Why Ukraine Matters to Us: The fight for humanity - VIKTOR KRAVCHUK

Why Ukraine Matters to Us

The fight for humanity

VIKTOR KRAVCHUK AUG 4

Now I’d like to make something different here: this is part 1 of a three-part series called Why Ukraine Matters.

So much is happening in the world, so many conflicts, so many dangerous people rising to power in their countries, it’s natural that Ukraine falls behind in the world’s headlines and attention.

It’s understandable. Everything today is so immediate, we’ve already been “too long” in the headlines. 

But I’ll do exactly what you would do if you were in my place: writing and writing about your reality so no one forgets. Or at least, so that the forgetting happens a little slower.

This journal is my attempt. And I think after 3 years and half, this is the right time for us to revisit why Ukraine matters.

Why this country is important to the world and must be defended. 

In three dimensions. Three parts.

This time I want to elaborate why Ukraine matters to all of us.

To us, as humanity.

PART I - WHY UKRAINE MATTERS TO US

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Russia is not attacking a country.

This is not an attack against Ukraine.

It is an attack on the idea that people get to live free.

An attack on the belief that a nation belongs to its people.

The right to build a future. To raise a child. To survive without fear and dignity.

This is not new for you, and if it gave you the impression of everything that reflects the most human parts of ourselves, both as society and as individuals, you were correct.

This is a war where one nation is denying another the ability to exercise their humanity.

And that’s why it is precisely a war against humanity.

Humanity, people made of flesh and bones, dreams and fears, everywhere. Here and there. Independent from borders or languages.

I am not even talking about good and bad, evil or virtuous.

I am talking about the right to be human.

Russia is denying us our right to be human enough to choose virtue or evil.

We wouldn’t choose to be evil anyway, because we have seen so much of what evil represents since Russia has chosen it throughout all their history.

But now they are denying us the chance to choose what we think right to be. What direction of humanity we would choose.

And God forbids we as a people ever choose evil someday, but we need to have the right to choose because there’s no “better” good, no “better” virtue, than the one we choose freely, knowing the evil we could have chosen but consciously decided to turn away.

The right to choose evil just to reject it. To throw in the trashcan of history the kind of nation a people could have become if they were part of a country called Russia.

Russia is not only a country embodied in evil. They want to go further. Their goal is to rewrite what it means to be human.

They want to rewrite the world. To change the basic values of our civilization.

Their objective is to make acceptable attacks to places where innocent life was hiding and places that were never supposed to be ‘strategic’ targets.

And then, they lie in an established script we have seen so many times:

They deny an attack happened, say there were ‘western weapons’ inside, call the dead “Nazis”, and, don’t be shocked, blame Ukraine for bombing itself.

This is a terrorist organization with a permanent seat at the U.N.

A century ago, another regime rose with symbols, slogans, scapegoats.

They used emotion, posters, fake history, the broadcasting possibilities of the time. Blamed minorities for everything. Offered unity through hatred, and promised peace while preparing for war.

They called it something very close to "making the nation great again."

And the slogan may sound familiar to you, but here I’m still talking about… Russia.

So curious, isn’t?

The similarities are so starking. They spread lies and wrap them in patriotism. They stage mass rallies, blame the weak... 

The foreigner.

The neighbor.

And telling their own people they are victims, at the same time they turn them into weapons.

What was done with pamphlets in the 1930’’s is now done with bots, trolls, and nuclear threats.

Russia is all in. This time it’s all or nothing for them. 

They don’t know how to exist in a world where diplomacy and rules are how nations relate to one another.

They want to submit the world to their own concepts of “understanding,” which is, of course, something that only makes sense in their sick minds.

The same minds bragging about “tradition” and “values” in the branches of the empire of lies spread across TV channels, Telegram groups, and every platform they control.

Russia wants to redefine what it means to be good.

To make domination seem logical.

To make compassion look weak.

To turn strength into cruelty, and cruelty into law.

They want to make you forget what being human ever meant.

This is why Ukraine matters to every single human being on this planet.

Again, what kind of world are we leaving to the humans of the future?

How might the world look today if enough of us, long ago, had chosen to look away from the threat that came from that certain man in Central Europe?

Now, we have another edition of that. A fight of those who are still choosing to be human.

Even under all bombs and the risk of the world getting tired of hearing from us, we are firm on that. Making our part.

For the survival of a country, and of a concept of civilization.

That choice is costing us lives, but if we don’t make it, the world they want will win.

The world of a new project of “humanity.”

Not just here. Everywhere.

And it’s simply not an option for any one of us.