My latest Q&A is with Kyle Parker, here. He is a Russianist. He is a key staffer of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. According to Bill Browder, who has spearheaded Magnitsky acts around the world, no one is more responsible for the U.S. act than Parker. This got Parker, along with Browder, placed on Putin’s Most Wanted list.
And you remember what Boris Nemtsov said. (He was the leader of the Russian political opposition, and was murdered in February 2015, within sight of the Kremlin.) He called the U.S. Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law ever enacted by a foreign government.” The law allows for sanctions on Kremlin officials who persecute Russians, as they do day after day.
There are many, many people who know a lot about Russia, Ukraine, and relevant U.S. policies. I doubt anyone knows more than Parker. He has lived with the issues for decades. And he has been in Ukraine seven times since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion on February 24 last year.
In our Q&A, I start by saying something like, “Isn’t it amazing that the Ukrainians are still standing, a year and a few months later?” (I will paraphrase both of us — Parker and me — throughout this post.)
“Yes, it is amazing,” says Parker, “and it has been amazing to see firsthand. Deeply moving. Every layer of society has come together to produce this result: this valorous defense of hearth and home. It’s hard to put into words.”
I wonder, “Why aren’t the Ukrainians worldwide heroes?” “Well, I think they are,” says Parker, “for people of goodwill. For people of goodwill who have eyes to see and ears to hear. I think the Ukrainians are rightly recognized as not simply the good guys but as — how to put it? They are what we’d all want to be in a similar scenario. A similar nightmare. We would all want to acquit ourselves — as individuals and as a nation — as they have.”
We talk about the early days of the war — which now seem distant but were just last year. Parker recalls the movie Red Dawn, from 1984. A bunch of teenagers in the American West band together to fend off a massive invasion. It was like that, says Parker, in Ukraine. The country had a smaller military then. Understandably, it was focused on protecting the big cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa.
There are smaller cities “just down the road” from those cities, says Parker — maybe an hour away. In the case of Kyiv, Chernihiv. In the case of Kharkiv, Sumy. In the case of Odessa, Mykolaiv.
On February 24, everyone in Ukraine awoke at 5 in the morning to invasion and aerial bombardment. There were spontaneous gatherings in town squares, says Parker. They went something like this: “What’ll it be? They’ll be here in a few hours. What’s our plan? What are we going to do?”
The day before, these people had been civilians, Parker notes, working in their various jobs, going about normal lives. Now they were called on to be combatants, to a degree. They could have done nothing, of course. They could have surrendered. But they didn’t.
In October 2022, Parker met a young man in Mykolaiv. The man was 23. He told Parker about the very beginning of the war. He had been working in his father’s auto-repair shop. When the invasion began, the young man talked with some of his friends, and one of them said, “Hey, my dad’s got a hunting rifle.” Other hunting rifles were found as well. The young men would try some partisan warfare.
They staked out the high ground on the main road into Mykolaiv. Russian forces, as it turned out, were very ill prepared. By the end of the day, the young Ukrainians had exchanged their hunting rifles for AKs, RPGs, and an armored personnel carrier. The young man to whom Parker spoke had, by himself, killed 31 Russians.
“I am sobered,” says Parker, “by an appreciation of the luxury that so many of us have: We will never be faced with situations where we have to resort — legitimately and rightly — to such violence, in defense of our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, our friends. And this is what happened in cities and towns all across the country, as Ukrainians were faced with punishing attack.”
They fought back. Many of us admire them for it. But Putin has many, many supporters and excusers in the Free World, just as his predecessors in the Kremlin did in the last century. (I remember them well.)
During our long and searching Q&A, I ask Kyle Parker many questions: What has the war done to Ukrainian identity? Did the U.S. government engineer a coup in 2014, as so many claim? What about Russian-speakers in Ukraine? Has NATO spooked Putin? Are we giving away our military store to the Ukrainians (as Donald Trump and others allege)? What if Putin uses nukes? Is our aid to Ukraine keeping us from deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? What can you say to people who refuse to believe reports of Russian atrocities in Ukraine?
Etc.
At the very end, I ask Parker a very, very painful question — a painful question for many: He is a great lover of Russia and its culture, and its literature in particular. Has the current war affected this love?
Again, our Q&A is here. I have seldom been part of such a thought-provoking, illuminating, moving interview.