The Temporarily Enslaved People of Ukraine

This is about people, not maps

It has been somewhat gratifying – though I read such pieces with an alltoo familiar horror – to see a series of recent reports in English focusing on the Ukrainians temporarily enslaved by Russia in the east and south of their country.

These pieces are extremely important. They have come from a range of academics and periodicals, such as Jade McGlynn (here, for example, on the resistance against Russian occupation), David Lewis (here on how Russia has been consolidating its control over the territories), and The Economist (here on the hell that the enslaved people endure).

They are important, as now it is crucial for people to understand that these are the fates of real people, living under horrendous conditions.

I am cautious of speaking of the Temporarily Occupied Territories (TOTs), as a focus on territories risks abstracting the real-life dangers and horrors that occupation places upon people. Talks of territories and maps risks leading people into the belief that trading land will somehow magically resolve the deep-seated issues we face with Russia and its mission of russification.

Russian conquest is about russification, as a way of forcing people to accept the ‘Russian world’. Moscow is expanding its ‘Russian world’ by enslaving predominantly people, and not just land.

This is the nature of Russian occupation. Moscow tries to forcibly turn people living under its control into Russians. This is not an ethnic policy: Putin has said more than once that anybody can become ‘Russian’ (‘russkiy’) if they uphold Russian (the Kremlin’s) cultural values.

And Moscow has seen to it that people under its rule accept this worldview, even if it has to use force to shape their perception of reality. Information plays such a massive role in the cognitive occupation of Ukraine, and in Russian security thinking more widely. But violence is applied across enslaved Ukraine to coerce people to accept the messaging they receive. Any physical resistance to Russian rule is, of course, brutally supressed.

This brutal violence can be seen in what they did in Bucha, in Irpen, in Sloviansk. This is the fate to which we potentially abandon thousands, hundreds of thousands, of our fellow Europeans. Massacres, merciless murders, lawlessness, countless families destroyed. And not just that: the millions of people whose lives have been ruined, who have had to flee and scatter to cold and foreign countries, children whose future have been callously stolen. And no trading of territory will make them, or us, safer.

This post is more of a hurriedly-written rant, late at night and extempore. But I shall also scribble some points going forward:

1.      We need a communications push on the human impact of the war and a focus on the people: this is coming, as I noted above in the excellent pieces, and there is much excellent Ukrainian journalism on the matter. I am still going to try to refer to the enslaved people, rather than on the TOTs. We also need greater understanding on the processes of russification and what they entail. There is a growing body of work on this, and I shall write more.

2.      A requirement for policy papers that impact on politicians on the people in Ukraine and rallies against the temptation of focusing on territorial exchanges. There is plenty of very persuasive material by very clever people on why we should not try to make a deal with Putin, and I cannot understand why it is not having deeper impact. This is not a criticism of the authors of such works – they are probably just as dumbfounded at political failures as I am – but we need a new way (critical mass? targeting the right people) to influence political decisions.

3.      Stronger European consolidation; this is the time for European countries to unite, in policy and in their strategic communications, in support of Ukraine, European values, and the need to liberate fellow Europeans. Governments and nongovernment organisations should be involved in this.

4.      The Crimea question. In leaked (?) messages in the past week, and in public statements by several politicians, including José Barroso, it seems that some people will argue that Crimea in particular is Russian and should be given to Moscow as part of a potential negotiation. Europe must unite to resist grasping this low-hanging fruit, doubling down on the fact that the Crimeans are part of Ukraine, and present cogent arguments for this. There are exceptional social and cultural arguments (as well, admittedly, as geographical reasons) that show that Crimea is unsustainable separate from the Ukrainian mainland (the reason Khrushchev rejoined the peninsula to Ukraine), which I shall go into in the future.

**********

Within this, we need an awareness that despite everything they have endured, the Ukrainians want to be free, and they are striving to liberate their countrypeople with courage and dignity. I can say this from the shelter of my home, but I have not yet met a Ukrainian (civilian or soldier) who wants to give in, or who feels they have the moral duty to give in. Our moral duty is to support them as best we can.

This Substack will always be free. But I would ask readers to share this post, if only this one – as widely as possible.

Please also consider making a payment to the Hell Hornets, a reconnaissance unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which has been operating in Donetsk Oblast since the start of the invasion. Drones do save lives, and you can help.

Unit's PayPal: mykytenkoy@gmail.com

For those who wish to contribute, please make sure you write 'Private donation' as a payment note.