I’m heartbroken.
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has unsettled me in a way that even the life-changing COVID-19 pandemic hadn’t.
I lived in the Ukrainian capital from 2004 to 2006 – two of the best years of my journalism career and two very happy years of my life. I ran The Associated Press’ Kyiv bureau, having arrived there from my previous AP reporting job in Moscow.
My Ukrainian colleagues became good friends. They were patient with my often stumbling Russian and my endless questions. Even the camo-wearing, gun-toting guard who responded to our office alarm every time I accidentally tripped it when working too early, or too late, was kind.
Weekends, I explored Kyiv. In winters, I tried not to slip on the invisible ice patches and dodged falling icicles. I warmed myself with mugs of glintvein, a mulled wine, bought off street vendors. I frequented a fast-food varenyky (dumpling) spot with more regularity than I should admit.
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I stuffed a scarf in my purse so I could drop in to the many Orthodox churches for a moment of prayer and peace. I became fascinated by the rather sordid biography of St. Volodymyr, the former pagan whose baptism into Christianity earned him a spot considered an equal to the apostles. I read Mikhail Bulgakov. And I happily spent hours spitballing about Ukrainian politicians after work ended.
Why did I believe better of Putin?
I embraced Ukraine and believed it embraced me back.
It never felt like home. I was an American with no Slavic blood in me. But after two years in the Russian capital, which I loved but always kept me on edge, Kyiv felt more chill.
I exhaled there.
So watching the scenes unfolding in Ukraine now because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion leaves me numb.
I focus on the faces of Ukrainians huddled in their winter coats and sleeping bags in the city’s ornate metro stations, children nestled into their parents’ arms. I zero in on the buildings, trying to place them in my head.
I completely understand the Ukrainians’ befuddlement over what’s happening. How can this be? Two nations that share so much history and culture. It’s hard to know a Russian or an Ukrainian who doesn’t have a relative and friend living in the other country.
And, yet, maybe I should have seen it coming. I can rattle off a list of people I personally interviewed who clashed with Putin and are now dead (shot, poisoned), jailed or exiled.
I don’t know why I believed Putin was more rational than this.
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I also was a witness to Ukraine’s first big attempt after the end of the Soviet Union to pull itself away from the darkness now engulfing Russia. I covered the 2004 Orange Revolution, that magical mushrooming protest that turned central Kyiv into a giant tent camp. The Orange Revolution (so-called because orange was the opposition’s campaign color) arose in response to a truly stolen election. The election had been called for the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych (the Russian stooge played an infamous role again in 2014, triggering Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity. I fear his return a third time) but everyone knew the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko had won.
Yushchenko had already paid a high price, poisoned by a dioxin that many believe was delivered at the behest of the Kremlin in the hopes of sidelining the popular politician.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians filled the streets for weeks in 2004 in protest over the stolen election, creating a kind of protest village. There were medics, police, teachers, even entertainers.
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I don’t want to underestimate the tension and fear. Rumors that tanks were going to be called in and guns turned against the demonstrators ran constant. I was scared to sleep through the night, scared I’d miss the start of an attack.
The United States didn’t have any troops on the ground. Neither did Russia. But both the Russians and the Americans loomed large. I spent hours sitting in the U.S. Embassy for background briefings on the shuttle diplomacy happening.
The tanks didn’t roll and Yushchenko won a second and fair revote.
As with many things, the Orange Revolution didn’t lead to nirvana: It ended in squabbles and corruption within the new Ukrainian government and disappointment among the people.
Even so, the Ukrainians never relented in their bid for democracy and partnership with other democratic neighbors. Russia, also, never gave up its efforts to scuttle a free, thriving and pro-Western Ukraine.
However, what we’ve seen this past week goes so much deeper.
The Russian military killing Ukrainians, firing on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. That sentence doesn’t even make sense.
The Kremlin under Putin has crossed a line that introduces more instability into a world already rocked by two years of a pandemic. And, personally, it shakes my own understanding of American power.
And while I understand why as Americans we don’t have any appetite for another foreign entanglement after Iraq and Afghanistan, I can’t help but feel like we’re letting the Ukrainians down.
‘Still have hope for Ukraine’
It’s heartbreaking to watch these attacks play out in real time on social media and know that the United States, still the most powerful nation in the world, nurtured Ukraine on this democratic path and could intervene to stop the bloodshed. Intellectually, I understand why we can’t. I understand the risks that American military involvement would create (Russia after all is a nuclear power, too).
And, yes, I know Ukraine still has our support, and the sanctions will likely prove damning to the Russian economy and hurt Putin’s circle and could, in the best case scenario, end his grip on power.
But I can’t shake my unease and this knot in my stomach.
When I texted with a Ukrainian friend on the first night of the invasion, she told me she was with her family in Kyiv. They were staying.
“I still have hope for Ukraine,” she texted.
I do, too. If she can feel hope, as Putin’s military attacks her hometown, I can summon hope, too. I just wish that was good enough to make a difference.
Mara Bellaby is executive editor at Florida Today. She previously worked for The Associated Press, reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, Moscow and London. She can be reached at mbellaby@floridatoday.com
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Russia invasion of Ukraine shakes how I view my America
