Ok then we’ll leave
Here’s a surprise. Protesters in Ukraine did such top quality protesting that they got Russian soldiers to go away.
A mayor in a Ukrainian town occupied by Russian forces has been released from captivity and the soldiers have agreed to leave after a mass protest by residents.
Slavutych, a northern town close to the Chernobyl nuclear site, was taken by Russian forces but stun grenades and overhead fire failed to disperse unarmed protesters on its main square on Saturday.
The crowd demanded the release of mayor Yuri Fomichev, who had been taken prisoner by the Russian troops.
Attempts by Russian troops to intimidate the growing protest failed and on Saturday afternoon Fomichev was let go by his captors.
I find that quite astonishing. Usually invading troops who fail to intimidate the populace just move on to the mowing them down stage. This seems to hint that some (or perhaps most) Russian soldiers don’t want to make war on the people of Ukraine.
Western officials have said that Vladimir Putin had planned to take Ukraine’s capitals within days of announcing his “special military operation” on 24 February but had come across unexpectedly fierce resistance.
And maybe unexpectedly unfierce attack? By reluctant soldiers who don’t see Ukrainians as enemies?
It’s hard to win without the hearts and mindof your own soldiers.
I have sympathy for the Russian soldiers who don’t want to be in this war. Russia has mandatory military conscription; I’m sure a lot of the soldiers don’t want to kill their Ukrainian kin. That must be a terrible kind of anguish, to find oneself forced into such a bind. Of course there are so many terrible kinds of anguish in war. Some of them are almost too unbearable to imagine.
Much of the most profoundly affecting art I’ve ever experienced has been about the psychological horrors of war. My bones trembled for what must have been days after I read a poem that had been found on a scrap piece of paper hidden in the clothes of a Polish Jew who died in the resistance. And paintings, and films. Who could even count how many? And music. PJ Harvey’s masterpiece Let England Shake, specifically about the bloody absurdities of World War One and the tragic mess of Afghanistan, but really about the psychological horrors of war in general, is one I come back to over and over. (She was rightly medaled with an MBE for it.)
“Smile, smile Bobby, with your lovely mouth.
Pack up your troubles, let’s head out
To the fountain of death
And splash about
Swim back and forth
And laugh out loud”