But this assumption has always been patently false. Prosperity and interdependence among nations during the Belle Époque in no way prevented World War I. The European Union has given more power to multinational corporations that—unlike the state—are not beholden to ensuring the well-being of the nation and its people. Multinational corporations are beholden to their shareholders, and in a very limited way: they have to make profit, and make it quickly, in the short term, calibrating all their decisions to make the quarterly earnings reports look good. The single market erodes the individual state’s capacity to mitigate the deleterious effects of elementary capitalist greed. Hence the EU, as it has developed, is complicit in the gradual breakdown of cultural and ethical values that have been subsumed by rampant consumerism. The ideal citizen of the EU is not someone willing to fight for European values, but rather a good consumer who can drive domestic demand and production so that we can pay for the cradle-to-grave social welfare system cracking as a result of the baby boomers getting old. By reversing the priorities (that is, profit and economic indicators become more important than the people) the free market has come to be seen as a virtuous end in itself rather than just the means of ensuring cradle-to-grave health care and the continuation of a millennial tradition of agriculture and food production. It gets to the point where what Big Pharma, insurance companies, and Monsanto want becomes more important than what new mothers, cancer patients, or struggling farmers need. The EU, for all its politically correct rhetoric, willingly collaborates in this process.
Now, with the Syrian tragedy coming to a head, the United States has been looking more and more like the “great and powerful” Wizard of Oz, who’s just had the curtain behind him drawn open by Dorothy’s dog Toto. They are no longer willing to play the world’s policeman—and probably not even capable of doing so without unleashing other catastrophes, such as Iraq and Libya have demonstrated. The Syrian rebels never counted much on US help, and the Ukrainians would rapidly be disabused as well. The rule of thumb has become every nation—every faction even—fights for itself. European nations’ recent retrenchment into self-interest is yet another symptom of a new historical wave welling up.
* * *
THE STEPPES OF UKRAINE, extending into endless Asia, have been a stage for human conflict since the prehistoric Aryans first swept across them on horses, and even before. Everything Europe is and has become can be traced to movements across this flat grassland, where the cultures that occupied it preferred mobility to the trappings of civilization, and where scorched earth was more than a tactic, it was a metaphysical rite.
Several times in the twentieth century the events in Ukraine had a huge impact on the course of European history. Battles there during World War I and the Russian Civil War laid the foundation for the rise of Bolshevism. During World War II, the Germans’ biggest mistake, according to many historians, was to antagonize the initially welcoming Ukrainian population. Moreover, the vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust died in the forests of Ukraine and Belarus, with bullets to the head or suffocated in a truck full of carbon monoxide, rather than in the extermination camps farther to the west.
There was no way I would miss what was about to unfold in Ukraine, because I felt it was just a prelude to a greater upheaval throughout Europe. Despite the trauma of my kidnapping being still undigested, the thrill of witnessing history was too attractive. As soon as I tied up some loose ends back home, I flew to Ukraine in April and settled in Donetsk, where the protests were already gaining traction.
By early April many government buildings in eastern cities were being taken over by anti-Kyiv protesters. I called Jean-Claude Galli, a French journalist I’d met during the 2008 war in Georgia and become friends with, who now worked for Swiss television. I asked if he wanted to come join me in the Donbas and cover the rebellion. He was short, quick, and had a deeper, more nuanced understanding of geopolitics than most reporters. About fifteen years older than me, he’d made his reputation covering the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. I liked his approach because while all the other journalists were covering the war from Croatia, Sarajevo, or other parts of Bosnia, he based himself in Belgrade to get a better look at the putative “bad guys.” Now a similar situation was developing. As far as most of the Western press was concerned, the violent revolution in Kyiv was a great achievement for freedom and democracy, while the violent protests simmering in the Donbas were fomented by Russia’s revanchist ambitions. While this may have been true, I’ve always been curious to see why the “bad guys” were considered as such. It gives you more insight into the “good guys’ ” darker places.
We rented a car and drove around the Donbas region. By April 9 the Ukrainian government had launched its Anti-Terrorist Operation, or ATO, which was a rather bureaucratic euphemism for war. Meanwhile ultranationalist volunteer battalions were being spawned every day.
On April 6 demonstrators stormed the Regional State Administration building in Donetsk and demanded a referendum be held, like the one in Crimea. There were a few clashes in the main square, and if there were any pro-Ukrainians there, they were forced to keep a low profile.
I traveled with Jean-Claude to the various cities under rebel control. The landscape outside the smoke-charred and rusting Soviet industrial towns was flat, a gently rolling steppe sown with wheat or sunflowers. It was perfect tank country, especially as the soggy spring ground hardened with the warmer weather. Some of the most intense battles of World War II took place here, particularly in the late summer and fall of 1943, when the Soviet army, having gained momentum after the Battle of Kursk, pushed on to the Dnieper River, where the German army had established dense fortifications. In the course of a few months around two million soldiers died on those steppes during the Battle of the Dnieper. (My friend Yann and I—both of us World War II buffs—had always wanted to travel to Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to visit the sites of many of World War II’s epic battles.)
The separatists were a ragtag bunch, but the Ukrainian army they faced was still in shambles from two decades of neglect and corruption. Checkpoints cropped up along the roads every day. In order to dislodge the separatists, the Ukrainians resorted to heavy artillery and shelled the separatists until they scattered. Volunteers from Russia started coming into Donetsk.
The Ukrainian strategy relied on artillery, so much of my work involved going to target sites and photographing the damage. At one point photographer Scott Olson and I got caught in a firefight in the town of Kramatorsk, which at the time was controlled by rebels. Ambushes were also common, but unless you were embedded with the rebels (who were not that organized yet) it was hard to get access.
* * *
I RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES in May to take care of prior commitments. The Balkans were hit with severe flooding so I went to Serbia to cover that for my agency. Meanwhile, I followed the news from Ukraine closely. In May referendums were held and the rebels declared the establishment of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the same for the neighboring Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). By July, though, the separatists were getting pushed out of many cities they’d taken control of. Then they shot down the Malaysia Airlines plane, which was big news all over the world and attracted even more journalists to the Donbas. There was a mass retreat from Sloviansk and much of the border with Russia was back in government hands. Kyiv was optimistic that it would soon crush the rebellion, and it looked as if the Ukrainian forces would try to surround Donetsk and lay siege to it.
As soon as I settled my business in New York I went back to Ukraine. I flew into Kyiv and took a train to Donetsk. The city’s population, about two million before the war, was less than half that now, and it was thinning out by the day. Surprisingly, the trains were still running in and out of the city, though some of them had to take alternate routes when bridges or tracks were blown up.
Donetsk was preparing for a siege. When we journalists got our accreditation at the government offices, along with a list of dos and don’ts
about what we could cover and photograph, the authorities handed us a single-page, double-sided how-to manual in Russian about preparing for urban resistance: setting up sniper nests, blowing up holes between apartments for safe passage, communication strategies, and so forth. Every day the city emptied out. Those who had relatives in parts of Ukraine that were quiet went there. Others had contacts in Russia and went there. A stealthy process of ethnic cleansing was under way.
All around the city, especially near the airport, shells would land, and I’d instruct a fixer to take us to the site. One day I had the opportunity to go a funeral of rebel soldiers killed in action. At the time no one seemed to mind my taking pictures, but when they got published the DPR authorities were not happy at all and I knew I probably wouldn’t be allowed back if I applied for accreditation in the future—that is, if the DPR even existed in the future.
* * *
EASTERN UKRAINE BECAME a magnet for every combat photographer and journalist in the West. I met colleagues whose work I knew, and I traveled together with some of the better-known ones, in particular, Scott Olson, Spencer Platt and Jérôme Sessini. All of them were older and more experienced than me, so I learned a few things about the trade from them.
But on the whole, combat photographers and journalists are a cantankerous bunch, with big egos, and they don’t often get along with each other. To top it off, there were hordes of younger freelance photographers and reporters crawling around Kyiv and Donetsk, trying to make a name for themselves in a business that was less and less forgiving every year. Many of them came on their own dime with little hope of making money. They were there just to establish their reputations.
Still, in Ukraine, hunkered down in a city with diminishing food supplies, ATM machines running out of cash, and the few inhabitants still left gearing up for a siege as they got shelled from three directions, I felt in my element. It was as if I could only appreciate the feeling of freedom in a context in which that freedom was either curtailed or so at risk that it was impossible to take for granted.
My experience in Syria no doubt had a lot to do with it. In retrospect, a little crumb of freedom in captivity—whether sunbathing by the empty pool or sneaking a glimpse at a note hidden in the cuff of my trousers—had more specific gravity than any mind-boggling array of drinks and scantily clad women at a Manhattan club. Thanks to my captors I was beginning to experience freedom less as choice per se than as some power that exacts a sacrifice as prerequisite.
* * *
BY AUGUST, EVERYONE—the press, the people in Donetsk, even the rebels—was expecting Ukrainian army soldiers to enter the suburbs at any moment. Either the city would capitulate suddenly or the Ukrainians would have to begin the hard slog of urban warfare: house-to-house battles mixed with intermittent artillery barrages. And if the remaining citizens of Donetsk hated the Kyiv government already for the bombs they dropped on their town, it would only get worse.
The first signs of a possible reversal came in reports as early as mid-July that the Russians were launching artillery strikes from Russian territory itself. Then there were humanitarian convoys coming in from Russia suspected of bringing in weapons and reinforcements. By late August the counteroffensive was under way and many Ukrainian troops got caught overextended, especially in the town of Ilovaisk, about six miles east of Donetsk, where hundreds of Ukrainian volunteers from the Donbas Battalion got surrounded in a pocket and were cut down in an attempted breakout.
At about the same time, while a host of other journalists and I were holed up in a Donetsk hotel, trying to keep up with the very fluid situation on the ground, we got word that James Foley had been beheaded by Daesh, which had posted the gruesome scene online. Many of the journalists knew Foley personally. I knew of him through my friend Giorgos Moutafis. I was very conscious of the fact that Foley had been abducted first in Libya (where Giorgos had met him) and then again in Syria, where he was executed. I took it as a cautionary tale. He’d pressed his luck, and maybe I was doing the same with mine. There was no telling what could happen in Donetsk, so I started to plan an escape route.
* * *
BY SEPTEMBER THE TIDE had turned and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was suing for peace. Russian forces were obviously helping the previously demoralized rebels and the world was witnessing an invasion of Ukraine, with all eyes focused on the scenario of a land bridge connecting Crimea to Russian territory along the northern shore of the Sea of Azov. The main obstacle for the Russian forces would be the major port city of Mariupol, which had been under Kyiv’s control throughout the summer.
I joined up with Spencer Platt and we drove across the front lines to Mariupol, under Ukrainian control. We waited for Russian forces to lay siege to that city of a million inhabitants. By September 5 a shaky truce was agreed upon, the first of the Minsk Accords. Neither side trusted the other, so Spencer, Jean-Claude and I stayed in Mariupol, waiting for hostilities to flare up again.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST TIME in the conflict I got a look at the new Ukrainian volunteer battalions. Mariupol was the base of the Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist bunch that caught international attention because their symbol—a stylized I and N (for “Idea of Nation”)—looked very much like a Nazi Wolfsangel. The ones I had contact with, however, seemed like very typical young men fighting for a cause—in this case against a Russian invasion. Just as the ones on the other side were fighting against what they deemed to be a “Banderite” coup (in Kremlin-speak, Stepan Bandera was a synecdoche for all manner of Nazi sympathizers) that wanted to nullify the Soviet glory of their parents and grandparents, especially those who had lived through World War II.
And yet, to an outside observer, especially one like myself who can barely make out the difference between the sounds of spoken Russian and Ukrainian, this looked like a civil war. On top of that, I was told by my fixers that practically all the Azov Battalion members spoke Russian among themselves rather than Ukrainian. The only fighters who spoke Ukrainian were the ones from the western part of the country.
Granted, academics are in disagreement about the extent to which this is a civil war, but to the untrained eye, these were the same people. They spoke the same language, went to the same schools, and worshipped in the same churches. They were neighbors before the war and married each other without any thoughts about nationality. Families were torn apart by having to take sides. And on a military level, the officers from opposite sides all knew each other. The older ones had served together in the Soviet army, and many of them were Afghan vets. The younger ones had served in the Ukrainian army. They were taught from the same manuals, using the same weapons.
There’s something about a civil war that makes it even more malign than a conventional war of self-defense or territorial conquest. There’s an element of self-loathing involved. You look at the “other” and it’s impossible not to recognize a facet of yourself. Often it’s some part of yourself you admire or at least indulge in. Acting out violently is almost like cutting off one of your own limbs. This is why in civil wars all sorts of taboos tend to be broken: rape, disfigurement, torture. The enemy, rather than being some “other” who can be subjugated or chased away, is considered an internal element that needs to be purged, excised.
I often thought of David, the childhood friend who would lose control and turn on me violently. I knew he never consciously wanted to hurt me, but when he exploded, it was as if he were trying to exorcise some demon within himself, and I, having become an extension of his own being, was the straw man. Over time I came to understand the dynamic, and I eventually forgave David. His violence taught me a lot about people, how easily they can succumb to irrational forces. But it also left an indelible mark within me, a stain that seems to spread with every war. I would often watch fighters coldly, trying to understand why they felt they needed to kill. Usually their reasons seemed more than valid—self-defense or retaliation for violence or injustice they’d been subjected to. Sometimes it was a question
of honor or glory. I’ve never come across the stereotype of a sadist who killed for the sake of killing, someone who worshipped murder. I’ve tried to observe soldiers with the detached compassion of a therapist, feeling I needed to remain above the fray. But the more I watched them, the more I recognized how much of that violence was just the flip side of a familiarity that was growing too uncomfortable. And watching wars was surely a way for me to process the violence that left its mark on me as kid—violence that can be terrifyingly seductive.
* * *
AMONG UKRAINIANS, THERE WAS no shortage of skeletons in either side’s closet, skeletons of men and women who had died a violent death. All those bones elicited the compulsion to purge the nation of its horrors. But as the irony of history would have it, the purges themselves became horrors to forget and/or remember . . . again and again, in a vicious circle going back to those first burial mounds on the steppes.
After the Minsk agreement, the Ukrainians managed to hold the cease-fire line just east of Mariupol. The fighting subsided so I went back to New York.
Nobody really expected the cease-fire to last, and in December, the continual battle (despite the Minsk cease-fire) for the Donetsk airport, which the Ukrainians controlled, flared up again. The rebels launched an offensive with the help of Russian regular army troops. In January there was a significant uptick in the fighting all along the front.
The Shattered Lens Page 22
