![]() On Saturday, Putin spoke to President Joe Biden on the phone, at Biden’s request, for over an hour. It was a large-scale military operation that included air strikes against a European capital, Belgrade. But you and I have witnessed a war in Europe, the war against Yugoslavia, which was unleashed, coincidentally, by NATO. Chancellor just said that people of his generation (and I am a member of his generation) can hardly imagine any kind of war in Europe. . . . During a press conference that followed Putin’s talks with Germany’s Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, a German journalist asked Putin, “Will there be a war in Europe? Can you rule out the possibility of a war in Europe?” Putin answered, “Mr. On Tuesday, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, did come back to it. “And that’s what they keep coming back to,” he said, meaning that, almost twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the 1999 air war as a point of comparison and justification. Ruzavin was in grade school at the time, but he understood. One evening over dinner, Gumenyuk said, “It’s impossible to imagine air raids in Kyiv.” Before I could catch myself, I blurted out, “Like it was once impossible to imagine air raids of Belgrade.” I was referring to the NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, which I covered on the ground I was in Belgrade when the first bomb fell on the city and the unimaginable became real. Gumenyuk is a leading Ukrainian journalist Ruzavin is a Russian investigative journalist. In late January, I spent time in Ukraine with, among others, Nataliya Gumenyuk and Pyotr Ruzavin, a married couple. And in peacetime-even in fragile, relative peacetime-it’s always hard to imagine war. Everyone understands that the war would be both bloody and senseless-surely Russia doesn’t really want to occupy one of the poorest countries in Europe, inhabited by forty-four million people, most of whom have come to hate Russia. A prominent Ukrainian think tank run by the former Defense Minister has issued two reports, three weeks apart, arguing that a successful large-scale Russian invasion is not yet feasible. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments keep downplaying the probability of war and reprimanding journalists for fanning the fear. On the other hand, the big war (as opposed to the shooting war in the east, which has continued to claim near-daily casualties for eight years) is unimaginable. The Dutch airline KLM discontinued flights to Kyiv. citizens to leave the country on Monday, it moved its embassy operations from Kyiv to Lviv. Then, over the weekend, the United States pulled its military trainers from Ukraine and directed U.S. Then they evacuated nonessential personnel. Western embassies evacuated diplomats’ families from Kyiv. ![]() ![]() On the one hand, the media-Western media in particular-bring daily bulletins of the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine, and of intelligence warnings that a large-scale invasion is a real threat, and possibly imminent. For weeks, people in Ukraine, and some people in Russia, have been stuck in the purgatory of doublethink.
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