Under Assault, Fighting Back

In the Ukraine war — in what Putin’s Russia is doing to the Ukrainians — there are many horrifying aspects. One of them is the abduction of children. “FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites.” “FT,” as you know, stands for “Financial Times.” The report is written by Alison Killing and Christopher Miller. Go here.

Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser to President Biden, issued a statement, which I will quote in full:

Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials have deported hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including children who have been forcibly separated from their families. We are aware of new and credible reports that Russian authorities are listing abducted Ukrainian children on Russian adoption websites. This is despicable and appalling. These Ukrainian children belong with their families inside Ukraine. Russia is waging a war not just against the Ukrainian military — but against the Ukrainian people. As the President has said before, Russia is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. We will continue to stand with the Ukrainian people as we help them defend against Russia’s barbaric war of aggression.

Let it be so. (This administration may have only a few months left.)

• Here is a report from Meduza, the Russian news organization in exile. It begins as follows:

In late May, Russia and Ukraine conducted their first prisoner exchange in over three months. The swap saw 75 people released back to Ukraine, including some who had been in Russian captivity for more than two years. Ukrainian photographer Kostiantyn Liberov photographed some of the former POWs after the exchange to document what the hunger and stress of imprisonment had done to their bodies.

Said Liberov, the photographer, “This was the most difficult shoot we’ve done in the last six months. After meeting and talking with these guys, it took us a week to recover from what we’d seen and heard.”

• Another report from Meduza is about female POWs, in particular.

More than 400 Ukrainian women are currently being held in Russian captivity, according to Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. Those who’ve been released recount inhumane conditions, sexual assault, and torture during their detention. In the new film Captivity, the independent television channel Dozhd (TV Rain) interviews some of these women about their experiences and speaks with the daughter of a woman who is still imprisoned.

These stories are hard to bear, of course. But, in my view, people ought at least to be aware of them.

• Here is something interesting, in light of a debate in our own country, the United States:

A new petition published on the Ukrainian government’s website calls on the country’s lawmakers to block TikTok for the sake of national security. The document asserts that China openly collaborates with Russia and supports it in its war against Ukraine. It also says that Chinese law allows companies to collect information about TikTok users that can subsequently be used for espionage and intelligence purposes.

• The foreign minister of Lithuania is utterly unillusioned, as an official in a Baltic state must be:

• Obviously, Russian soldiers and Ukrainian soldiers have different motivations, in the fighting they do. Consider this:

Hundreds of Russian draftees who have opted to face prison time rather than return to the war in Ukraine are being systematically imprisoned and then forcibly sent back to the front, according to new reporting from the independent outlet Verstka. Those who resist are bound, beaten, and boarded onto planes at gunpoint before being sent to Ukraine and forced to join assault units.

You can read the rest at Meduza, here.

And here is a piece by Joseph Roche, reporting for The Dispatch from Kharkiv: “In Ukraine, ‘We Know Why We Fight.’”

• Gregg Nunziata is the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law. In a busy career, he has been general counsel and domestic-policy adviser to Senator Marco Rubio. Earlier this month, he wrote, “We can debate American policy on Ukraine, but the contempt draft-dodging Trump and his fans have for a country heroically bleeding, dying, for its liberty is beyond disgusting.”

“Beyond disgusting” is right, I think.

At one level, I suspect, Ukraine’s disparagers “hold their manhoods cheap.” They play tough nationalists on social media. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are sacrificing themselves for their country: to keep it free and independent. The disparagers must sense the immense gulf that separates themselves from the genuine article, so to speak.

It would be one thing if they said, “I respect your patriotism and your valor, and I wish you all the best against the invader. But, you know: Can’t help you. I got Mexicans to think about” (or whatever). Instead, they sneer at the Ukrainians and defend, or perfume, Putin.

Again, “beyond disgusting.”

But the Ukrainians have a lot of support as well — even among Republicans, even among people who are planning to vote for Trump once more. I just saw a friend who’s a die-hard Republican and would not vote Democratic on a bet. Yet he flies a Ukrainian flag from his home, in rural Michigan.

This is a spirit that endures. A sense of solidarity is felt, by many.