured are heard on 1,017 scratchy wax cylinders that for a long time many feared were lost. The film details how they and other materials were recovered and made their way to the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. They are a treasure trove for scholars and musicians who want to preserve and resurrect a culture that was nearly wiped out.

“Nobody else did any projects like this, of collecting that much music and writing that much about it,” Mark Slobin, an American ethnomusicologist, says in the film. Slobin’s collections of Beregovsky’s work were key to the klezmer revival of the past 40 years.” “Nobody did a project like that in Poland when the culture was alive. Nobody did it in these other places where the Jews lived. So it stands as a monument not just to where he worked in Ukraine, but for the whole population of Eastern European Jewish culture

© Provided by The Jerusalem Post

 Moyshe Beregovsky is seen with various documents and sheet music collected in his vast archive of Yiddish folk and klezmer songs.

 (credit: COURTESY JEWISH MUSIC FORUM)

Various klezmer musicians are seen in the film, playing the songs that Beregovsky collected. Many of the songs reflect the misery of the Jewish experience under the Soviets, the Nazis and the Soviets again. Even a so-called “humorous” song – sung here by Psoy Korolenko, a puckish Yiddish singer from Russia – is a revenge fantasy about confronting Hitler after the war.

(Korolenko and Toronto Yiddish scholar Anna Shternshis, who is featured prominently in the film, will discuss Yiddish music and humor during World War II in a virtual Jewish Music Forum event on Monday night. “Song Searcher” is doing the Jewish festival circuit and will start virtual screenings next week.)

The film never loses sight, however, of the incalculable human toll of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Survivors who were children during the war tell of the horrors of the forced marches, the suffering in the ghettos and the grim fate of the Jews in Transnistria, who were spared the concentration camps but were starved and shot to death by German and Romanian occupiers.

There are also rare color photographs of the slaughter at Babyn Yar, one of many moments when the pictures and stories of trapped civilians and desperate refugees blur with this morning’s headlines out of Ukraine.

But the history, like today’s headlines, is head-swirling as you try to keep track of the shifting occupations and the various degrees of villainy. The Soviets are celebrated as the liberators of Auschwitz, but almost immediately turn on the Jews. Their targets included Beregovsky, who by this time had founded or led a slew of important and perfectly legal academic institutions in Russia and Ukraine: a Cabinet for Research on Jewish Literature, Language, and Folklore; the Archives for Jewish Folk Music; the Cabinet for Music Ethnography and Audio Recording at the Kyiv Conservatory. He had even received his Ph.D. from the Moscow Conservatory, with a dissertation on Jewish instrumental folk music.

By 1949, such Jewish ethnic activities were considered “cosmopolitan” by the Soviets, and Beregovsky was shipped off to Siberia, where he joined other slave laborers in building a railroad. Already a grandfather, he found some solace in leading the prison camp’s choir, and the film includes snippets of letters he wrote home to his wife Sara in Kyiv, asking her to send – what else – sheet music.

Beregovsky was able to return to Kyiv after the death of Stalin, where, before cancer would kill him in 1961, he was able to arrange his private archive.

What was preserved? What was lost? And what might still be lost as the current war grinds on? Much of the film was shot in Ukraine in 2019 and 2020, with the camera lingering on Kyiv’s pastel-colored academic buildings, the lazy Dnipro River and the waving wheat in the country’s breadbasket. You recall this is a “pre-war” Ukraine, and then realize you are thinking back about three and half weeks.

Jews have a complicated history with Ukraine. (How complicated? The filmmakers acknowledge the “generous support” of Roman Abramovich, the Russian Jewish oligarch who is being hit with a slew of international sanctions thanks to his close ties with Vladimir Putin.) Perhaps one and a half million Jews were killed there. They were the victims of the Nazis, but also of the Germans’ local collaborators. Once home to the second-largest Jewish population in Europe, and still a place where over 40,000 Jews live, the country can also be seen as a vast Jewish graveyard. And yet its Jewish culture was as central to the country’s identity and self-understanding as it was to the Jews, as scholars in the film explain.

As I write this, Ukrainian culture as a whole is literally under fire. A museum was razed in Ivankiv. Kharkiv’s Central Square is a war zone. Lviv is bracing for the worst by packing sandbags around public sculptures and hiding museum collections.

“The heritage war for identity means that the target is not only territory or some military or civil objects,” Ihor Poshyvalio, the director of the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, told PBS NewsHour Thursday. “The target is our historical memory, our cultural traditions, our national and individual identity, our memory and identity as a nation.”

The historical memory of the Jews was only saved from oblivion by the survivors, and by a dogged little man who was rewarded for his troubles with a prison term. “Song Searcher” ends on a note that is neither hopeful nor despairing – or maybe it is both: Igor Polesitsky, a violist and klezmer from Florence, sits near the graves of his slain Jewish relatives in Kalinindorf, once a Jewish agricultural colony in southern Ukraine.

“Look around here, there’s nothing Jewish remaining,” he says, after playing a requiem preserved by Beregovsky. “The one thing that truly remains is what was saved by Moyshe Beregovsky. So his archive is what brings us here, and we become a link with the spirit of people who are no longer with us.” The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.

 

A Klezmer Karnival – Philip Sparke

Hal Leonard Europe Concert Band

Klezmer music originated in the ‘shtetl’ (villages) and the ghettos of Eastern Europe, where itinerant Jewish troubadours, known as ‘klezmorim’, had performed at celebrations, particularly weddings, since the early Middle Ages. Since the 16th century, lyrics had been added to klezmer music, due to the ‘badkhn’ (the master of ceremony at weddings), to the ‘Purimshpil’ (the play of Esther at Purim) and to traditions of the Yiddish theatre, but the term gradually became synonymous with instrumental music, particularly featuring the violin and clarinet. In recent years it has again become very popular and in A Klezmer Karnival Philip Sparke has used three contrasting traditional tunes to form a suite that will bring a true karnival atmosphere to any concert.

AMP 124-010

 

Goodbye Odessa - Yiddish Song

Olga Mieleszczuk

Vocal: Olga Avigail Mieleszczuk, violin: Daniel Hoffman, clarinet: Ittai Binnun, accordion: Ofer Malchin, contrabass: Yehonatan Levi

record and sound: Ittai Binnun / Lars Sergel, mastering: Marek Walaszek

Oh Odessa, goodbye Odessa,

I will miss you so much,

I will never forget you,

Farewell my friends,

Let's shout together:

Odessa Mama, I love you so much!

This Yiddish-Ukrainian song "Proshchai Odessa" was sung by Pesakh Burstein. I've combined it with a Ukrayinish Kek-Vok (Ukrainian Cakewalk) collected by Yale Strom.

A SPECIAL TREAT LED ZEPPLIN'S IMMIGRANT SONG

Verbatim: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to Canada's Parliament

OTTAWA — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an address to Canadian parliamentarians in the House of Commons on Tuesday, where he appeared through a video link.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Here is a full transcript of his speech, as translated into English from the original Ukrainian by a parliamentary interpreter:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Speaker, Prime Minister — dear Justin — members of the government, members of Parliament, all distinguished guests, friends, before I begin, I would like you to understand my feelings and the feelings of all Ukrainians, as far as it is possible, our feelings over the last 20 days — 20 days of the full-scale aggression (by the) Russian Federation after eight years of fighting in Donbass region.

"Can you only imagine? Imagine that at 4 a.m., each of you, you start hearing bomb explosions, severe explosions. Justin, can you imagine hearing — you, your children — hearing all these severe explosions? Bombing (the) airport, bombing the Ottawa airport, tens of other cities in your wonderful country? Can you imagine that?

"Cruise missiles are falling down on your territory and your children are asking you what is happening. You are receiving the first news (as to) which infrastructure objects have been bombed and destroyed by the Russian Federation and you know how many people already died. Can you only imagine? What words? How can you explain to your children that a full-scale aggression just happened in your country? You know that this is a war to annihilate your state, your country. You know that this is the war to subjugate your people.

"And on the second day you receive notifications that huge columns of military equipment are entering your country, crossing the border. They are entering small cities. They are (laying) siege, encircling cities and they start to shell civilian neighbourhoods. They bomb school buildings. They destroyed kindergarten facilities, like in our city, in the city of Sumy, like in the city of Okhtyrka. Imagine that someone is laying siege to Vancouver. Can you just imagine that for a second and all these people who are left in such a city? And this is exactly the situation that our city of Mariupol is suffering right now. They are left without heat or hydro, or without a means of communicating, almost without food, without water, seeking shelter in bomb shelters.

"Dear Justin, dear guests, can you imagine that every day you receive memorandums about the number of casualties, including women and children? You have heard about the bombings. Currently, we have 97 children that died during this war. Can you imagine if the famous CN Tower in Toronto was hit by Russian bombs?

"Of course, I don’t wish this on anyone, but this is our reality in which we live. We have to contemplate, we have to see where the next bombing takes place. In your church's square? We have a Freedom Square in the city of Kharkiv, our Babi Yar, the place where victims of the Holocaust were buried, and it has been bombed by the Russians.

"Imagine that Canadian facilities have been bombed similarly as our buildings and memorial places are being bombed. A number of families have died. Every night is a horrible night. The Russians are shelling from all kinds of artillery, from tanks. They are hitting civilian infrastructure. They hit big buildings.

"Can you imagine that there is a fire starting at a nuclear power plant and that is exactly what happened in our country. Each city that they are marching through, they are taking down the Ukrainian flags. Can you imagine someone taking down your Canadian flags in Montreal and other Canadian cities? I know that you all support Ukraine. We’ve been friends with you, Justin, but also I would like you to understand and I would like you to feel this, what we feel every day. We want to live and we want to be victorious. We want to prevail for the sake of life.

"Can you imagine when you call your friends, your friendly nations, and you ask ‘Please close the sky. Please close the airspace. Please stop the bombing? How many more cruise missiles have to fall on our cities until you make this happen?' And they, in return, express their deep concerns about the situation. When we talk with our partners they say ‘Please hold on. Hold on a little longer.’

"Some people are talking about trying to avoid escalation and at the same time in response to our aspiration to become members of NATO, we also do not hear a clear answer. Sometimes we don’t see obvious things. It is dire straits, but it also allowed us to see who our real friends are over the last 20 days and as well in the eight previous years.

"I am sure that you’ve been able to see clearly what is going on and I am addressing all of you. Canada has always been steadfast in their support. You have been a reliable partner to Ukraine and Ukrainians and I am sure this will continue. You have offered your help, your assistance, at our earliest request. You supply us with the military assistance, with humanitarian assistance. You imposed severe sanctions. At the same time, we see that unfortunately they did not bring the end to the war. You can see that our cities like Kharkiv, Mariupol and many other cities are not protected just like your cities are protected — Edmonton, Vancouver. You can see that Kyiv is being shelled and bombed.

"It used to be a very peaceful country, peaceful cities, but now they are being constantly bombarded. Basically, what I am trying to say is that you all need to do more to stop Russia, to protect Ukraine, and by doing that to protect Europe from Russian threats. They are destroying everything: memorial complexes, schools, hospitals, housing complexes. They already killed 97 Ukrainian children.

"We are not asking for much. We are asking for justice, for real support, which will help us to prevail to defend, to save lives, to save life all over the world. Canada is leading in these efforts and I am hoping that other countries will follow the same suit. We are asking for more of your leadership and please take a greater part in these efforts, Justin, and all of our friends of Ukraine. Old friends owe the truth. Please understand how important it is for us to close our airspace from Russian missiles and Russian aircraft. I hope you can understand. I hope you can increase your efforts, that you can increase sanctions so they will not have a single dollar to fund their war effort. Commercial entities should not be working in Russia.

"Probably you know better than many in any other countries that this attack on Ukraine is their attempt to annihilate the Ukrainian people, and there nothing else to it. This is their main objective. It’s actually a war against Ukrainian people, and it’s an attempt to destroy everything that we, as Ukrainians, do. It’s an attempt to destroy our future, to destroy our nation, our character.

"You Canadians, you know all this very well, and that is why I am asking you, please, do not stop your efforts. Please expand your efforts to bring back peace in our peaceful country. I believe and I know that you can do it. We are part of the antiwar coalition and, jointly, I am sure that it will achieve results.

"I would like to also ask our Ukrainian diaspora in Canada: This is a historical moment, and we need your support, your practical support. We hope that with your practical steps, you will show that you are more than part of Ukrainian history. Please remember, this is a practical, modern-day history of Ukraine. We want to live. We want to have peace.

"I am grateful to every one of you in the Parliament of Canada who is present there and to every Canadian citizen. I am very grateful to you, Justin. I am grateful to the Canadian people, and I am confident that, together, we will overcome and we will be victorious.

"Glory to Ukraine. Thank you to Canada."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 15, 2022.

The Canadian Press

 

 As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to Parliament Tuesday morning, the National Post convened an expert panel to consider his words and his delivery: Dominique Arel, professor and chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa; Robert Danisch, professor in communication arts at the University of Waterloo who studies political rhetoric in democratic societies; Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, professor and chair of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta; and Ronald Beiner, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto and author of Dangerous Minds: Nietzsche, Heidegger, and the Return of the Far Right. Zelenskyy’s words here were delivered in Ukrainian and are presented in English according to the Parliamentary translation.

ZELENSKYY: Before I begin, I would like you to understand my feelings, and the feelings of all Ukrainians as far as it is possible. Our feelings over the last 20 days, 20 days of full-scale aggression of Russian Federation after eight years of fighting in Donbas region. Can you only imagine? Imagine at 4 a.m., each of you, you start hearing bomb explosions, severe explosions. Justin, can you imagine hearing? You, your children hear all these severe explosions, bombing of airport, bombing of Ottawa Airport. Tens of other cities of your wonderful country. Can you imagine that?

DANISCH: In terms of a communication structure, he’s doing the classic, what we call in rhetoric, identification. He wants us to identify with Ukraine and share their emotional position. It’s a classic speechmaking strategy that’s been around for 2,000 years. It invites the audience to make an imaginative leap, and one function is to put the audience in the right frame of mind in order to persuade them.

AREL: He’s very good at that. He relates the human story. He was an actor before, but he’s not acting now, that’s why he’s so effective. He has the ability to speak from the heart and to the heart. Of course we can’t imagine that, but how could Ukrainians imagine that themselves just three or four weeks ago? The last time any city in Ukraine was bombed was 1944.

ZELENSKYY: Cruise missiles are falling down on your territory and your children are asking you what happened. And you are receiving the first news, which infrastructure objects have been bombed and destroyed by Russian Federation, and you know how many people already died. Can you only imagine what words, how you can explain to your children that full-scale aggression just happened in your country. You know that this is war to annihilate your state, your country. You know that this is the war to subjugate your people. And on the second day you receive notifications that huge columns of military equipment are entering your country, crossing the border. They’re entering small cities, they’re giving siege, they’re encircling cities and they start to shell civil neighbourhoods. They bomb school buildings. They destroyed kindergarten facilities. Like in our cities of Sumy, like in city of Okhtyrka. Imagine that someone is laying siege to Vancouver? Can you just imagine for a second, and all these people who are left in such cities. This is exactly the situation that our city of Mariupol is suffering right now, and they are left without heat or electricity or without means of communicating, almost without food, without water, seeking shelter in bomb shelters. Dear Justin, dear guests, can you imagine that every day you receive memorandums about the number of casualties, including women and children. You’ve heard about the bombings. Currently we have 97 children that died during this war. Can you imagine the famous CN Tower in Toronto, if it was hit by Russian bombs?

DANISCH: Zelenskyy’s speech to the British Parliament echoed and rephrased familiar lines from Churchill and Hamlet. It is saying he is kin with his fellow British world citizens. He didn’t do that with us. He did not quote literature. It’s funny, but it would have been more powerful in a certain way. He was generic in his reference to the CN Tower.

ZELENSKYY: Of course, I don’t wish this on anyone, but this is our reality in which we live. We have to contemplate, we have to see where the next bombing will take place. We have a Freedom Square in the city of Kharkiv. Our Babyn Yar, the place where victims of Holocaust were buried, it has been bombed by the Russians. Imagine that Canadian facilities have been bombed similarly as our buildings and memorial places are being bombed. A number of families have died. Every night is a horrible night. Russians are shelling from all kinds of artillery, from tanks. They’re hitting civilian infrastructure, they’re hitting buildings. Can you imagine that there is fire starting at a nuclear power plant, and that’s exactly what happened in our country. Each city that they are marching through, they’re taking down Ukrainian flags. Can you imagine someone taking down your Canadian flags in Montreal or other Canadian cities. I know that you will support Ukraine. We’ve been friends with you Justin, but also I would like you to understand, and I would like you to feel this, what we feel everyday.

DANISCH: I’m worried that there’s a bit of Instagrammable fame to this moment for him. He’s media savvy. It helps him gain attention, but often on Instagram and TikTok, they’re quick burns. You get a lot of attention quickly, and then it dissipates. If he wants us to not forget about him, he has to amplify the stakes, and I’m not seeing it that way. I’m seeing the Instagrammable qualities.

ZELENSKYY: We want to live and we want to be victorious. We want to prevail for the sake of life. Can you imagine when you call your friends, your friendly nation, and you ask, “Please close the sky, close the airspace, please stop the bombing, how many more cruise missiles have to fall on our cities until you make this happen?” And in return they express their deep concern about the situation. When we talk with our partners, they say please hold on hold on a little longer. Some people are talking about trying to avoid escalation, at the same time in response to our aspiration to become members of NATO, we also do not hear a clear answer.

BEINER: It’s not clear that a speech, however powerful, will induce NATO to get more enmeshed in this conflict than it already is. But one hopes that at least a way can be found to put the Polish MiGs at the disposal of Ukrainian pilots, so Ukraine can do the work itself of closing Ukrainian airspace to Russian attacks. This is not something that Canada can do, but perhaps it can at least urge the U.S. to find a solution.

ZELENSKYY: Sometimes we don’t see obvious things. It’s dire straits, but it also allowed us to see who our real friends are over the last 20 days, and as well eight previous years.

BEINER: What does full friendship require in this situation? More than Ukraine is currently getting from Canada and other allies. Sanctions have not stopped the war, nor will they stop innocent Ukrainians from dying.

ZELENSKYY: I am sure that you’ve been able to see clearly what’s going on, and I’m addressing all of you. Canada has always been steadfast in their support. You’ve been a reliable partner to Ukraine and Ukrainians, and I’m sure this will continue. You’ve offered your help, you assistance at our earliest request. You supply us with military assistance, with humanitarian assistance, you imposed severe sanctions, serious sanctions. At the same time we see that unfortunately this did not bring the end to the war. You can see that our cities like Kharkiv, like Mariupol, are not protected just like your cities are protected, Edmonton, Vancouver. You can see that Kyiv is being shelled and bombed. It used to be we were a very peaceful country, peaceful cities, but not they’re being constantly bombarded. Basically what I’m trying to say that we all need to do, you all need to do more to stop Russia, to protect Ukraine, and by doing that to protect Europe from Russian threat. They are destroying everything. Memorial complexes, schools, hospitals, housing complex. They already killed 97 Ukrainian children. We are not asking too much. We are asking for justice, for real support which will help us to prevail, to defend, to save life all of the world.

DANISCH: He was trying to be gently critical because he wants more from us. The identification was meant to soften that criticism, make us more receptive to the criticism. I got the sense that he was exhausted by that labour of gently critiquing governments. He knows he has to perform the identification first so the criticism doesn’t push us away, but the strategy is not working. He is not getting the no-fly zone. The criticism may have to be stronger to get us to listen.

ZELENSKYY: Canada is leading in these efforts, and I am hoping that other countries will follow suit. We are asking for more of your leadership, and please take more, greater part in these efforts, Justin and all of our friends of Ukraine, all friends of the truth. Please understand how important it is for us to close our airspace from Russian missiles and Russian aircraft. I hope you can understand.

BEINER: Alas, he’s asking for something that Canada and other NATO members won’t dare do, as Zelenskyy knows.

AREL: Just a month ago, the position of Canada was that we would not send lethal weapons. Why? For fear to escalate. And then of course now we’re sending massive amounts of weapons. What is unimaginable now may not be unimaginable a month from now, so Zelenskyy will keep asking.

ZELENSKYY: I hope you can increase your efforts, you can increase sanctions so they do not have a single dollar to fund their war effort. Commercial entities should not be working in Russia. Probably you know better than many other countries that this attack on Ukraine it’s their attempt to annihilate Ukrainian people, and there’s nothing else to it. This is their main objective. It’s actually the war against Ukrainian people, and it’s an attempt to destroy everything that we as Ukrainians do. It’s an attempt to destroy our future, to destroy our nation, our character. You, Canadians, you know very well all this. That’s why I’m asking you please do not stop in your efforts. Please expand your efforts to bring back peace in our peaceful country. I believe, and I know that you can do it. We are part of the anti-war coalition, and jointly I’m sure that will achieve results. I would like to also ask our Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. This is a historical moment and we need your support, your practical support. We hope that with your practical steps you will show that you are part of more than Ukrainian history. Please remember, this is a practical modern day history of Ukraine. We want to live, we want to have peace. I am grateful to everyone of you in the Parliament of Canada who is present there, to every Canadian citizen. I am very grateful to you, Justin. I am grateful to Canadian people, and I am confident that together we will overcome and will be victorious. Glory to Ukraine. Thank you to Canada.

DANISCH: I thought what was more notable was what he didn’t do. He did not tell us why democracy matters, or why it’s good. He opted out of that, which to me was kind of a mistake. He didn’t paint it as a conflict between democracy and fascism, and that was a miss.

AREL: The war’s goal is to overthrow government. It is eminently anti-democratic. Russia has been good at confusing the narrative internationally. Domestically they extinguish free media. Propaganda is built on denying the reality of the war that they won’t call a war. When Zelenskyy is saluting “friends of truth,” I think he’s getting at that. This is the real truth. we’re fighting for freedom, for statehood, and what we say is real.

As Ukraine war rages, Israel grapples with fate of oligarchs

By JOSEF FEDERMAN and ILAN BEN ZION

A banner in the colors of Russia's national flag depicting Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich and reading "the Roman Empire" is shown during the English Premier League soccer match between Chelsea and Newcastle United at Stamford Bridge stadium in London, Sunday, March 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is grappling with how to deal with dozens of Jewish Russian oligarchs as Western nations step up sanctions on businesspeople with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A worried Israeli government has formed a high-level committee to see how the country can maintain its status as a haven for any Jew without running afoul of the biting sanctions targeting Putin’s inner circle.

“Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries,” Foreign Minister Yair Lapid declared Monday during a stop in Slovakia.

Several dozen Jewish tycoons from Russia are believed to have taken on Israeli citizenship or residency in recent years. Many have good working relations with the Kremlin, and at least four -- Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Viktor Vekselberg -- have been sanctioned internationally because of their purported connections to Putin. Some of the sanctions stretch back even to before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month.

Israel, which has emerged as an unlikely mediator between Ukraine and Russia, has not joined the sanctions imposed by the U.S., Britain, European Union and others. But as the war in Ukraine drags on, and other names are added to the list, the pressure is increasing.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 TV station over the weekend, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland, called on Israel to join the group of countries that have sanctioned Russia.

“What we are asking among other things is for every democracy around the world to join us in the financial and export control sanctions that we have put on Putin,” she said. “You don’t want to become the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars.”

Aaron David Miller, a now-retired veteran U.S. diplomat, said on Twitter that Nuland’s comments were the “toughest battering of Israeli policy since crisis began or of any policy in very long while.”

Israel, founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, an estimated 1 million Jews from Russia and other former Soviet republics have moved to Israel. In recent years, a growing number of tycoons from the former Soviet Union have joined them.

Some, such as former energy magnate Leonid Nevzlin, came after falling out with Putin. Others appeared to have done so as hedges against trouble abroad.

Abramovich, for instance, took Israeli citizenship in 2018 after his British visa was not renewed, apparently as part of British authorities’ efforts to crack down on Putin associates after a former Russian spy was poisoned in England. Although he appears to spend little time in the country, he has bought some choice real estate, including a home in a trendy Tel Aviv neighborhood reportedly purchased from the husband of Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot.

Some of the tycoons have kept low public profiles, while others have embraced their Jewish roots, emerging as major philanthropists to Jewish causes or investing in Israel’s high-flying technology sector. With a limited number of places to go, a growing number of Jewish tycoons, especially those with Israeli citizenship, could find themselves spending more time in Israel.

Israeli media have reported private jets belonging to oligarchs coming in and out of the country in recent days. Channel 12 said late Sunday that one of Abramovich’s planes had landed in Israel, though it was unclear if he was onboard. Israeli media reported he was seen at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Monday, around the same time as his private jet flew to Istanbul.

While Israel weighs its moves, Jewish organizations already are taking a closer look at their relations with Russian oligarchs.

Last week, Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, said it was suspending a reported donation of tens millions of dollars from Abramovich “in light of recent developments.” In Ukraine, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, built at the ravine where over 30,000 Jews were massacred in just two days in 1941, said that Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, had resigned from its advisory board due to the sanctions.

Lior Haiat, spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the government has formed a special inter-ministerial committee to study the sanctions issue. The fate of affected oligarchs is a central part of that mission.

On Monday, Lapid said the ministry was working with other government bodies, including Israel’s Central Bank, to make sure tycoons do not use the country to avert sanctions.

Lapid also has advised his colleagues to keep their distance from the oligarchs.

“You have to be very careful because those guys have connections and they can call you on the phone and ask you for things,” Lapid recently told the Cabinet. “Don’t commit to anything because it could cause diplomatic damage. Say you can’t help them and give them the number of the Foreign Ministry.”

His comments, first reported in Israeli media, were confirmed by officials who attended the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing closed Cabinet proceedings.

Israel, one of the few countries that has good relations with both Russia and Ukraine, may be able to insulate itself from the international pressure as long as it continues to mediate between the warring sides. Joining the sanctions would risk drawing Russian ire and jeopardize Israel’s unique role.

Ksenia Svetlova, an international-affairs expert and former Israeli lawmaker born in Russia, said Israel would hold out from taking a stance as long as possible.

“It depends on what kind of pressure they will exercise against Israel,” she said. “Not voluntarily, certainly.”

 

The Pandemic of Fear & the Angel of Dread

Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium, Appendix VII

懼

‘It will need the whole of Europe to keep those gentlemen within bounds.’

— Frederick the Great on the Russians
quoted in Norman Davies
Europe: A History, 1997, p.649

In response to a visit to Babyn Yar (Ru.: Babi Yar) outside Kyiv in 1961, Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932-2017) published a poem that the composer Dimitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) made the centre piece of his Symphony No. 13. Composed in July 1962, the symphony premièred in Moscow that December. Widely acclaimed during the short-lived Soviet ‘thaw’, Symphony No. 13, also known by its subtitle ‘Babi Yar’, generated considerable controversy, in particular because it affirmed the theme of Yevtushenko’s poem which was anti-Semitism, both past and present. Nonetheless, Shostakovich’s work is credited with having pressured the Communist Party bureaucracy of Ukraine to build a memorial to commemorate the massacre of some 34,000 Jews and many others at Babyn Yar by the Nazis in 1941. Yevtushenko himself said that Shostakovich was the moral architect of that memorial.

On 3 March 2022, Alex Ross, the music critic of The New Yorker wrote:

‘Of late, I’ve been listening to the enigmatically gentle music of Valentin Silvestrov, among other Ukrainian composers. I’ve also turned to Shostakovich, the angel of dread. His Symphony No. 13 is subtitled “Babi Yar,” in honor of one of the most horrific massacres of the Holocaust. On Tuesday, a Russian missile reportedly killed five people in the area of the Babyn Yar memorial, in Kyiv. The symphony’s fourth movement is an immensely chilling setting of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem “Fears,” which begins with the ironic announcement that “fears are dying out in Russia” and goes on to say: “I see new fears dawning: / the fear of being untrue to one’s country, / the fear of dishonestly debasing ideas / which are self-evident truths; / the fear of boasting oneself into a stupor . . .” As war fever mounts on all sides, those words and that music might haunt the citizens of all lands.’

— Alex Ross, ‘Valery Gergiev and the Nightmare of Music Under Putin’
The New Yorker, 3 March 2022

***

Readers of China Heritage will be familiar with our argument that the Chinese Communist Party’s civil war within the borders of China Proper, and its conquest of much of the former territory of the Qing Empire (which was claimed by the Republic of China established in 1912, the successor regime to the Qing), in particular Greater Tibet and Xinjiang (but not Mongolia or vast tracts of land ceded to the Soviet Union and Kim Il-sung’s Korea by Mao Zedong) has lasted for over seventy years. Beijing’s imposition of a ‘Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’ on 1 July 2020 formally marked the third front in the Communist’s decades-long war of attrition. Taiwan is the fourth front in China’s ongoing uncivil war.

These lines from Yevtushenko’s poem ‘Fears’ страхи resonate with the theme of our consideration of the Xi Jinping decade:

I wish that men were possessed of the fear
of condemning a man without proper trial,
the fear of debasing ideas by means of untruth,
the fear of exalting oneself by means of untruth,
the fear of remaining indifferent to others,
when someone is in trouble or depressed,
the desperate fear of not being fearless
when painting on a canvas or drafting a sketch.

Here, the poet also unwittingly predicted his ongoing balletic accommodation with the Soviet establishment.

***

This is Appendix VII of Xi Jinping’s Empire of Tedium. When China experiences its next ‘thaw’, the works of those who bore witness to the Xi interregnum honestly may enjoy the recognition that they are presently denied.

— Geremie R. Barmé, Editor, China Heritage
Distinguished Fellow, The Asia Society
6 March 2022

***

Related Material:

• Other People’s Thoughts, XXIX, 4 March 2022
• Orville Schell, ‘Putin and Xi’s Imperium of Grievance’, Project Syndicate, 1 March 2022
• Liu Baifang & Orville Schell, 迥 — Dissing Dissent, 26 February 2022
• Geremie R. Barmé, A.M. Rosenthal, et al, ‘Beijing, 1st July 2021 — ‘It was a sunny day and the trees were green…’, China Heritage, 1 July 2021
• Xu Zhangrun 許章潤, ‘Viral Alarm — When Fury Overcomes Fear’, China Heritage, 24 February 2020
• Yevgeny Yevtushenko, страхи (‘Fears’)
• Shostakovich, ‘Babi Yar’: IV. Fears, Symphony No. 13 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 113, YouTube

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Part of the Mirror Field designed by Maksym Demydenko and Denis Shibanov at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. Source: The Economist, 18 September 2021