That is not to make light of our problems and challenges. It’s just that while the rest of us have our crosses to bear, the 40 million people living on the 600,000sq km piece of land linking Europe with Russia are living an existential crisis, and many are paying the ultimate price.
As of last week, it is 300 days since Vladimir Putin invaded his sovereign neighbour to the west in a ruthless, unprovoked, politically self-serving act. In his hubris, he thought he could steamroll the country in days. He figured without the spirit of the Ukranian people and the willingness of freedom-loving countries across the world to support them.
In the last 300 days, senseless numbers of lives have been lost, bodies have been broken, and innocent people have been raped and tortured. As well as the hot war, Putin has waged an energy war on Europe, and attacked the infrastructure of Ukraine in an attempt to freeze the population into submission. Knowingly attacking civilians is a war crime.
He has sabre-rattled about using nuclear weapons, and conscripted his own people indiscriminately to prosecute his war of vanity, in many cases without providing them the means to fight or even survive.
But this piece is not about Vladimir Putin, or about the people who seek to excuse his actions with their range of dubious whataboutisms. It’s not the geopolitics that I find myself thinking most about.
I’m mostly thinking about how ordinary Ukranians will be spending their Christmas, whether they observe it on the Western date of December 25, or the Orthodox date a couple of weeks later. I’m trying to imagine what it will be like, looking for something positive to celebrate over this holiday period in the everyday hell that has been life for most in the last three hundred days.
We know it will be cold. The forecast for Kyiv is for snow on Christmas Day and a top temperature of just 2C. Because of Putin, many will be without power or heating. The chill will be eating away at them. People will be worried for the health of their children and for their elderly parents.
There are plenty who will be mourning this Christmas the loss of a son or daughter, previously full of vitality, cut down in Putin’s killing fields in defence of freedom and their flag, or perhaps the father, who stoically turned up and volunteered, leaving his cushy office job to do his bit for his country. Many Russian families will be doing the same. Social media is full of recent photos and videos commemorating young and not-so-young people, who looked so bright, happy, and alive.
Many more will be waiting for news from the frontline, perhaps from the trenches around the hellhole Bakhmut has become. Bakhmut, in Donestk region, which we’d never heard of until a couple of months back, was a city the size of Palmerston North, and about the same level of strategic importance. The Russian army and the Wagner Group are trying to have a victory there by throwing legions of unprepared troops into battle, but progress is measured in centremetres. If you want to see what World War I conditions look like in 2022, steel yourself and look up images of the fighting in Bakhmut.
One of the reasons I think I feel so much for the Ukranians and their predicament is because they are the underdog. They are the weedy kid in the schoolyard being monstered by the bully. They didn’t ask for this. This isn’t an internal civil war, like so many are. This is a war of territorial aggression by a bigger power. There should be no place for such military imperialism in the 21st century. Ukrainians just wanted the quiet life, a chance to grow up peacefully and provide for their families. They weren’t threatening anybody.
Thank goodness America and Europe have stood up so far to support them. There is no shame in that. We ourselves live in a country which has never had the means to defend itself without outside help.
So as we sit down on Christmas Day in the warmth of a Kiwi summer, we should spare a thought in a quiet moment for the people of Ukraine.
My hope for 2023 is that Ukraine is victorious. That it is able to push the aggressor back behind his own borders sufficiently that he won’t attack his neighbours again. That all the people who have given their lives in the defence of their country and its right to exist don’t die in vain. That every freedom-loving democracy maintains its resolve, and provides enough support to the Ukranians to enable them to complete their mission.
That includes us. Our help so far has been too meagre.
Anything less than full-throated support for Ukraine means Putin, or whichever KGB clone eventually replaces him, will feel emboldened to try this criminal stunt again.
If Ukraine is able to send the Russian army and their assorted henchmen packing, even if nothing else positive happens, 2023 will have been a good year. For the world, for people who value freedom and independence, and for any small country that risks being monstered by a bigger one.
Slava Ukraine and slava all Ukrainians. This Kiwi is thinking of you all this holiday period.
- Steven Joyce is a former National Minister of Finance. He is director at Joyce Advisory.
