? זאָג, פון אוקראינע װאס זיינט איר אװעק —

[sovay]

Quite apart from events on the world stage, every day this week has contained some additional stressor, of which the latest example was spatch needing to spend the day at the ER for what turned out to be diverticulitis. He is home now with antibiotics and enjoying some well-deserved soup. My ability to do very much this week beyond work has been somewhat frustrated. Someday, statistically, someone I care for or even just know socially will catch a break and it will be awesome.

In terms of ongoing resources for Ukaine, Razom seems to have the bases covered. I found myself saying elsenet that I don't think I'm old enough to blame it on the failure of historical memory, but I keep catching takes from people who seem to have forgotten that the Yugoslav Wars—Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo—even happened and it is very strange. I understand the significance of the eight-decade mark since one stable sovereign nation in Europe invaded another. But it's not as though we haven't seen sieges and airstrikes in places that didn't look sufficiently (there are not enough scare quotes in the world) foreign as to feel safely distant since then.

Courtesy of a friend who is not on DW: mir zaynen do, af Ukraynish.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Thank you for the song link, and best wishes to spatch for a swift mend!

[sholio]

I keep catching takes from people who seem to have forgotten that the Yugoslav Wars—Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo—even happened and it is very strange.

I've also been having this thought quite a lot. I understand that this is qualitatively and politically different. But at the same time ... I was born in 1976. I grew up under the shadow of the Cold War, Russia invading Afghanistan, Russian troops stationed across the sea from Alaska, and then when that was winding down, the wars in the Balkans. This does feel different from the last couple of decades, but it's more like "well, this feels a lot like the 80s and the 90s all over again" rather than 1940. At the same time I realize there are very different political forces in play and no historical event replays the same; hindsight lets us know how it all came out. But it feels very strange to realize how thoroughly a generation of peace (in that part of the world, anyway) has apparently wiped some things out of the collective memory. At least as far as American pundits are concerned - I expect the takes are a bit different in those parts of the world.

I'm sorry to hear spatch is unwell and glad there are antibiotics in play!

[strange_complex]

Sorry to hear about spatch's medical adventures! A friend of mine had diverticulitis some years ago, so I'm aware that it can be alarming and potentially very serious. I hope he is convalescing nicely.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I'm extremely bewildered by that forgetting too. This invasion can make us heartsick without our erasing the genocidal war crimes of the 1990s.

Poor spatch. I enjoyed the children's art he posted from the ER though.

[lokifan]

I've been shocked, yeah. There was a genocide! You can't even say it was a little war or a skirmish. You're right that one sovereign nation invading another changes the calculus, and I'm sure that's a factor - but it also suggests to me that because the victims of the Bosnian genocide were often Muslim, they haven't been remembered as European victims of war crimes.

Get well soon, spatch!

[gwynnega]

I really hope spatch feels better soon!

[davidgillon]

I grew up in the Cold War, and decided on a career in defence because of it. Of course the Cold War promptly fizzled out four years later, so that's probably an argument against letting geo-politics drive career choices, but it does give me a framework for processing what's going on, and where politics are likely to go from here. But we've got people well into their 30s who don't remember the Cold War and for whom the Balkan conflicts occurred in their early childhood, so they don't really have experience of living normal life under a threat of war.

I see on that note that Putin has just succeeded in doing what Trump signally failed to do and persuaded the German government to immediately increase defence spending to the NATO target of 2% of GDP from its current 1.5% (and Schulz was talking about making continuing that commitment part of German constitutional law rather than a political decision). For reference the NATO target during the Cold War was 4%, but it tended to be only the US and UK who met that, most of the European NATO defence budgets were typically in the 3% range if memory serves. In fact I just checked and West Germany's defence budget dipped below 3% from 1985. OTOH West Germany on somewhere just under 3% had a tremendously capable military. I think a lot of defence budgets will be getting emergency supplements this month.

One thing that argues against things becoming a direct Cold War analogy is that the Russian military is a fraction of the size it used to be. Deploying 150,000 troops to attack Ukraine has seen them stripping troops from at least as far away as the Finnish border (discussed by a Finnish defence blogger here: https://corporalfrisk.com/2022/02/26/a-modest-proposal/ - scroll down to the picture of a tank for that section of the piece). There have also been reports that Putin asked Kazakhstan for troops and was turned down, which suggests the Russians know they need more men - you normally want a three to one superiority on the attack, more against prepared defences, many times more for attacking a defended city, and they're closer to one to one with respect to Ukraine. If Russia struggles to attack Ukraine after months of preparation then their general staff is going to recognise the impossibility of a general attack on NATO along the whole inter-bloc border, even if Putin doesn't.

Which won't stop people being concerned and worried. I spoke to my Polish neighbour earlier and he was worried about his parents, who live in eastern Poland about 90km from the Russian border. The concern for NATO is more probably for the Baltics, which Putin undoubtedly wants back in the Russian fold and which don't have huge militaries, but NATO has had forward-deployed troops from the major powers in the Baltics to discourage that for years.

And speaking of the Baltics, Latvians gathered outside the Russian Embassy in Riga to sing the Ukrainian national anthem at it https://twitter.com/NaomiOhReally/status/1497343157973012483

[pengwern]

I'm sorry to hear of the added stress and sorry about (everything else) -- elsewhere I'd simply like but here I can only wave and send some hopefully distracting (??) links:
a nessie mug: https://designobjectory.tumblr.com/post/647707906142289920/nessie-beaker
the addition of a haggard cigarette to a portrait of jesus: https://refuzz.tumblr.com/post/677143305931341824

a poem and a cat picture! https://bamboocounting.tumblr.com/post/677138173731684352

[thawrecka]

I have a friend six years younger than me who once confidently asserted that the 90s was a simpler time with no genocides, so yeah, a lot of people seem to have genuinely no knowledge of the very recent past.

[selkie]

BUT LOOK who's still not dead and just as cute as you last saw me and not dead.

I don't make up for entire genocides, but still.
(Did no one else have to read Zlata Filipovic for school?!)