Mary Dejevsky

National symbols are usually proudly emblazoned for all to see. That’s the point of them. One, though, seems rather to have crept up on us in recent weeks, being flashed almost like a secret tattoo and then quickly covered up again. It is the letter ‘Z’ that Russians have started using to denote national solidarity and support for their country in the war in Ukraine. The Z came to international notice when a Russian gymnast, Ivan Kuliak, displayed it prominently on his strip two weeks ago while standing next to a Ukrainian competitor at a tournament in Qatar. He now faces a disciplinary inquiry as under the rules such symbols must not be worn.

We’re just ten days into Russia’s assault on Ukraine and the western world has painted itself in Ukraine’s colours. Cities and towns have hung out Ukrainian flags and lit their public buildings in blue and gold. The BBC has changed the pronunciation of the Ukrainian capital from Kiev to Kyiv. Tesco is driving the supermarkets’ charge to rename chicken Kiev. And leading the cheers for Ukraine’s heroes have been the legislatures, from London to Brussels to Washington DC. MEPs watched a video message from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in respectful silence before erupting in applause and tears. The US Congress gave the blue-and-gold clad Ukrainian ambassador a prolonged standing ovation at Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

One of the reasons why I judged — wrongly — that Vladimir Putin would not order an all-out invasion of Ukraine was the likelihood of a protracted war. But another was the possibility of popular protest in Russia, which could have potentially destabilising effects on the Kremlin. After sporadic protests in the hours immediately after the invasion, all of them ending in arrests or dispersal by police — citing Covid restrictions — Thursday evening sprang a surprise. Young people came out in their hundreds with homemade placards saying 'nyet voine', no to war, not just in Moscow and St Petersburg, where political engagement tends to be higher, but in nearly 50 towns and cities across Russia. https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1496905869983768581?

Ukraine, as is periodically observed, means borderland. Geography will forever influence its destiny as an independent state. With tensions between East and West again rising, however, Kiev might well conclude that Ukraine is more accurately translated as 'on the margins'. Foreign leaders and ministers have, to be sure, been punctilious in making courtesy visits to President Zelensky and his team before or after paying court to President Putin in Moscow. But it must now be crystal clear to Kiev that — in a conflict essentially centred on Ukraine, though actually about much more — its western champions have at best considered Ukraine’s interests as secondary to the pursuit of the main quarrel with Russia, often not considering them at all.

Western warnings of an ‘imminent’ Russian invasion of Ukraine have grown more insistent in recent weeks with different voices, from the media to politicians, needlessly stoking the fires of war with their aggressive and inaccurate rhetoric.

If anyone produces a ‘history in 100 objects’ for the first half of the 21st century, one of those objects could well be a German helmet from the consignment of 5,000 dispatched to Ukraine, as the Russians seemed about to invade. The donation was noteworthy because it was met not with gratitude but with ridicule, not only from Ukrainians on social media – will it be pillows or duvets next time? – but from Germans themselves. There were reasons, of course, why the Germans sent helmets, while the British made great play of airlifting 2,000 shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles and the Americans sent Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-air missiles, as part of 80 tonnes of what was described as ‘lethal aid’.

Watching coverage of Hurricane Ida on both sides of the Atlantic, it was hard to escape the impression that politicians and reporters were almost hoping that the worst would happen: that New Orleans would be drowned in a new Katrina. The 'fifth largest hurricane on record' and a protracted power outage affecting one million people were bad, but hardly the human catastrophe some had anticipated. In the event, the doom mongers had to be satisfied with the heaviest ever rainfall in New York and New Jersey, some crippling flood damage and as many as 50 deaths. This did not, of course, prevent commentators up to and including the US President seizing on climate change as the arch-culprit. What had happened, said Joe Biden from the White House, was 'yet another reminder that...

The bomb attacks at Kabul airport were what US and allied commanders overseeing the mass evacuation had most feared. In so far as they could be, they were prepared. They had, it appears, received very specific intelligence — perhaps based on a trial run by the bombers — that such attacks were in the offing. They warned people to stay away from the airport. Guards were doubtless on extra-high alert. And yet the perpetrators got through. More than 60 civilians were killed along with 13 US marines. Dozens more were injured and taken to already overburdened hospitals in Kabul. The carnage of 26 August was the costliest day in the last stages of the West’s Afghan war.

Of the many harrowing images coming out of Afghanistan, one commandeered public attention for longer than most. It showed a small child being handed to an American soldier over the wall of Kabul airport and demonstrated, shocked viewers were told, the desperation of parents to save their children, even if it meant entrusting them to strangers. Now two observations might be made about this. The first is that it was not quite as it seemed. It was later reported that the child was ill and was being passed for treatment at a Norwegian medical facility on the other side of the wall. The family were subsequently reunited.

It may well go down as the understatement of the year. In a quite extraordinary address to the nation after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the US President made this admission: ‘The truth is this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated. So what’s happened? Afghanistan’s political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUrivUGaATM If this were the only intelligence failing of recent years, then maybe a little indulgence could be shown More quickly? Than we had anticipated? As recently as 10 August, US intelligence said that it would take the Taliban up to 90 days to take Kabul.