Ukraine: What the media doesn’t tell us, Part One

It is difficult to find out exactly what is going on in a war, any war. The press from each side is usually biased, it is difficult for journalists to get to battle sites, there is a genuine element that people do not know what is going on, and there is of course military secrecy, where one side cannot afford to let the other side know what is happening.

This has to be acceptable. It is war, not a game of tennis. Even in these days of social media we cannot expect to understand what is happening on the ground. That is a job for historians and retired generals in the years to come. What is not acceptable is deliberate bias on the part of media groups that claim to be impartial. In the West we expect Russia Today to be biased towards the Russian perspective, but the BBC should not express the same – or more extreme – bias towards the Ukrainian perspective.

I have to add, otherwise I am open to being slated by all and sundry, that right is on the side of Ukraine, that Russia should not have invaded, and that problems should be resolved through talking, not shooting. Nevertheless, when I switch on the TV or the radio, or read a newspaper or news website, I expect to be provided with information from all sides. In the West everything is from the Ukrainian perspective, nothing about why the Russians invaded, and as much as we don’t like to think about it they did have their reasons for invading. Perhaps the main one was security fears. If Ukraine joined NATO then Russia would be threatened in its soft underbelly. Russia sees Ukraine as being within its sphere of influence, which is not surprising given that many Ukrainians (at least until 24 Feb) also thought they were Russian, or at least closely related to Russia. They go back a long way, at least to Kievan Rus over a thousand years ago, and Ukraine has been part of the same political group (country, nation, empire) for most of the period since then, excepting the influence of Mongols, Poles, Lithuanians and others over the centuries. It is only from the 20th Century that there has been independence for Ukraine, and then only for short periods until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The idea of Ukraine as a national entity only goes back to the 19th Century, with the influence of people like Mykhailo Drahomonov, who created a Ukrainian socialist organisation, and who influenced a generation of young leftwing Ukrainians who founded the Ruthenian Ukrainian Radical Party in 1890. It was founded in Lviv (Lemberg) which was of course in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time – rather than the Russian empire.

Ukraine attempted to achieve nationhood in the wake of the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1917-18. It was briefly independent before becoming part of the Soviet Union in 1922. When working in Finland I daily passed the old Ukrainian Embassy building in Helsinki.

The other problem with Ukrainian nationhood is its geographical location. Much of the western part of the country was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then in Poland, with parts in Romania, etc. The borders only settled down after World War Two, and even then it changed when Crimea was given to Ukraine in 1954 by Khrushchev. As for the people, many consider themselves Russian or nearly Russian, and many speak Russian as a first language. As is the case for many new nations, Ukraine encouraged the use of Ukrainian rather than Russian despite the wishes of many of its people.

Then we have Putin. OK, I get the need for security, the need to keep Ukraine out of NATO. From the Russian perspective I agree with it. If I was Russian I would probably have been very worried over the last couple of decades as NATO, the old enemy, has expanded across Europe, taking in the old Warsaw Pact countries and several of the new post-USSR countries. Ukraine and Belarus are the only buffers. Unfortunately, by invading Ukraine Putin has effectively created a unified Ukrainian nation, something that did not exist before. Now he is in trouble. He might win the war, he should win the war, but it is unlikely that he will win the peace. Indeed, it is debatable whether he will survive as Russian leader after this disaster. He probably expected many Ukrainians to welcome his troops with open arms (a little like many Ukrainians welcomed the Germans in 1941 – but that is another story), and he probably did not expect the West to show such unity against his actions.

Why has the West been unified? Two reasons stand out, one political, one human nature. Politically, Ukraine has been moving towards the EU and towards NATO membership, so the leaders of the West are upset that Putin is trying to regain control of Ukraine. In terms of human nature people have watched other people just like them, ie other Europeans, white Europeans, suffering, and they empathise – far more than they empathise with non-European people.

Next time. All we hear and see is the tragedy, the human suffering. The media generally ignores the military situation, or when it does talk about it, it just relies on unreliable Ukrainian reports.