'I want Russians gone from my country,' Ukrainian lawmaker says as brutal war grinds on
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WASHINGTON — Inna Sovsun has heard the shelling, the Russian firepower aimed at Kyiv. And she can hear the Western promises to help Ukraine, her native country, defend itself against the Russian invasion. It is difficult to reconcile the two.
“We were hearing explosions every 30 minutes,” the liberal Ukrainian politician says, describing the assault — supposedly during a period of Russian goodwill amid ceasefire negotiations — as “the toughest night we have had here in Kyiv” since the Kremlin launched an unprovoked invasion of its much smaller neighbor in late February.
“It’s not de-escalation at all,” Sovsun told Yahoo News in an interview conducted over video link from her Kyiv apartment. “We have very little trust in what the Russians are saying overall.”
Last week’s peace talks in Istanbul appeared encouraging but failed to produce a ceasefire. Russian forces have since retreated from Kyiv, but in doing so have left evidence of their occupation, including what appears to have been the widespread killing of civilians in the suburban city of Bucha. Ukrainian officials have labeled it a genocide.
And they have continued to plead for more help from Western nations that have vowed to stand with Ukraine but are also afraid of provoking the Kremlin into a direct conflict that, some say, could lead to World War III.
For the Ukrainian people, that conflict is already here, making any equivocation or delay on the part of the West inexcusable. “Bucha massacre proves that Russian hatred towards Ukrainians is beyond anything Europe has seen since WWII,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter, in a message that included an image of bodies buried in the mud. (Warning: graphic content.) “The only way to stop this: help Ukraine kick Russians out as soon as possible. Partners know our needs. Tanks, combat aircraft, heavy air defense systems. Provide them NOW.”
The U.S. has provided $2 billion to Ukraine in military aid, including Stinger and Javelin surface-to-air missiles, as well as exploding Switchblade drones. But the White House has said it does not support a no-fly zone over Ukraine and that its military aid would be confined to what it has nebulously called defensive weaponry.
Over the weekend, the U.S. said it would facilitate a transfer of T-72 tanks to Ukraine, thus seemingly doing away with the defensive-weaponry label — and potentially allowing Ukrainian forces to reclaim more land.
“I believe there is only a military solution to this war,” Sovsun says, arguing that providing Ukraine with long-range missiles with the capability of destroying Russian artillery would have saved thousands of civilian lives.
“I wish there were a diplomatic solution,” she says, “but any diplomatic solution requires us to compromise in our interests and the interests of our people.” A similar compromise ended the first Chechen war, but Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a second invasion that leveled the restive mountainous republic. Ukrainians also fear that anything but the complete return of Ukrainian land would give Putin the pretext he needs to take more.
“I want Russians gone from my country,” Sovsun told Yahoo News, describing talks with Putin as “hostage negotiations” bound to give away too much of Ukraine for a peace that won’t last. “You cannot be making deals with a person who continues to kill you.”
The slaughter at Bucha was a grotesque reminder of the incoherence of the Russian campaign, which Putin launched under the guise of purging the Ukrainian government of “Nazis” — a goal that has apparently since been abandoned. He has also lashed out at NATO and the U.S., offering a litany of grievances, though none that would come close to justifying a war that has already killed thousands of civilians and soldiers.
“I don’t know what the goal is,” Sovsun says of the Russian invasion. “I wish someone would tell me what the goal is, because it is changing all the time.” The retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv appears to suggest that the Kremlin is seeking to consolidate its gains in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as in the Crimean Peninsula.
“Their army is not as strong as they expected it to be,” Sovsun says of Russia. But that army is still three times the size of Ukraine’s, acting on the orders of a leader she calls “psychotic.”
Even as social media users celebrate Ukrainian victories, military experts caution against underestimating a military known for engaging in long, grueling conflicts without regard for the human toll of such involvement.
“The war is far from over and could still turn Russia’s way if the Russian military can launch a successful operation in eastern Ukraine,” says a Sunday assessment of the conflict from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C., military think tank. Ukraine’s victory around Kyiv was “significant but not decisive,” the assessment argues.
The retreat from Kyiv could portend not only an effort at consolidation in the east but a turn toward counterinsurgency, of the kind that led to victory in the second Chechen war, which Putin launched in 1999. The arrival of forces loyal to pro-Putin Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov in Ukraine could be a sign that the conflict could soon look like the one that obliterated the small, Muslim-majority republic to keep it from becoming independent. (Bucha’s mayor has said Chechen paramilitary units were operating in his city, the site of last week’s massacre.)
“That is our territory,” Sovsun says. “We are within our right to have control over that territory, but we would not be able to do that with defensive weapons.”
The distinction makes little sense to Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., the lone Ukrainian-born member of the U.S. House of Representatives. “It’s all defensive in nature,” she told Yahoo News in an interview in her office. “The Ukrainians should be able to protect their own people.”
Sovsun believes that the successful defense of Ukraine could benefit Russia too, perhaps even leading to the end of Putin’s two-decade grip on a nation that once looked like it was on the path to democracy.
“If we can kick them out of our country,” she predicts, that “will lead to some changes in Russia as well.”
