A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 2

5 April 2022
When I contemplated the image from Kyiv that I posted last week, as well as Bruegel I thought of Isaac Babel’s stories Red Cavalry about the Russo-Polish War of 1919-21. Some of that war took place in Ukraine, and the stories are full of extreme, gratuitous, brutal violence. I thought particularly of ‘Crossing the River Zbrucz’, in which the narrator is billeted at a heavily pregnant Jewess’s with three Jews, one of whom is asleep pressed up to the wall, completely covered by a blanket. Eventually the Jewess takes the blanket off, to reveal a man with his throat torn out and his face hacked to pieces. She recounts factually, coldly, how he was killed in her presence, then she explodes: ‘And now I want to know, I want to know — where in the whole world will you find such a father as this my father?’ As with Bruegel’s paintings, one needs strong nerves to read these stories. Babel had learnt well certain lessons from Chekhov about depicting terrible things. And yet the stories are also saturated with an other-worldly beauty reminiscent of Georg Trakl’s poems of World War I. I recommend reading Red Cavalry in our follower David McDuff’s translation:

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

6 April
We Russia-watchers were utterly wrong — I am glad to say — in thinking that Kyiv would ‘fall in 72 hours’. But I don’t regret attaching the name Machiavelli (whose Prince I was re-reading at the time) to the methods by which Putin would attempt to enslave the Ukrainian state. We know from the intelligence made public that his plan was to destabilise it with lies, sabotage and assassination, then ‘decapitate’ it by capturing Kyiv and ‘liquidating’ the government. Putin failed, because of the heroic solidarity and morale of the Ukrainian people. But European intelligence told us that he also drew up plans to stage public executions in captured Ukrainian spaces to break morale, and that is exactly what his soldiers did to order at Bucha. Pure Machiavelli. Moreover, the sickening sight of Mariupol reminds one of Machiavelli’s words: ‘Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy that city, may expect to be destroyed himself, because when there is a rebellion, such a city justifies itself by calling on the name of liberty and its ancient institutions, never forgotten despite the passing of time’…

7 April
The West failed to deter the invasion of Ukraine by issuing threats/performing threatening actions that meant something, and there is no evidence that NATO had a military plan for what to do when the invasion happened. Joe Biden said that Putin ‘could not stay in power’ and the world speculated wildly about what he meant. When intelligence indicated that Putin was about to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, Biden said that if he did ‘NATO will respond in kind’, again he didn’t say what that meant, no-one knew, and he was widely mocked. Very curiously, though, these black holes have turned out to be an advantage, because Putin could not know what we were going to do next, either, and keeping your enemy guessing is a vital weapon. Meanwhile, Biden ramps up his completely justified accusation that Putin is a war criminal, yet baulks at exporting antiquated planes and tanks to Ukraine because the U.S. is already sending more anti-aircraft and anti-armour missiles than anyone else. Biden is not looking as stupid as everyone convinced themselves, starting with D. Trump. Perhaps Biden’s age has even given him wisdom.

And the reality, it turns out, is that we had been supplying Ukraine with weapons and training its soldiers to use them all along. According to yesterday’s Times, British troops ‘deployed to Ukraine in the months leading to the invasion’, trained ‘droves’ of Ukrainian soldiers in the use of anti-tank weapons, ‘counter-sniper techniques, how to defend against heavy armour and how to fight in urban battles’, Britain had already given Ukraine 5000 Mlaw anti-tank weapons, and ‘is in the process of shipping another 5000 and other explosive weapons’. As we know, in the hands of the utterly motivated Ukrainian Army these have been very effective. We can safely assume, I think, that other members of NATO have been doing the same. Putin could not stop them, never complains in public about it as that would expose his own impotence, and we are completely at liberty to continue because both Ukraine and the members of NATO are sovereign states. I agree with Chris Deverell, who was head of Joint Forces Command 2016-19 and said two days ago that the West’s supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine was ‘not enough’ and western allies should ‘mobilise their military capability to force Putin’s hyenas out’:

We have to do more for Ukraine. We cannot sit and watch this bestiality imposed on a free and democratic people. If we are deterred by Russia’s nuclear weapons now, why would we not also be when [Putin] attacks a NATO country? No, it’s a choice, and we can make a different one.

One could claim, then, that NATO had a covert plan, or at least policy, before the invasion, but it was not deterrent, only punitive once the invasion happened. If Ukraine is to be helped to save itself, we must continue with that plan now that it is out in the open; we must continue to supply them with the arms and military consultancy that they need to win the war themselves. At the same time, Andrew Tatham was absolutely right to stress lateral thinking in this war. Considering the fear that Putin’s hackers had struck into the West before the invasion, they seem to have been remarkably ineffectual since (the waves of Cyrillic spam that crashed down on Calderonia, for instance, in the days of the invasion, soon dried up); one might speculate that our own cyber attacks on Russia have been discreetly more effective. I see no other way forward than doing everything in our power to assist Ukraine with weapons, consultancy, intelligence and cyber-power to win. I continue to believe that in a bad-case scenario NATO could occupy Western Ukraine in a joint exercise with the Ukrainian Army (whose government would be at L’viv) and Putin would not dare attack NATO forces. So far he has not tried seriously to cut off the supply lines from the West, nor does he have the control of western Ukrainian airspace to do so.

8 April
When I go out these days, I am stopped by neighbours who want to talk about Ukraine. They are aghast at something they never thought to see ‘in Europe’ in their lifetime, and ask me how I think it will ‘end’. Well, of course, there are so many big variables that I certainly don’t know… My private scenarios, from better to worst, might be:

With massive military (and naval) aid from the West, Ukraine comprehensively defeats Russian forces and the invaders are driven out of Ukraine. The Russian defeat is as bad as in the Crimean War or Russo-Japanese War and Putin is deposed, closely followed by Lukashenko. Ukraine becomes a sovereign European state, Belarus too.
Russia takes the Donbas this month and Ukraine sues for peace recognising the Crimea and Donbas as Russian. The West funds reconstruction, Ukraine is set to join the EU in eight years, NATO gives securities of neutrality to Ukraine.
Putin re-invades Ukraine from the north and the West’s guarantees are again dud. The Russians take Kiev this time and simultaneously advance westwards to the Dnipro. Govt escapes to L’viv, NATO forces co-occupy Western Ukraine, country partitioned.
Putin bully-blackmails Lukashenko into invading Western Ukraine from Belarus whilst Russian troops take Kiev, simultaneously advance westwards from the Dnipro and join the Belorussians to occupy Western Ukraine. NATO watches from across the border. Russian troops face NATO and an iron curtain descends again across the continent.

One thing is sure: for Putin there is no going back. As the British-born Putin-watcher and former White House adviser Fiona Hill has said, he sees the Ukrainians as ‘traitors’ and has switched from trying to capture their country to ‘annihilating’ them. But by the same token, Putin is a rat caught in his own trap.

The other question neighbours ask me, is: ‘What is wrong with the Russians, why are they like this?’ I might tackle that in my next post.

9 April
In the summer of 1968 I spent six radiant weeks in Kiev. Cautiously and on my own, I visited Babi Yar, the ravine on the outskirts of Kiev where from 1941 the Germans and their collaborators massacred 34,000 Jews and about 100,000 humans of other origins. Much of the area was screened by wooden hoardings as it was going to be built on. Diggers had been at work. In places gaps had appeared between the hoardings and through them I saw a sea of bones. Two years earlier, in response to public Russian and western protest, the Soviet government had erected a small monument there:

Photograph taken by me of temporary monument at Babi Yar, 1968

This monument did not mention the ethnicities of the victims, but over time the site was developed into a memorial park and in 2016 work began on the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre there. This is the one that was hit by a Russian missile on 1 March 2022.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.