A deep bow of gratitude to Olya and all Ukrainians for so bravely standing up to the biggest bully with the worst weapons. I am sickened by Trump and Vance’s inclinations to appease Putin instead of wholeheartedly helping defend Ukraine.
I fear her message will fall on deaf ears; although, I certainly hope not. I can’t fathom what is currently happening to those still behind Putin’s new ‘Iron Wall.’ Were Ukrainians summarily executed in place like Mariupol, who haven’t seen freedom in 3 years? What about towns that have only recently found themselves under that dark shroud of Putin’s reconquest—I can’t imagine what is not coming out because of the control of the narrative, and the language disparities that don’t allow the many stories to come out.
Meanwhile in the US Universities and Nazi Christian Nationalism
To paraphrase JD Vance’s attack on universities and upper education, “the government should honestly and aggressively look to destroy the university system of higher education because it is the enemy to American Christian values” (November 2021) This is fundamental to the Christian Nationalist(CN) movement currently propagated by the Nazi regime in the White House and is the fundamental pinning of the regime’s attack on Harvard university
What is one of the essentials of the CN propaganda is born out of American societal’s longstanding debate(since 1740) about the haves and have nots with respect to education according to historian Heather Cox Richarson in her Letters from an American Substack column The have nots have argued that higher education threatens Christian values and even goes so far as to relate government and universities in cahoots with each other to decimate the Christian fabric of society But among other issues under this cloak of being a proponent of Christian values is the elimination of the boundaries of Church and State thereby attacking the First Amendment’s freedom of religion
In Nazi Germany the CN movement led to book burning and the regime’s tolerance of Universities that touted the Nazi way of thinking(“We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian.” Adolph Hitler 1928)
I Survived the Bucha Massacre Ukrainian journalist: I know what “compromise” with Putin looks like. Olya Bilan
There is something in your piece, Olya, that is very difficult to answer—and perhaps that is precisely the point.
Because what you describe does not sit easily inside the language we often use when we discuss this war from a distance. Words like “compromise”, “settlement”, or “lines on a map” begin to feel strangely thin when placed next to lived experience—next to basements, candles, missing fathers, and the simple, terrifying act of asking permission to enter one’s own home.
And one realises, reading you, that the argument is not abstract at all. It never was.
What you are really doing—very quietly, but very powerfully—is restoring scale. You take what is often discussed as territory and return it to what it actually is: people, memory, language, dignity. And once that shift happens, the question changes. It is no longer what can be traded, but who is being asked to live with the consequences.
There is also something else, which I think many in Europe and the United States are only slowly beginning to understand.
We tend to think of war in terms of movement—front lines advancing, territories gained or lost. But what you describe is something different. It is not movement. It is condition. A system imposed on daily life, where uncertainty, fear, and arbitrary power become the structure people must live inside.
And that, perhaps, is why the idea of a “frozen conflict” or a “compromise line” feels so misleading. Because nothing is frozen for those who remain there. The war does not stop. It simply changes form.
Your piece reminds us—gently, but unmistakably—that any discussion of “ending the war” that does not account for that reality is not really addressing the war at all.
Thank you for writing this, and for doing so without anger, without exaggeration, and without losing clarity. That, in itself, carries a kind of authority that no argument can easily dismiss.
I understand why Americans have become weary of wars after Afghans Iraq. But there are no boots on the ground and arming Ukraine powers our military industry that benefits American workers. We had a great chance strengthening NATO while bringing Ukraine into the alliance permanently. But alas, right wing propagandists including Tucker Carlson has a fetish for Russian power and supposedly responsible Republican Joni Ernst shrilled for Trump in a WSJ op-ed criticizing wasteful spendings by the Ukrainian government. I hope Europe wakes the hell up since America had fallen and cannot get up.
Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦 this flag will remain and all the current injustices will be made right. Blue Revolution now and live the Constitutional democracy our families have fought and died to preserve…embrace your power through our sovereign fiat currency to make billionaires irrelevant.
Many people believe that the victims were pro-Russian, slaughtered by neo-Nazis, and then staged. Russia demanded an independent investigation. Ukraine, oddly enough, opposed.
A deep bow of gratitude to Olya and all Ukrainians for so bravely standing up to the biggest bully with the worst weapons. I am sickened by Trump and Vance’s inclinations to appease Putin instead of wholeheartedly helping defend Ukraine.
I fear her message will fall on deaf ears; although, I certainly hope not. I can’t fathom what is currently happening to those still behind Putin’s new ‘Iron Wall.’ Were Ukrainians summarily executed in place like Mariupol, who haven’t seen freedom in 3 years? What about towns that have only recently found themselves under that dark shroud of Putin’s reconquest—I can’t imagine what is not coming out because of the control of the narrative, and the language disparities that don’t allow the many stories to come out.
Meanwhile in the US Universities and Nazi Christian Nationalism
To paraphrase JD Vance’s attack on universities and upper education, “the government should honestly and aggressively look to destroy the university system of higher education because it is the enemy to American Christian values” (November 2021) This is fundamental to the Christian Nationalist(CN) movement currently propagated by the Nazi regime in the White House and is the fundamental pinning of the regime’s attack on Harvard university
What is one of the essentials of the CN propaganda is born out of American societal’s longstanding debate(since 1740) about the haves and have nots with respect to education according to historian Heather Cox Richarson in her Letters from an American Substack column The have nots have argued that higher education threatens Christian values and even goes so far as to relate government and universities in cahoots with each other to decimate the Christian fabric of society But among other issues under this cloak of being a proponent of Christian values is the elimination of the boundaries of Church and State thereby attacking the First Amendment’s freedom of religion
In Nazi Germany the CN movement led to book burning and the regime’s tolerance of Universities that touted the Nazi way of thinking(“We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian.” Adolph Hitler 1928)
I Survived the Bucha Massacre Ukrainian journalist: I know what “compromise” with Putin looks like. Olya Bilan
There is something in your piece, Olya, that is very difficult to answer—and perhaps that is precisely the point.
Because what you describe does not sit easily inside the language we often use when we discuss this war from a distance. Words like “compromise”, “settlement”, or “lines on a map” begin to feel strangely thin when placed next to lived experience—next to basements, candles, missing fathers, and the simple, terrifying act of asking permission to enter one’s own home.
And one realises, reading you, that the argument is not abstract at all. It never was.
What you are really doing—very quietly, but very powerfully—is restoring scale. You take what is often discussed as territory and return it to what it actually is: people, memory, language, dignity. And once that shift happens, the question changes. It is no longer what can be traded, but who is being asked to live with the consequences.
There is also something else, which I think many in Europe and the United States are only slowly beginning to understand.
We tend to think of war in terms of movement—front lines advancing, territories gained or lost. But what you describe is something different. It is not movement. It is condition. A system imposed on daily life, where uncertainty, fear, and arbitrary power become the structure people must live inside.
And that, perhaps, is why the idea of a “frozen conflict” or a “compromise line” feels so misleading. Because nothing is frozen for those who remain there. The war does not stop. It simply changes form.
Your piece reminds us—gently, but unmistakably—that any discussion of “ending the war” that does not account for that reality is not really addressing the war at all.
Thank you for writing this, and for doing so without anger, without exaggeration, and without losing clarity. That, in itself, carries a kind of authority that no argument can easily dismiss.
I understand why Americans have become weary of wars after Afghans Iraq. But there are no boots on the ground and arming Ukraine powers our military industry that benefits American workers. We had a great chance strengthening NATO while bringing Ukraine into the alliance permanently. But alas, right wing propagandists including Tucker Carlson has a fetish for Russian power and supposedly responsible Republican Joni Ernst shrilled for Trump in a WSJ op-ed criticizing wasteful spendings by the Ukrainian government. I hope Europe wakes the hell up since America had fallen and cannot get up.
Slava Ukraini! 🇺🇦 this flag will remain and all the current injustices will be made right. Blue Revolution now and live the Constitutional democracy our families have fought and died to preserve…embrace your power through our sovereign fiat currency to make billionaires irrelevant.
Many people believe that the victims were pro-Russian, slaughtered by neo-Nazis, and then staged. Russia demanded an independent investigation. Ukraine, oddly enough, opposed.
“Many” do not believe this nonsense. There are never been nazis there, and you probably know that.
https://www.jpost.com/international/internationalrussia-ukraine-war/article-835852
"Today, there are more than 18 million living veterans in the United States, representing about 6% of the country’s adult population."
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/08/the-changing-face-of-americas-veteran-population/
I am reminded that WW III is well under way. And that Ukraine is standing between the enemy and the rest of us. An amazing people.