Ukraine and Russia

If there’s anything that I feel about the current state of Ukraine being invaded by Russia, it’s pure sadness and pity. My bottom line is that men and women and children do not have to die this way. We may not be able to fully understand the reasons why --Ukraine is as strange as it is far away. But the prospect of death and hunger and all the evil things associated with war brings a feeling of melancholy and sadness.

Depending on when we were born, we may have different perspectives of Ukraine or even Russia. For us who were born in the ‘60’s, mental images of things “Russian” would always be associated with a four-letter word --USSR. The younger generation may not fully understand what the Cold War was, but I remember a cousin my age during elementary --we were always debating as US and USSR-- quoting the airplanes and missiles each side had at that time.

Until now, it is difficult for me to differentiate between USSR and Russia. Russia was a member of the USSR, but it was the biggest member-country and the leader, with the capital in Moscow and the head of state undoubtedly Russian. That the USSR broke up in 1991 is something I could not imagine myself and I never got to think of the other soviet states as non-Russian. Many were still aligned with Moscow, though they enjoyed the joys of being “independent” republics.

When the biggest commercial airplane in the world landed at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport in November 2013, I always thought of it, and referred to it as “that Russian giant”. Oh, I knew it came from Ukraine, but I was still ignorant enough to simply think of it as nothing and lump it under the “Russian” reference. After all, a lot of the former USSR’s nuclear missile arsenal was in Ukraine. I may have believed Ukraine is an independent country, but in the back of my mind, I always looked at it as “Russian.” But this is also the reason why it never entered my mind that Russia would someday invade it in a war that wrought such devastation and misery.

The question is “why?” Because it wanted to join NATO? Yes, that would not be good for Russia, but Ukraine is a sovereign independent country which can do whatever it wants for itself. Regardless of the reasons we rattle off, it does not negate the fact that it is an independent nation. For Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to demand what it should do is already an infringement of its sovereignty.

Maybe it’s really all about Putin. He was with the KGB for 16 years and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before the USSR disintegrated. It must have been painful, looking at USSR’s better republics no longer with you. The USSR was USA’s worthy opponent; Russia was decimated when it broke up…and never really fully recovered. I hope I am wrong, but I can’t shrug off the thought that this might be just a result of Putin’s pent-up anger over the last 30 years. Let’s hope and pray hostilities will cease soonest. People are dying when they shouldn’t be --a huge humanitarian catastrophe in the making.