I returned from Ukraine less than ten hours ago and I would like to give my point of view on the discrepancy between what you see in the media and what really happens on the streets of Kiev.
Watching the news it seems that by now in the streets of the country there are crowds of soldiers with Kalashnikovs in hand ready to shoot the Russian invader at the gates. The reality is very different and I felt it from the moment I arrived at the airport. Wandering around the city you see nothing more and nothing less than what you can meet in a very normal European city, people who go to work, take public transport, some children playing and students going to school and university.
The winds of war that we see so much on national news don't seem to be there. The only thing to remember the international skirmishes is a small demonstration in Majdan square. The same square that triggered the conflict in 2014. The demonstrators tell me that they are representatives of the American community living in Kiev, and they are there to demonstrate for peace and against Putin.
The feeling, to be honest, is that our news outlets have only now realized that there is a conflict in Donbass; unfortunately it has been going on for eight years and has left on the ground - on both sides - about forty thousand dead and wounded and one million displaced people (in this conflict even the figures are not clear). The clash, which until a few weeks ago did not give a damn to anyone, now puts the world on alert.
The people I have had the opportunity to chat with have lived with the war for many years. To make the idea better: it is as if two regions of Italy had decided to separate, weapons in hand. The protests that resulted in the violence in Majdan square have generated a deep rift between the Ukrainian and Russian people, who have always been brothers.
Partisan narratives also seem to have changed. If on the one hand there is President Putin who tries to demarcate the very close brotherhood of Russia, especially in all those Russian-speaking regions, on the other hand, President Zelens'kyj invites us not to dwell on this linguistic difference but to concentrate rather on belonging to the motherland Ukraine, overcoming the divisive factors such as the spoken language. In fact, the language today does not seem to be a dividing element as if it is true that the law requires the use of Ukrainian as an official language, for example, road signs are proof of this, university teaching is done in Russian.
Surely the historical brotherhood between the two nations changed after 2014, the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Donbass, marked a deep wound between the two peoples, who have never been more distant from each other to date. .
Comparing myself with the local analyst Tara Semeniuk I developed the idea that in Ukraine if a large-scale war really broke out it would in effect be a proxy war, fought between the two historical enemies that is USA and Russia on a ground not within their competence. And in this scenario who would have everything to lose is Ukraine and the involvement of other countries of the Alliance or of the European Union is not taken for granted either. The scenario reminds me (partially) of what happened in the Balkans after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
The people I spoke to did not convey to me the fear of an impending conflict but more of a major geopolitical maneuver to widen spaces of influence on the Russian side, as well as a major political move by the Biden administration in reminding the world that it is still a super power even in the aftermath of the Afghan fool.
If we look at how many Western soldiers are deployed in the area, we cannot fail to notice the low figures compared to the Russian ones.
Net of the major maneuvers, the real question is: how willing are Western nations to engage their own military personnel on the ground, in a distant war of very little interest, with a huge economic effort and possible losses on the ground?
Photo: author
