Hello all. It’s another not-so-happy Friday as we mark one week of war in Ukraine. The more I report on this story, the more I’m struck by the incredible resolve of the Ukrainian people in the face of unjustifiable aggression. I’ve also been moved by the many brave Russians who have risked reprisals to speak out against this war. Many of Russia’s best and brightest are now trying to flee the country, while they still can. To quote Puck News’s Julia Ioffe, who has been an indispensable resource during this crisis, “Putin is destroying two countries at once.”
In podcast news: I joined this week’s Bunker panel to discuss the war in Ukraine. One listener kindly described it as being the “informed chat with friends” podcast they needed. You too can join the conversation via all good podcasting apps (find yours here).
What I’ve written
In the week since Russia invaded Ukraine, the country has been ejected from the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, disinvited from Eurovision, and banned from competing in numerous international sporting events. I wrote about how even though these kinds of cultural boycotts aren’t as tangible as political and economic sanctions, they can still have an impact—especially on Putin.
This, after all, is a president whose love of sports and competition is central to his carefully crafted macho-nationalist image—one that has been memorialized in memes of him playing ice hockey, wrestling, and riding horseback shirtless. By excluding Russia from these arenas, international organizations are not only denying Putin an important propaganda platform, but they are also undermining his image of strength. The decisions to strip him both of his titles as honorary president and ambassador of the International Judo Federation and of his honorary black belt in tae kwon do are particularly personal blows. Keep reading here
To paraphrase one of Barack Obama’s favorite phrases, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. Were Vladimir Putin to offer his own rendition of these words, it would probably go something along the lines of: The arc of history is long, but it bends backwards.
I wrote about the Russian president’s revisionist history and who it serves:
Putin is not the only world leader who has harkened back to an ahistorical past to justify his decisions in the present. Right-wing nationalists around the world have sought to portray themselves as the primary defenders of a glorious past that their enemies would seek to deny or forget. By whitewashing uncomfortable legacies and seeking to cultivate a politics of historic grievance, Putin has attempted the same. But in his justification for the invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s ahistoricism has bordered on delusion. Whether the Russian people or the rest of the world share in it, for now, appears to be immaterial: If there’s one audience this revisionist history is designed for, it’s Putin himself. Keep reading here
What I’ve read
This dispatch from Moscow on how Putin wants Russians to see the war in Ukraine (The New Yorker)
An atomized society held together by a hermetically sealed ideology can change its collective mind with barely a warning. Russia saw this happen in the late nineteen-eighties, when Soviet society was seemingly transformed, apparently overnight, by glasnost. If a sea change is going to happen again, it may happen now, when Putin has assembled every possible force against himself. Even a handful of Russian billionaires who have been loyal to Putin have cautiously—very cautiously—called for peace.
This op-ed on the racist biases displayed in the Western media’s coverage of Ukraine (The Washington Post)
The implication for anyone reading or watching — particularly anyone with ties to a nation that has also seen foreign intervention, conflict, sanctions and mass migration — is clear: It’s much worse when White Europeans suffer than when it’s Arabs or other non-White people. Yemenis, Iraqis, Nigerians, Libyans, Afghans, Palestinians, Syrians, Hondurans — well, they are used to it.
This long read on what Rashida Tlaib represents (The New York Times Magazine)
The Palestinian cause has become a significant part of the politics of the American left at the same time that the left has gained a legible footing on the national stage. Tlaib, a democratic socialist who is if anything more outspoken on domestic issues than she is on the Palestinian cause, has found herself at the center of this turn. She appeared in a traditional Palestinian dress made by her mother during her swearing in, sometimes wears a kaffiyeh (symbolically tied to the Palestinian resistance) on the House floor and speaks often about her grandmother in the West Bank. Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a lawyer and longtime Arab American activist, told me that the simple fact of Tlaib’s presence on the Hill means that “we are now actual people to them.”
What I’m thinking about
This incredible exchange (involving a case of mistaken identities) on Indian TV:
Finally, to end this correspondence on a bit of a lighter note, I made my BBC Newsnight debut this week! Or at least someone called Yazmeen did…
Until next time,
Yasmeen