How close is Putin’s Ukraine war to us?

Putin’s terror in the Ukraine is a two-hour flight from the center of Europe. Two hours? In reality, the Kremlin kleptocrate’s war on freedom is much closer - it’s in our heads. As I mentioned in my last week’s column, what is happening there in the Ukraine brings back long-lost memories for all over 80-year-olds. They look at women and children in the underground tunnels of Kyiv on TV - and see themselves and their families in the air raid shelter in 1945. They look at the refugees at the border posts - and feel the dirt of the treks from war in Europe to a new home, where no one wanted them.

Seniors experience the fear of life again in front of the TV screen. They know what Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, is talking about when he says: “The worst is yet to come.” Sometimes we must switch off to switch on. Don’t we need to talk about it instead of just watching TV?

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz openly addressed the fears of the elderly, as well as the children’s questions about war. It is now important to be resolute and level-headed and to take a clear course. The chancellor responded to accusations of appeasement and softness that nobody could have prevented the war because nobody was in Putin’s head: “That Thursday changed the situation”, that Thursday of the invasion.

In the consciousness of the younger generation, Putinism also works like poison. The ruthlessness that is evident in the occupation of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe as well as in the acceptance of the deaths of many Ukrainians and young Russians, which Putin had to admit the other day. The corona horror graphics are almost gone in the TV news, but there are reports and pictures of the war. The talk shows still have only one topic and that is now Ukraine and no longer the virus. In such extreme situations, one likes to remember a sentence attributed to Martin Luther: “If I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.” Anyone who does not use the time that remains is Putin’s victim. Let’s plant a bamboo tree now!

Henry Kissinger, doyen of Western foreign policy, explained our age as a persistent, sometimes desperate search for a grand, orderly concept: “Chaos looms, but at the same time there is an unprecedented world order.” But this world order is threatened in the face of weapons of mass destruction, the collapse of states, environmental destruction, genocides, and the spread of new technologies. Kissinger wrote this in 2014, eight years before the chaos that Vladimir Putin is now creating.

The Kremlin autocrat is also talking about a new world order, but it is an old one, one with the Soviet Union 2.0 as the superpower, which is currently only indicated by caravans full of war equipment. We also need to explore another “new vulnerability” – and that what matters is not Moscow, but Beijing. Kissinger knew this best, writing about China: “The search for a world order in our time will make it necessary to include the views of societies whose reality is different and self-contained.”

Albert Einstein is recommended for those who are too war-oriented: “I’m not sure with what weapons the third world war will be fought, but in the fourth world war they will fight with sticks and stones.”

In our heads, the Kremlin kleptocrate’s war on freedom (presently in Ukraine) is much closer. Am I scared? Yes. I would really appreciate your views.

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