The Ukrainians have been more than heroic. Europe seems to have come together in an almost unprecedented way. Striking mercilessly at the helpless among the Ukrainians, Putin seems also to have hurt himself beyond repair. The whole world would like the wrecking to cease, peace to return to Ukraine, Ukrainians families to be reunited, and Ukrainian cities to be rebuilt.
The world also prays that some boundaries (we all know what those are) will not be crossed.
Some other assessments also ring true. The end of the war is likely to see a much weaker Russia, enfeebled militarily and economically, although this probability could bring the above-mentioned limits frighteningly close.
The course of the war has in all likelihood also chastened China, causing it to be more careful than before about provoking strong opposition. The world seems to have learnt that neither a nuclear armory nor economic strength suffices for a single nation to do as it pleases, or to defy with success an alliance of nations, the conscience of humanity, and the global marketplace.
The widely offered analysis connecting what Putin has done to Ukraine to his desire (and the desire also of some other Russians) to resurrect the glorious past of a unified Russian world, a Russkiy mir, one that included not just Ukraine but some other parts of a real or imagined Great Russian Civilization or Empire of history, should not be dismissed.
This explanation sounds more plausible than the theory of a mentally unstable autocrat, and it could also explain the considerable support that Putin still seems to enjoy in Russia despite the alarming estimates of Russia’s casualties in Ukraine and of its economic loss from sanctions imposed on it.
If an intense Russian nationalism has been driving Putin and his supporters, it has also been pointed out that the strength of this nationalism gets multiplied from its merger with religion – with, in this case, Russian Orthodox Christianity. Writing in a U.S. newspaper, a protestant bishop in India, Joseph D’Souza, has urged the patriarch of Russia’s Orthodox Church to withdraw the strong backing he has allegedly given thus far to Putin.
Meanwhile President Zelinsky, who is Jewish, has pleaded with Pope Francis to do what he can to stop the destruction.
Much of the world – and perhaps much of Russia too -- hopes that bold Russian hands will now restrain President Putin and prevent further wild or desperate actions that are unlikely to alter the war’s result even though they could prolong the war. The toll the conflict has already taken, including in Russia and of Russians, is hideously large.
If the immediate rights and wrongs of this horrific war seem fairly clear, it does not follow that what is happening in the rest of the world is OK, or that strong-arm intimidation does not take place elsewhere. Questions will need to be asked about oppressive acts and policies of coercion in other places, about other exclusive nationalisms, and other religious nationalisms, whether Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, Jewish, or something else. Recreating modern versions of imagined pasts, and re-establishing the past’s supremacies, whether real or fancied, is a desire nursed by many who are not Putin, and in places that are not Russia.
It would be natural and legitimate therefore to want the world to unite against coercion in other places too. For now, however, we can only salute the incredibly brave and mercilessly hammered people of Ukraine, who have been forced to fight back or to hide, starve, flee, and separate themselves from loved ones. And we can remember those Ukrainians, including children, the sick, and the elderly, who have been blasted to death. In addition, we can think of those thousands of Russian soldiers who without good reason were ordered to perform violent, inhuman and suicidal tasks far from home, and of the others who may yet be ordered to do the same.
All this has happened and is happening, let us recognize, in confrontations between people closely linked by culture, literature and geography and in many cases by blood! Then there are the many of different races and religions who, not counting the cost or the risk, have reached out to assist defence, aid victims, or report their ordeals. Humankind is something.