Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only started a week ago. The outcome of the situation remains uncertain. However, it already seems clear that this is a conflict like no other, and above all a conflict that is not talked about like the others.
First, we are witnessing an almost unanimous movement of solidarity towards the Ukrainian people. At the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday, almost all of the diplomats left the room when the Russian foreign minister began his address. Demonstrations in support of the Ukrainians are taking place all over the world, and the anger over the invading Russian army seems to be just as strong even in Canada. A Maru poll published this week shows that 91% of Canadians are in “total opposition to the tyranny of Vladimir Putin’s Russia”. I would find it hard to name another war situation in which world public opinion has shown itself to be so camped, so quickly, against an armed attack. It seems simpler to describe the horror of a bomb falling on innocent civilians when that bomb is not, say, American.
Second, the wave of pro-Ukrainian solidarity does not seem, at least for the moment, to translate into a tsunami of hatred towards the Russian people or people of Russian origin. Several important leaders quickly set the tone, starting with the Ukrainian President himself, Volodymyr Zelensky, followed by the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Chrystia Freeland, also of Ukrainian origin. Both have been sending messages over the past few days that the ongoing conflict is not with the Russian people, but with President Vladimir Putin and his entourage. There are also images of anti-war demonstrations in major Russian cities — gatherings that would surely be even bigger if it weren’t for the brutal police repression there. On television, people seem to avoid using terms like “the Russians” to designate those responsible for the military aggression, preferring to talk about Vladimir Putin himself or his regime.
This awareness of the weight of words and the risk of slippage is refreshing. We know that the beginnings of the pandemic in the Wuhan region and the strained diplomatic relations with China have led to all kinds of comments about “the Chinese” and a rise in hate crimes against people from Asian origin.
We also know that a deplorable number of our fellow citizens do not hesitate to drift from a criticism of the Saudi regime or of a group like Daesh towards generalizations about “Arabs” or “Muslims”. Just last summer, fools also committed a series of anti-Semitic acts in the borough of Saint-Laurent, as if it were a way of criticizing the State of Israel. And we remember that, during the Second World War, Canada notably saw fit to intern its own citizens of Japanese origin.
Since the list of sad precedents is long, the current preoccupation with words is out of place. I don’t see anyone seriously speculating that Putin’s authoritarianism has its roots in a particular flaw in the Orthodox religion or that Russian culture is rooted in a single eulogy of violence. The analysis mainly focuses on political, economic and humanitarian issues. Finally, fingers crossed that it lasts.
Finally, refugees did not present themselves as threats to be turned back at the borders. Bulgaria’s President Roumen Radev had perhaps the most candid statement on this. “They are Europeans,” he said earlier this week. “These people are smart, educated… These are not the waves of refugees we are used to, people with uncertain identities, with uncertain pasts, who might even have been terrorists. Commentators, pundits and journalists also spoke of their shock at the war affecting the “civilized” world – failing to provide a list of the “barbaric” regions of the world at the same time. This new openness to the victims of the war therefore seems to come from the identity of the Ukrainians: the doors are opened to them in the name of their Europeanness and not of their humanity. The poor treatment reserved for Africans and Asians residing in Ukraine at the Polish border, denounced on Tuesday by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has moreover dismantled this important nuance.
The special humanization of the Ukrainian people plays a very important positive role in the fate of this population. There is war, the wounded, death, torn families. There may still be hunger, lack of water and resources, and who knows what else. No individual should have to endure these horrors, ever. It is even more despicable to have to face in addition, in the midst of these torments, the indifference of the world, or its hostility. For the moment, respect for the dignity of the Ukrainian people seems to be a central concern for a large part of the planet. Let’s hope it will last and that other victims of contemporary wars will soon be able to benefit from it.
I don’t want to make a jovial portrait of the coverage of the war in Ukraine here. The news of the past few weeks is very difficult, its implications are historic, and the challenges it entails are many. That said, I have rarely seen such a widespread concern for humanization of the parties involved in a conflict, and I believe that it is important to underline this. Many seem to look at what is happening in Eastern Europe and say to themselves: “These people are like me, that could be me. The truth is that every human being is largely like himself, and offers a mirror of himself. It is one thing to say so, and another to transform one’s outlook on international news based on this principle.