“A stone thrown into a pond – the ripples will spread”
The past 566 days and counting since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, February 24 2022 – a date now forever carved into consciousness of the European continent, have brought about dozens of thousands of deaths, left millions displaced and echoed around the globe as a wake-up call, one blaring with air-raid sirens. Allan Little’s in his report for the BBC conjures up an image of this war as a conflict of polarities, a grand confrontation of two irreconcilable forces. In one corner of the boxing ring stands the 1945 Yalta agreement reliant on “spheres of influence” against the 1975 Helsinki Final Act centered around independent sovereign states in the opposite corner, it’s authoritarian regimes pitted against democracies. A sort of you-win-or-you-lose with elusive peace negotiations dwindling on the horizon as a war of attrition looms over. In this binary perspective, it’s the human factor that adds dimension.
The amplitude of emotions experienced and the range of coping strategies, poignantly compiled by This American Life episode and Lindsey Hilsum’s letters, is what really struck a chord with me this week. There is no way of capturing a tragedy in sheer death toll numbers, but rather its harrowingly nagging effect on everyday lives is what’s better suited for documenting the unbearable. From cooking over a burning wooden log and predicting shelling from birds’ behavior to finding the strength to joke and smile at your neighbor while in a besieged city, human adaptability and resilience in the face of the greatest atrocities known to mankind that preserve any chance at hope. As much as a cry for the dead, it’s a mourning for the living who have to coexist with what they’ve witnessed.
The podcast really exemplified to me the quandary of telling uncomfortable stories. The personal account of Munachi, a young Nigerian medical student in the Ukrainian city of Lviv who suddenly found himself as a refugee, though he denies the word, on a content that didn’t want him. Revealing how racism in Eastern Europe intersects with the new reality of wartime shed light on the stories of those who don’t usually make it to the headlines. Inevitably, I found myself asking if the inclusion of this story undermined the Ukrainian struggle in any way.
The other question brought up by this week’s readings (or rather listenings) was the possibility of prosecuting war crimes. In light of ICC issuing an arrest warrant against Mr. Putin earlier this year, a new debate on the effectiveness of international tribunals and the potential impunity of the main perpetrators was incited. While lower-rank criminals are more likely to receive a verdict, this sparks a conversation on the distribution of responsibility between low-grade executors and high-rank officials in the aftermath of a war. Is there justice if the main culprits are off the hook? Whether it’s worth trying to prosecute clerks in an attempt to reach to the top of the iceberg or whether it only does a disservice of creating an illusion of due process with no real substance? I’m looking to learn more about international law and answer those questions for myself.
