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Ukraine at War: A Ceasefire Might Be Necessary, But There Won’t Be ‘Peace’
A Russian drone struck the Chabad-run Perlina school in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 30, 2024. Photo: Jewish community JCC in Kyiv, Kyiv municipality, and Yan Dobronosov
In the first decade of independence, Ukraine was quite distinctly divided into a number of regions, which differed greatly from each other in terms of ethno-identification and linguistic composition:
1. Western Ukraine: oblasts that were part of Austria-Hungary before World War I (Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Zakarpattya, and Chernivtsi) and Volyn and Rivne oblasts that were part of Poland in the interwar period. This region of Ukraine was the least Russified and Sovietized. The legacy of the Ukrainian national movement was strong here, including the fresh memory of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (abbreviated UPA) armed struggle against Soviet rule (especially in the first three oblasts, where Greek Catholics rather than Orthodox Christians predominate among the believers);
2. Central Ukraine. This region more or less fits within the boundaries of The Cossack Hetmanate, or Hetmanshchyna, a semi-independent Ukrainian state entity that existed in the 17th-18th centuries (Chernihiv, Poltava, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy and Kirovohrad oblasts). It was characterized by the stable preservation of the Ukrainian language in villages and small towns, with the prevalence of “surzhik” (mixed Ukrainian-Russian idiom) and the local variant of the Russian language in larger cities. The level of national self-consciousness of the local Ukrainian population was quite high, but, unlike in Western Ukraine, the tradition of the Ukrainian national movement was significantly disrupted by the long process of Sovietization and Russification;
3. Southern and Eastern Ukraine: oblasts that were once part of Sloboda Ukraine (Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts) and Novorossiya Governorate (Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts). This region was characterized by a significant presence of ethnically Russian population, total dominance of the Russian language in cities and in some (ethnically predominantly non-Ukrainian) villages, mass transition of the local Ukrainian population to surzhik (in villages) and to the Russian language (in urban areas). The ethnic self-consciousness of a significant part of the local Ukrainian population was severely eroded.
Kyiv, like other large cities in Central Ukraine, was predominantly Russian-speaking. However, a significant part of its population had a high level of political and national consciousness, which brought the capital closer to Western Ukraine and — in combination with significant migration from western oblasts as well as from villages — paved the way for linguistic Ukrainianization.
Crimea was the most Russified region of Ukraine. The Russian language (its status as an official language along with Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar was legally recognized in the region) unambiguously dominated in all spheres, there was no Ukrainian-language education system, and there was only one district of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea — Krasnoperekopsky district — where ethnic Ukrainians were a relative majority.
Outside of Western Ukraine, addressing strangers in Ukrainian by default in both official and everyday communication was not the norm — despite the fact that Ukrainian was proclaimed the only state language. Demands to recognize Russian as a second state language were articulated openly by politicians in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
Russian aggression in 2014 led to a gradual change of this situation. After the full-scale invasion began in 2022, it changed dramatically. I got to visit Ukraine many times after the Russian aggression began in 2014 — I traveled to Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Kremenchug, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Uzhgorod, Khust, Mukachevo, as well as Mariupol (occupied by the Russians in 2022) and Bakhmut (now completely destroyed), which are practically on the line of contact. On behalf of the Jewish Agency, I also visited occupied Crimea twice (in Simferopol, Bakhchysarai and Yevpatoria). Shortly after the full-scale invasion began, I traveled to Ukraine and visited the country only a few times thereafter. I also had many conversations with refugees from Ukraine in Moldova, Poland and Hungary. This empirical experience, as well as information from the Ukrainian media, allows me to form my own preliminary impression of the social, ethno-identification and linguistic processes developing in Ukraine itself and among Ukrainian refugees outside of it.
The first thing that immediately catches the eye is the almost universal complete exclusion of the Russian language from all official and semi-official spheres of use. A very significant part of the population has switched or is switching to Ukrainian in informal communication. At the same time, under stress or in situations of trustful communication, people accustomed to conversing in Russian often involuntarily resort to the Russian language. Undoubtedly, Ukrainian society as a whole is strategically aimed at maximizing its distance from Russia and Russians, including both in language and culture, as well as at the complete switching of the younger generations to the Ukrainian language, which is facilitated by the elimination of Russian-language schools and classes.
The rapid growth of settlements in Western Ukraine due to the arrival of numerous migrants from the east, from areas occupied by the Russians or in close proximity to the zone of active hostilities, is noteworthy. Some of these predominantly Russian-speaking migrants, having found themselves in places with total predominance of the Ukrainian language, feel insecure about their Ukrainian language competence, fearing that their Ukrainian speech will be perceived by the locals as a ridiculous and uneducated surzhik. In this regard, I have seen announcements in some stores and cafes in Lviv that read something like “Russian speakers, you are not ridiculous. You are encouraged to speak Ukrainian.” Migrants from the East settle not only in large urban centers, but also in villages.
I happened to visit many villages in Transcarpathia and in the Hungarian villages adjacent to the border. It is striking that while in the villages on the Hungarian side of the border there are abandoned houses (because young people often leave the villages and move to the cities), there is nothing like that on the Ukrainian side of the border. The locals explain this by the fact that migrants from the east buy or rent almost all available housing in the west of Ukraine. It goes without saying that the closer to the border with EU countries, the safer it is, as there is little chance of Russian missile attacks.
For almost three years of full-scale war, Ukrainian society has adapted to quasi-normal functioning in the environment where mortal danger exists not only on the line of contact, but also in the rear. It is important to emphasize that quasi-normal life continues not only in the west of the country, but also in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih, which are dozens of kilometers away from the front line and are exposed almost daily to rocket fire and drone attacks. At the same time, the war fatigue and lack of prospects accumulated in society are becoming evident. There is a feeling that Western allies are not letting Ukraine win, combined with the realization that without their help it is impossible to continue active and quite successful resistance to Russian aggression. We should not forget that Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian military are suffering from a growing PTSD, which will inevitably manifest itself in the future, when the active phase of the conflict is over.
Apart from the horrors of war, a powerful factor traumatizing the public consciousness is the feeling of injustice regarding the distribution of the war burden within Ukrainian society itself. In this regard, Ukrainians often refer to the Russian saying meaning “war to some is boon to others.” While some Ukrainians have been fighting at the front for the third year already, others are quietly living abroad, evading conscription in Ukraine or doing their army service far from the front. The lack of proper rotation at the front, associated with the actual failure of mobilization efforts, is the direct cause of this situation. At the same time, the notorious TCCs (Territorial Centers of Recruitment and Social Support) often simply detain men in public places and send them to the army, including the elderly and sick. I can confirm this by personal experience. TCC representatives stopped me twice and sought to verify whether I am really over 60 years old (because I apparently look too young) and whether I really do not have Ukrainian citizenship (apparently, I speak Ukrainian too well). Against this background, Ukrainian government officials of different levels, as well as other influential individuals and their family members have reservations from mobilization.
Moreover, many of them, according to a significant part of the population, earn money from the war through various corruption schemes. The impossibility of organizing anti-government protests (“Maidan”) and holding elections during the war reinforces the feeling of hopelessness. In this context, there is a sad joke that goes like this: “There is only one way to defeat corruption in Ukraine: shoot all the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, then shoot all those who will come to their funerals, and only then hold elections.”
As a result of the full-scale Russian invasion, millions of Ukrainians became refugees abroad, causing the largest migration crisis in Europe since World War II. It should be noted that at the first stage, the Ukrainian authorities themselves de facto called on those unfit for active service from the most threatened areas to temporarily leave the country in order to save their lives and reduce the burden on the Ukrainian economy. During the chaos of the first weeks of the full-scale invasion, a significant number of men of conscription age (up to 60 years old) also left Ukraine. Some of them were able to do so by taking advantage of the corruption in the Ukrainian border services. The presence of Ukrainian refugees in Poland is particularly noticeable.
It is not uncommon to see Ukrainian inscriptions in the Polish capital. For example, ATMs offer Ukrainian as one of the options along with Polish and English. Ukrainian, surzhik and Ukrainian variant of Russian can be heard in Warsaw and beyond very often. It is very obvious that a significant part of the technical staff in hotels, small stores, etc., are Ukrainians. Many of them, despite the patriotic feelings they demonstrate, do not intend to return to Ukraine in the foreseeable future — or ever.
At the same time, there is a kind of “shuttle migration” between Poland and Ukraine, when women living in Poland visit their husbands who remain in Ukraine, because they are in the army or simply cannot leave the country because they have not reached the age of 60. This situation, being indefinitely stretched in time, naturally creates a lot of problems for maintaining normal family relations. It is obvious that Ukraine’s irreversible demographic losses as a result of emigration due to the war will be even higher than those resulting from combat losses and civilian casualties caused by Russian shelling and bombing. This subject is widely discussed in Ukrainian society, and the authorities are making some, so far not very successful, efforts to return at least some of the refugees from abroad.
In this grim situation, many Ukrainians, primarily those who can be regarded as the intellectual elite and expert community, see the Jewish State as a successful model of survival and development in extreme conditions. They see Israel as a model of a small, dynamically developing state that has successfully resisted external aggression from an uncompromising enemy, many times superior in human and material resources, which denies the right of this state to exist and whose goal is to destroy it completely. There are strong sympathies for Israel among ordinary Ukrainian citizens as well, as I have witnessed more than once in the course of direct communication with them in various situations. This is facilitated, in particular, by Israel’s war against Iran, which is the closest ally of Russia. To Ukrainians, Jews are not some “exotic people” but “neighbors”. There are many natives of Ukraine in Israel, and natives of Ukraine played a decisive role in the establishment of the Jewish state. In addition, many Ukrainians are personally acquainted with Jews now living in Israel. All this allows them to perceive the Israeli model as partly “their own” and as fundamentally implementable in Ukrainian conditions.
To summarize, I can say that the majority of Ukrainian society and its elites have come to terms with the idea that the liberation of the Russian-occupied territories is impossible in the foreseeable future. In this regard, against the background of accumulated fatigue, it needs a respite, which can be provided by a ceasefire agreement along the existing lines of contact. At the same time, there is no question of an official renunciation of the territories seized by Russian troops or any normalization of relations between Ukraine and Russia. Ukrainian society is mostly convinced that Russia is an immanent enemy of Ukraine, so the resumption of active armed confrontation is inevitable.
The author is a contributor to the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, where a version of this article was originally published.
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New York Times Campus ‘Middle-of-the-Road’ on Israel Is Actually Pretty Far Out
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“It Can Be Lonely to Have a Middle-of-the Road Opinion on the Middle East,” is the headline over a recent New York Times news article. “Some college students and faculty members are seeking space for nuanced perspectives on the Israel-Hamas war on deeply divided campuses,” a subheadline explains.
What examples does the Times offer up of “nuanced perspectives” and “middle-of-the road” opinion?
One person named in the Times article is a Columbia student named Aharon Dardik. The Times describes him as “a pacifist who spent his teen years with his family in the West Bank but who ultimately refused to serve in the army in Israel. He believes in working with Israelis and Palestinians toward collective liberation and a world not divided by ethnonationalist allegiances.”
A “world not divided by ethnonationalist allegiances” seems like an extremist utopian fantasy, not “nuanced” or “middle of the road.”
The Times doesn’t mention Dardik’s extreme description of Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “plausible genocide,” his praise of extreme anti-Israel congresswoman Ilhan Omar, or his support for gradually phasing out Columbia’s partnership with Tel Aviv University, all of which were mentioned in a piece about him in RealClearPolitics. The Times doesn’t mention that he was court-martialed by the Israel Defense Forces six times and spent about 4 months in an Israeli military prison, as Moment magazine has reported. It doesn’t report Dardik’s expression of support for the Columbia “encampment” and for the takeover of Hamilton Hall by anti-Israel protesters, which are also in the Moment account.
It all doesn’t sound too nuanced or middle of the road to me.
Another person named in the Times article is a professor at Swarthmore College, Sa’ed Atshan. The Times claims the professor “tries to make sure there is complexity in everything he teaches in his Contemporary Israel and Palestine class.” Atshan told NPR that he is a pacifist, and that “it’s difficult to be a pacifist in the U.S. where guns are so pervasive and a world where violence is so pervasive. In a world where the military industrial complex is transnational and has its tentacles everywhere we go.” The Philadelphia Inquirer has described him as a supporter of the movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel, and as a proponent of a “one state solution” that would be an end to Israel as a Jewish state.
Another of the Times’s examples is Dov Waxman, a professor at UCLA who “wrote on social media that he supported the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a position he said he took as a supporter of international law.”
These people don’t seem that “middle of the road” or “nuanced” to me. That the Times would describe them as such says more about the Times and its biases than about the realities of the situation on American college campuses.
It’s not even clear how “lonely” these characters are. The Times claims Dardik started a group at Columbia that has “over 100 members.” Waxman recently was invited to speak at a Harvard conference on antisemitism on campus, convened by Derek Penslar, who describes himself as “Head of Harvard’s Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.” There, according to an account in Harvard magazine, Waxman asserted that “the media often exaggerated campus antisemitism.” Atshan gathered support from a petition signed by 750 people, according to the Inquirer. They’re all getting adulatory press coverage from the New York Times describing them, not that accurately, as “middle of the road.”
Maybe they look like “middle of the road” from the vantage point of the New York Times newsroom. Not so, though, from the perspective of the Israeli or American public. The real loners are the Times editors, who persist in pushing a point of view about Israel that is far out of the mainstream. It may boost Times circulation on a few formerly elite college campuses, but it also explains a lot about the newspaper’s fading credibility.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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Republican Jewish Coalition Endorses Mike Johnson to Retain Speaker of the House Role
US House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to members of the media at the Capitol building, April 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ken Cedeno
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) has endorsed Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) to retain his title as speaker of the House of Representatives, citing his strident advocacy for Israel and commitment to combating antisemitism.
“[Rep. Mike Johnson] has shown courageous leadership and moral clarity in taking bold action to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the American Jewish community against unprecedented levels of antisemitism, and resolutely defended the State of Israel as it continues to fight an existential war against Iran and its terrorist proxies,” RJC wrote on X/Twitter.
“Speaker Johnson has more than earned our full-throated and enthusiastic support to lead the Republican Majority in the 119th Congress,” RJC added.
The RJC’s endorsement comes as Johnson has launched a bid to keep his position as speaker of the House of Representatives. Johnson has received immense criticism from the far-right wing of the Republican party after he helped push through a spending bill that failed to raise the federal debt limit. Over the holiday season, Johnson has faced a rebellion from lawmakers within his party and has had to work alongside Democrats to keep the federal government running, calling into question the extent of his support among fellow Republicans.
Over the course of his term as speaker, Johnson has established himself as a stalwart ally of Israel. Last May, the speaker delivered a keynote speech at the US Embassy of Israel, in which he vowed that America will stand with the Jewish state “in their time of greatest need.” Johnson spearheaded an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the US Congress, calling out Democrats for expressing half-hearted support to the Jewish state. He subsequently blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for skipping Netanyahu’s address, suggesting that Harris sought to mollify pro-Palestine activists during her failed presidential campaign.
Johnson also placed the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act”—legislation which would strip tax-exempt status from charities that lend support to terrorism—on the floor of the House of Representatives. The legislation narrowly passed in the House of Representatives in November.
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Ritchie Torres Blasts Columbia Over ‘Intifada’ Student Publication, Calls For ‘Revolution’ Against ‘Far-Left’
US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) speaks during the House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, Sept. 30, 2021. Photo: Al Drago/Pool via REUTERS
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) blasted Columbia University over the weekend over their lackadaisical approach to combating antisemitism, excoriating the Ivy League institution for allowing a terrorist-supporting student group to exist on campus.
“Columbia University is so embedded in anti-Israel propaganda that it has a publication entitled, quote, ‘The Columbia Intifada.’ What is needed in our society is a revolution of the responsible against the intifada idiocy of the far-left,” Torres said in a statement on Sunday.
Earlier this month, the prestigious university came under fire after it was revealed that ‘Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine’—a cohort of anti-Israel student activists—distributed a publication titled ‘The Columbia Intifada’ around campus. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) reportedly printed 1,000 copies of the publication, which included articles titled “Zionist Peace Means Palestinian Blood,”and “The Myth of the Two-State Solution.”
When pressed about the publication, Columbia University criticized the students involved and indicated that it would consider administering punishment.
“Using the Columbia name for a publication that glorifies violence and makes individuals in our community feel targeted in any way is a breach of our values,” Columbia said in a statement.
“As we have said repeatedly, discrimination and promoting violence or terror is not acceptable and antithetical to what our community stands for. We are investigating this incident through our applicable offices and policies,” the university continued.
Though the publication is not officially recognized by Columbia University, critics argue that it indicates a thriving anti-Israel sentiment on the prestigious campus.
This is not the first time that Torres has lambasted Columbia over their failure to protect Jewish students on campus. Over the past year, Torres has repeatedly condemned the campus for allowing pro-Palestine students to chant slogans perceived by many to be antisemitic. He has also called Columbia’s anti-Israel professors “pseudo-intellectuals.”
In addition, the congressman has commended New York University (NYU) for expanding its anti-harassment and non-discrimination policies to protect students who support the existence of Israel. NYU’s new hate speech policies state that deploying “code words like ‘Zionist’” do not necessarily shield students from violating the university conduct policies. He has called on Columbia to implement a similar policy.
In the year following the Hamas terrorist group’s slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, Columbia has become a hotbed of pro-Palestine protests. Immediately following the Oct. 7 massacre, a litany of Columbia student groups issued statements expressing approval of the Hamas attacks and assigning blame exclusively to Israel. A mob of pro-Palestinian protesters held a demonstration in front of the City University of New York Hillel on Tuesday, shouting at Jewish students to get “out of the Middle East” and “go back to Brooklyn.”
Many Columbia campus groups have implemented policies banning self-professed “Zionists” from membership, effectively excluding the majority of Jewish students. Columbia University student Khymani James publicly stated that Zionists “don’t deserve to live.” The Ivy League university has not confirmed if James has been permanently expelled from the campus.
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