Mandryk: Close connection to Ukrainians brings war home

By Murray Mandryk

You don’t likely know those people bravely defending their homeland against Russian invaders, yet they probably feel familiar to you.

It’s because you likely know, or may know some of their distant cousins.

They now farm next to you. They run the local Co-op. Their kids have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, dentists and politicians. A few of them even became journalists.

Our connection to Ukraine is undeniable. It is one reason why what’s now happening in Ukraine hits close to home for all of us.

There are those who argue that close ties shouldn’t be a reason — or at least, shouldn’t be the only reason — for our reaction.

A minority argue that the suffering we are seeing in Ukraine is no different than the suffering we’ve seen in the war-torn Middle East or in African nations.

Still, others argue that while we need to support Ukraine in whatever way we can because they are people suffering, we shouldn’t feel obligated to do so simply because they came to Canada in search of a better life. After all, a lot of pioneering settlers from Europe came for a better life.

Still, others argue that while we easily relate to the suffering of those in a white European nation, we go so far as to deny the suffering of indigenous people sent to residential schools as children where they suffered all forms of abuse.

Such criticisms are not without merit, but they miss the point.

Humans are tribal by nature. Really, it’s why we see invasions and wars like we now see in Ukraine.

Sadly, tribalism sometimes brings out the worst in humanity. At best, it often makes us overly protective of those we consider our own tribes and hesitant to accept those from the outside.

But another very human thing is not really understanding or taking the time to try and understand other the dynamics in which other people are now existing or have existed.

The first such dynamic is that what is happening in Ukraine is a threat to all of us.

Since the last great war concluded almost 80 years ago, we’ve been forced to live with the understanding that we now have the technology to blow the planet apart.

Those Cold War fears of the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago or the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan 40 years ago have largely subsided for the past three decades because of the demise of the Soviet Union.

But with Russian President Vladimir Putin reacting to potential Western intervention with threats of making intervening nations suffer as they have never suffered before, what’s now happening in Ukraine has quickly escalated into something different than regional conflicts between nations elsewhere in the world.

We all have an interest and responsibility to condemn what Putin is doing, which makes it extremely bizarre that there are those — even on the Prairies — still endorsing the Fox News/Donald Trump views in support of Putin that resonate with a lot of U.S. Republicans.

Second, while we are likely more inclined to support Ukraine because of the contribution of Ukrainians to Canadian history, that doesn’t necessarily mean we understand their history.

Why “freedom” and “opposition to oppression” is associated with Ukrainians has a lot to do with a millennium-long history of warding off invaders and dictators from the Vikings to the Mongols to the Tartars to the Poles to the Austro-Hungarians to the Russian Czars to Russian Soviets to the Nazis to now Putin.

Such oppression is why so many Ukrainians fled to Canada, where many endured prejudices, including First World War internment camps.

Yet through it all, they become great contributors to our country while holding on to language and cultural ties to where they came from.

It is admirable. But far more admirable is the current Ukrainian resistance to tyranny.