Ukraine and the myth of peace
It was exactly a year ago this week that, contentedly ensconced in a Cape Town hotel, I was woken in the middle of the night by an incessant pinging on my phone. Messages were pouring in from friends in Ukraine telling me that Russia’s invasion had begun. Slumbering next to me, a newspaper columnist of more refined interests was startled, after a pleasant evening, to hear me muttering and swearing about Vladimir Putin.
The insanity of Putin’s march on Kyiv shocked me. I had reported on Ukraine since March 2014, just after the war first began. I was in New Haven and watched on an oversized diner TV as men in green military uniforms without any identifying insignia walked into Crimea and hoisted the Russian flag over the Supreme Council building. Later, I listened incredulously as Putin denied they were his troops and then, yet more incredulously, as the West’s leading politicians appeared to accept this obvious nonsense. In those moments, a new era had started to dawn…
David Patrikarakos for UnHerd.
