Brutal. Horrific.
But not necessarily crazy.
Those were some of the takes of New Haven Ukrainian-Americans and Ukraine watchers Thursday in the wake of Russian premier Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It’s horrible to put into words that this could happen,” remarked Myron Melnyk, an active member of St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church on George Street, one of the centers of the region’s Ukrainian-American community.
Like others in his congregation, Melnyk has been in close contact with friends and relatives still living in Ukraine, in his case in Kyiv. He spoke Thursday with the son of a friend who studies at a university in Kyiv; classes were canceled until further notice, and the student was scrambling to make it to “the outskirts” to avoid bombing or other forms as Russian troops moved toward the capital.
Melnyk, a Vietnam vet, has been working over the past few years with fellow members of a Ukrainian-Americans veterans group to help soldiers injured in fighting on the front lines near the Eastern border with Russia, when they need help not available in the Ukrainian medical system. With the help of U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the group brought three soldiers here for treatment at Yale New Haven Hospital. Fighting has occurred in eastern Ukraine since 2014. (Click here for a story about a St. Michael CHurch event about that in 2014.)
“I’ll use two words: Shock and horrified,” Melnyk said Thursday about Putin’s decision to invade and seek to conquer all of Ukraine.
“Shock because nobody expected a full-blown invasion. But going back and thinking about it, it’s not so surprising: Putin said many times that the greatest tragedy of the 20th Century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Not World War I. Not the Holocaust. Not World War II. The ‘greatest tragedy’ was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when every country decided to go on their own.
“He doesn’t mention that in 1991, in a nationwide referendum in Ukraine, 92 percent of the population voted for independence.”
Experts have debated in recent weeks whether Putin acted strategically and rationally in preparing to invade Ukraine, or whether he has become irrational, ready to hurt his own nation’s self-interest and risk worldwide confrontation in the interest of pressing Russia’s historic claim to Ukraine and undoing the humiliation of the Soviet Union’s dissolution.
The decision to mount the full-scale invasion supported the fears of the latter camp.
David Cameron is not in the latter camp. He argued Thursday that Putin acted rationally and strategically: He has long eyed reclaiming Ukraine, and saw an opening in the weakening of Western resolve.
Cameron, a Yale political scientist and former director of the MacMillan Center’s Program for European Union Studies, did say he was surprised Putin proceeded with “an all-out invasion” rather than just claiming two breakaway Ukrainian provinces.
“It looks crazy. In fact, he’s rational and strategic. He’s doing this for a reason,” Cameron said during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. (Watch the conversation in the above video.)
“He was looking at the world and saying, ‘If we don’t do something about Ukraine, in five years, 10 years, 15 years, Ukraine is going to be part of NATO. We will be surrounded,” and Ukraine will have missiles that could reach Moscow from Kyiv in minutes.
“The easy first reaction is to say, ‘The guy is crazy. … You have to understand that … this idea of a unified people is real to him.”
Cameron agreed with a recent Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times, repeating a 1990s-era prediction by former Secretary of the State George Kennan that expanding NATO into Eastern Europe would eventually prompt blowback from a threatened Russia.
It’s still unclear whether the Russians will occupy Ukraine after conquering it, or whether it will install a puppet government and call troops home, Cameron said.
In either case, the invasion has “revived the Cold War.” In the near term, Americans can expect inflation to continue rising, with gas prices increasing “several dollars” a gallon, Cameron predicted. We should also expect hacking attacks on computer systems and infrastructure in response to economic sanctions imposed by the West.
But despite Putin’s invocation of Russia’s nuclear arsenal in warning nations not to interfere in the invasion, Cameron predicted that this will not escalate to a broader air or ground war. That would happen only if NATO troops intervene, which won’t happen, he said.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans are calling for military intervention.
Many are calling for a stepped-up non-military response, including New Haven U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro.
“President Putin and his cronies must pay the full price for their actions, which are not just an attack on Ukrainian sovereignty but on global democracy,” DeLauro stated in a release issued Thursday.
“We must move further beyond the initial tranche of sanctions imposed by the Biden Administration to respond to Russian aggression. In conjunction with our allies, we must terminate Russia’s participation in the global economy and fully cut off Russia’s leading financial institutions.”
“We need no further justification to implement the most severe and crippling sanctions against Russia,” echoed Sen. Blumenthal. “The crippling sanctions and export control mechanisms announced today will cost Russia, Putin, and his corrupt cronies dearly. We must continue to work with our NATO allies and the world community to increase the economic pressure on Putin.
It was nice to imagine that threatened economic sanctions could prevent Putin from invading Ukraine. Totally unrealistic, but nice.