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A “No War” sign on the bridge over the Fontanka River in St. Petersburg, Russia.
‘A horrendous truth’
OU Ukranian, Russian community members denounce Putin’s invasion KALY PHAN
kaly.n.phan-1@ou.edu
It is 9 p.m., Feb. 23 in Norman. The sky is littered with stars, ice glazes the ground and students at the University of Oklahoma are safe at home after a wintry mix closed campus earlier in the day. The night is eerily still under the hazy glow of the sky, leaving those inside with a premonition of calamity. At the same moment, across the Atlantic Ocean, it is 5 a.m., Feb. 24 in Kyiv, Ukraine. A tense atmosphere — grounded in a historic conflict that intensified almost eight years ago following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation — is shattered with the sound of sirens. Explosions echo across the country as Russian troops close in on Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders. Normanites woke on Feb. 24 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and later that day, the United States, United Kingdom and members of the European Union imposed economic sanctions on Russia. Despite Kyiv being about 5,700 miles away, connections of heritage and family make the events there feel incredibly close, leading some to call for local action against this “real war.” On Feb. 24, a group of OU staff and faculty sent a letter to The OU Daily condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The letter included OU history professor Melissa Stockdale, associate professor of Russian Emily Johnson, associate professor of international and area studies Rebecca Cruise, assistant professor of Russian Dustin Condren, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication Katerina Tsetsura, College of International Studies adjunct instructor Robert Andrew and Russian instructor Rachick Virabyan. The letter read that, as s c h o l a r s o f Ru s s i a a n d Ukraine and admirers of Russian and Ukrainian achievements, they agree
with the Board of Directors of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, which “condemns Russia’s military assault on Ukraine.” They wrote it was a “shocking turn of events.” “We condemn the invasion and President Putin’s use of historical distortions and lies to justify his aggression,” the letter read. “We mourn the casualties resulting from this senseless attack and wish to express our support for all the people of Ukraine and Russia who oppose this war.” Tsetsura, whose professional research focuses on Ukrainian and Russian media and strategic communication, told The Daily that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a global issue and concerns everyone. Tsetsura said the world is “very hyperconnected,” and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will “be your business” before you even know it. This is the time to understand the scale of globalization, she said, citing Pastor Martin Niemöller ’s “First They Came” poem as a warning. In the poem, the speaker references how Nazi forces came for different demographics of people, and because it did not affect them directly, some groups remained silent. Yet, once the Nazis came for their group, there was no one left to defend them. “(People) don’t understand the scale of what’s happening,” Tsetsura said. “We are living this history, and what’s happening in front of our eyes right now is a really big historical event that will dominate the narrative of the world order and world history for many years.” As an ethnic Russian from Ukraine, Tsetsura said she has a personal stake in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She lived and studied in Russia in 1998 and resided in other former Soviet Union states, including Ukraine, where she still has family. Tsetsura wrote in a follow-up email to The Daily that her relatives in Kyiv and Kharkiv, where fighting broke out Feb. 27, are hiding in basements and bomb shelters. She wrote that her relatives and their families, including children who range from three to 12 years old, can hear sirens and bombs
and see fires in Kyiv. They are scared, Tsetsura wrote, and are asking people in the U.S. to close the airspace over Ukraine and help get Russian soldiers off of Ukrainian land. While Tsetsura sat in her home, her child safely playing on an iPad in the other room, she said she could only “watch in disbelief ” at the news unfolding in Ukraine. This made it difficult to focus on getting work done while OU’s campus was closed. “I do feel I’m Ukrainian more than ever today,” Tsetsura said. “What’s happening today, (Feb. 24), is really an attack on everybody who wants to be a free person, regardless of where you live. The ability to decide for yourself, what your life should be, what your fate should be, is essential.” Andrew, who also contributed to the faculty letter, focuses on U.S.-Russian relations and is a former diplomat assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow from 2005-07 through U.S. Foreign Service. He said, since the USSR fell in 1991, this has been a thirty-year reckoning from Russia by Putin to “reclaim its glory” from the Cold War as a respected adversary of the U.S. and China. “ T h i s i s Ru s s i a’s w a r against Ukraine, (and) this is Russian aggression,” Andrew said. “This is where we find ourselves. In this new Cold War. It’s going to potentially be another long slot (of time) to deal with this issue.” Andrew, like Tsetsura, has connections to Ukraine, as he has friends who are currently in Ukraine in danger zones. “I couldn’t sleep. I was worried sick,” Andrew said. “These are my friends. For me, it’s not a concept of, ‘Oh, well that’s someone else’s problem.’ No, it’s all of a sudden my problem in a sense where it’s affecting me because I know these people, and I keep my fingers crossed that they’ll be okay.” In following news regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Andrew said it is important not to trust what Putin says, but what he does. OU adjunct professor Max Kovalov said Russia has falsified humanitarian efforts to justify its occupation of and military action against Ukraine.
Kovalov was born and raised in Ukraine and received a scholarship to attend university in the U.S. in 2002, where he received his master’s in international studies at Oklahoma State University and his Ph.D. in political science at OU. He is also the Bennett director of the John Edwin Mroz Global Leadership Institute and focuses his academia on democracy, specifically in Eastern European and post-communist regions. Kovalov said Russia’s media is state-controlled and can be “manipulated easily,” which he feels is present in the country’s justification of its actions against Ukraine. “Russia describes it as an attempt to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine,” Kovalov said. “It was supposedly uncovering mass graves (and) uncovering violations against the rights of ethnically Russian citizens. Nobody is threatening the rights of Russian citizens, and it’s absurd to call Ukraine a neo-Nazi state.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who refused the U.S.’s offer to evacuate him to stay and fight, is Jewish and lost three great uncles during the Holocaust. To this, Kovalov asked, “How can someone who grew up in a Jewish family be described as a neo-Nazi?” Tsetsura said Eastern European journalism has a history of non-transparent practices which have encouraged distrust toward the media. “It would not be an overstatement to say that, in many ways, (non-transparency) started in Eastern Europe,” Tsetsura said. “It has started with the very basic ideas of how to not be transparent and still survive in journalism, or how to try to bend things a little bit here and there, and now we see the result of that as a ripple effect.” For example, on Feb. 18, Putin said he had no plans to invade Ukraine but dispatched troops to conduct “peacekeeping functions” on Feb. 21 in two pro-Russian separatist areas — the Donetsk People’s Republic a n d L u h a n s k P e o p l e ’s Republic — on Ukraine’s eastern border, which he recognized as independent.
Three days later, he announced Russia would be authorizing military operations in Ukraine, and missile strikes and military barrages immediately followed. Kovalov said the invasion is a fight between democracy and autocracy at its core. He said that, if people subscribe to Putin’s narrative that Russia and Ukraine are the same people and that Ukrainians are successful at building democratic reforms, it begs the question of why Russians can’t do the same. “Democratic reforms in Ukraine are a threat to an autocratic leadership of the Russian Federation,” Kovalov said. “That was the reason why the Russian government has been cracking down on protesters, on independent media of any kind, (and) of expressions of civil society or mobilization by civil society, because the Russian government truly believes that the threat is not necessarily coming from the outside.” Current protests in Moscow against the invasion of Ukraine are being suppressed by authorities. Tsetsura said it is a “positive sign” that people are still protesting the invasion despite some being grabbed from the streets and detained. Some protesters escaped imprisonment, including the parents of Russian graduate student Daniil Solovev, who wrote in an email to The Daily that they participated in city protests on Feb. 25. Solovev wrote his family is frightened, stunned and stressed about Russian economics shrinking due to “an unwanted war.” He wrote he feels similarly shocked and helpless and couldn’t sleep when Russia invaded Ukraine because he was scrolling through his news feed. He wrote he is currently avoiding social media and the news, as he hopes it will “all finish soon.” “It all appeared unreal to me, like I was in a very wicked nightmare,” Solovev wrote. “If someone said 10 years ago that there is going to be a war between Russia and Ukraine, this person would be called crazy, but now, it is a horrendous truth.” Solovev wrote that, in his opinion, the invasion occured most likely because Putin is pursuing
the reestablishment of the Russian Empire. Ukraine is the last piece of the big puzzle, he wrote, which is why he “acts so ruthless.” “He wants to put Ukraine back under Russian influence, as he did with other ex-Soviet countries,” Solovev wrote. “He must be stopped. Russian people and other nations do not deserve to live another century under the Iron Curtain.” Based on reports Andrew has seen, he said Russia seeks to take Kyiv and control the border, which would make it difficult for “insurgents” to remain supplied with weapons and support. He said Ukraine is a proud country with a history of partisans, like those who fought against occupying German forces during World War II. He said, based on this history, the Russians know Ukraine won’t go down without a fight. In Vietnam and Afghanistan, he said insurgents had safe havens across borders where they could regroup and, in the case of Americans in Vietnam, pick their battles, making it difficult to fight. Andrew said Russia is most likely trying to prevent this from happening in Ukraine. “I think it’s a race to see how quickly Russia can subdue the population and convince them not to do that,” Andrew said. “At this point, I think the Ukrainians have shown some resilience, so let’s see where that’s going to go. (However,) it certainly could be a quagmire.” Unlike Tsetsura, Andrew, Kovalov and Solovev, journalism junior Ben Dackiw’s connection to Ukraine is muddled by several generations, as his great grandfather is from Ukraine. He said he has always taken pride in his heritage, meaning he has a heightened awareness of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and dislikes the “World War III” jokes he sees on social media. “It takes no effort to show compassion to the people who are not going to be sleeping, they’re not going to be eating, (and) their able-bodied men are getting conscripted to fight off the Russians,” Dackiw said. “They didn’t ask for this.” see UKRAINE page 2