A Boundless Savagery

Yesterday, the U.S. Helsinki Commission issued a statement, saying this: “As of today, Russian occupying forces have destroyed every Ukrainian church in Crimea. Vladimir Putin will not be satisfied until he wipes out Ukrainian culture, freedom, and independence.” I think everyone realizes this: pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine alike.

• Note the below yuk — circulated immediately after President Biden announced he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign:

To my sense, this speaks volumes about MAGA’s attitude toward the Ukrainians: people who are trying to save their country — who are sacrificing and dying — in the face of an annihilationist assault by an evil neighboring dictatorship.

“New” Republicans and “old” can agree, I think: The current party bears little resemblance to the former.

• In Soviet days, many people in the Free World promoted the interests of the Kremlin. Some did it for money; some did it from affinity. In some, there was a blend, probably. In any event, nothing has changed.

As RFE/RL tells us, an “influential broadcaster and author” has been expelled from a German association of investigative journalists. (“RFE/RL” is our combination of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.) Hubert Seipel has interviewed Putin and written two laudatory books about him. His payment: 646,000 euros. A pretty tidy sum.

There will always be Seipels. Always have been, always will be.

• For the Kyiv Independent, Dinara Khalilova has written a grim and significant report: “Stuck in legal limbo, Ukrainian civilians endure torture in Russian prisons.” The subheading of the report reads, “Thousands of civilian Ukrainians abducted by Moscow are stuck in Russian-controlled prisons as there is no legal tool to bring them back.”

Those who care about such matters, will care.

• Last week, there was an anniversary: It was on July 17, 2014, that Putin’s guys in Donetsk shot down a civilian airliner, killing 298 people. Ian Garner, a Russia scholar, had an observation:

I’m still astounded that MH17 didn’t really have any impact on public or political attitudes to Russia. Three hundred people killed in cold blood by Russian military actors and nothing happened. A big collective shrug.

Yes. Putin believes he can get away with anything. Nothing has taught him otherwise. There will always be people who sit at his feet and appease.

On the very day Putin bombed the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine — July 8 — India’s Modi sat down to tea with him. Nice as can be. Three days before, Hungary’s Orbán had gone to see Putin on a “peace” mission. Sure.

• You have heard a line, here in America: Forget Ukraine. Forget Russia. Forget Europe. China is where the real action is. We have to focus all our energies on China. No doubt the Taiwanese would be reassured by our abandonment of the Ukrainians. No doubt the PRC would be shaking in its boots if we abandoned our commitments — and, for that matter, our interests — in Europe.

I have a hunch about the “China hawks” of this type — the Ukraine-abandoners, the Europe-abandoners: They would flinch in the face of the PRC when the chips were down. If I were an East Asian ally of the United States, I wouldn’t trust them.

For many people, I think, the profession of a hard-line position on China is an excuse to oppose support of Ukraine. And an excuse to downgrade or ditch NATO.

(Related to all this is the pro-Israel/anti-Ukraine disposition.)

In any case, I wish to recommend a column by Josh Rogin, here. He is one of our sharpest, best-informed journalists on China and U.S. policy. The heading over his column: “What Vance gets wrong about the China challenge.”

• It is important, I think, to know some names and faces — names and faces of victims of aggression. Otherwise, the victims are mere data, mere statistics. A lot of people don’t like the picturing of victims, especially of children. They think it’s manipulative, and it makes them uncomfortable. Frankly, I am long past caring.

Olexander Scherba, a Ukrainian diplomat, remembers Stepan Chubenko:

Oleksandra Matviichuk has memorialized a boy named Cyril. Ms. Matviichuk is a human-rights lawyer, the executive director of the Center for Civil Liberties, in Kyiv, which shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. In the picture, we see Cyril in costume, scooting along:

War is not an abstraction. This war was visited on the Ukrainians by Vladimir Putin and his partners. If they succeed in crushing and eating Ukraine, they will move on to the next. The civilized world has a good chance of stopping them now — through the Ukrainians, who are doing the fighting and bleeding and dying. From others, they ask for money and weapons. What a deal, for the civilized world.