Ukrainian national anthem sung Sunday on the Green.
The bad news: “We could possibly be on the brink of World War III,” potential nuclear bombs and all.
The possibly better news: Lots of “good people” can still fight to save democratic Ukraine.
Marci Shore offered that sobering but still-hopeful update Tuesday about the war in Ukraine.
Lots of people have been hanging on the New Haven-based historian’s take on the at-turns devastating, at-turns inspiring events in the Eastern European nation mounting a David-like resistance to the Russian invasion that started two years ago. An associate professor of intellectual history at Yale, Shore wrote a book (The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution) about the 2014 citizens’ uprising that broke out in Kyiv’s Maidan Square and tooppled a repressive government. She has since become a go-to pundit, including penning this article this past weekend in the Wall Street Journal.
In that article (highly recommended: bypass the paywall and read it here), and in an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program, Shore argued that the 2014 uprising created a citizenry capable of resisting a better-armed foreign invading force.
The Maidan revolution was the “birth of a civic nation,” Shore said, one committed to freedom and independence. The success of citizen resistance to a violent government crackdown served as a “revelation of the human capacity to be better.” This realization of the power they possess to resist tyranny prepared the 44-million-strong nation for Vladimir Putin’s bombs and tanks.
That said, Shore came to a frightening realization when she watched Vladimir Putin’s speech two weeks ago seeking to justify the invasion. She contrasted it to the cold, calculating, lucid speech she watched him give in 2014 seeking to justify his invasion of Crimea. Back then, he seemed very much the master “chess player” with whom other nations could rationally plot strategy. In the latest speech, “he was no longer” a man in control, she observed. “His Russian was no longer as sharp. He seemed deluded, deranged, outside reality.”
In her observation, he was no longer the rational though dangerous chess player. He was a “lunatic madman” capable of pressing the nuclear button and lead us into a third world war, whether or not it makes sense for anyone involved.
“Game theory won’t help us now,” she said.
So she’s on board with people urging the creation of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and other ramped-up Western military support, even if that ups the ante with Putin, who does not appear to be someone willing to abide by traditional Cold War or post-Cold War norms and limits. “Our colleagues in Ukraine are confident they can win on the ground if they support in the air,” she said.
Ultimately, she said, it may all be “in the hands of the Russians now. … At some point the Russians have to take him down.”
For all her “catastrophic” concerns, Shore retained a measure of optimism based on her friendships and other dealings with Ukrainians and Russians over the years.
“What I cling to is the fact that there are more good people than bad people. I don’t believe that Russia is a country of 144 million people who want to murder Ukrainians. I am desperately hopeful that somebody is going to bring Putin down and good will prevail.”
Click on the video above in this article to hear the full discussion with Marci Shore on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Paul Bass Photo
Marci Shore Tuesday at WNHH FM.