I Hope Russia Loses and Russians Win

   

    On this morning my thoughts are with a very specific family in St. Petersburg. I'm thinking of Lonya, the eldest son whose voice had the deep huskiness of a man full grown at the age of 16; Katya, his younger sister with her brown hair always braided and her apple cheeks; Yaroslavl, the baby who turned 1 while I lived with them and would now, I'm in awe to write, be in his 20's. Their parents who opened their home to me and it shames me to write that I can't remember their names, but I remember the father was an absolute chess fanatic with Bobby Fisher as his idol. He would always use the phrase "in another life" to express that something, like staying in the glamorous European Hotel, was far too expensive. His wife who was shorter than me but contained so much affection and warmth and fed me with grave concern over how skinny I was; and the grandmother who gave up her bedroom for me and also darned my socks after she laundered them. I'm thinking of their dacha in the country, where she would come back with buckets overflowing with homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers. I truly lucked out with my host family when I spent a semester in St. Petersburg. my classmates on the program told of "missing" passports, and cheese hidden from them whereas my family produced two magnificent meals when my mother and sister visited on separate occasions and after I pleaded with them to serve only tea. On Yaroslavl's birthday, my host father and I toasted to his youngest son with some brandy and he told me how, when I first arrived, he wasn't sure I would survive St. Petersburg but clearly I was made of tougher stuff. 

My social media feed is flooded with the Ukrainian flag and prayers for the people of Ukraine, and I, of course, join these sentiments, even while still recognizing that there is a whole nation of people Vladimir Putin has held hostage since, at least 2005. I'm thinking of them and how their purchasing power has declined in the 20 years since I lived with them, how their choices in elections have been systematically eliminated through death, imprisonment, or exile (and sometimes all 3), how they have never had a police force to trust, and how as sanctions are imposed on the wealthiest of Russians, this will most likely just be passed on to the people who gave me shelter. And, it's worth saying, I'm thinking of the LGBTQIA Russians who are living the Kafka-esque nightmare of being told it's perfectly legal to be themselves as long as they're not themselves.

There's been a lot of discussion as to the motivation of this invasion of Ukraine, but one thing I have yet to see mentioned is the deep set belief of Russians that Ukraine is Russia. It is the epicenter of their origin story, with red-headed vikings of Scandinavia landing in Kiev at the invitation of the Slavs who couldn't decide who should rule. Kiev is the wellspring of Russian Orthodoxy with Saint Sophia Cathedral modeled on descriptions of Constantinople's Hagia Sophia and being modeled in turn all throughout Russia. That Ukraine separated from Russia during the fall of communism has never sat right in the minds of Russians since. 

So, while I'm not geopolitical expert, and somehow still not an expert on Russian political strategy, I feel fairly confident in saying that the invasion of Ukraine as ordered by Putin is not "genius". It is the decision of someone who has run out of cards to play and is using this last resort as a method to shore up popular support behind him. It is a move straight out of the sentimental manipulation of a Stephen Spielberg movie, pushing the very emotional buttons of a populace who always felt it was them against the world, and that part of them was missing. 

That the people of a sovereign nation have to lose their homes, their sense of safety, and possibly their lives for a man to prop up his political career is horrifying to say the least. This is truly a no-win situation, as all wars are: sons like Lonya and Yaroslavl, and maybe their sons, will die fighting for a vanity project, and their Ukrainian peers will die for the same vanity project.

Being a voting citizen, I have no real solutions to offer. But I'm writing this to urge us all to remember that while Vladimir Putin is an awful person, the people of Russia are not. They did not create this mess, they did not ask for this invasion, and they now have a new commonality with the Ukrainian brothers and sisters in that they no longer have any options. It is so easy to slip into the mindset of "Us vs. Them" and to whip ourselves into sentiments of national patriotism. Please, as you feel yourself viewing all Russians through one lens and one view point, please look at this picture and ask if it's what they wanted.