You Have Seen This Before

Russia calls it peace, but the pattern is older than this war

There is a question I keep returning to.

Those of you who have read me for years may already think the answer is obvious.

You understand what is happening and what’s at stake.

But sometimes we repeat something so much that we may lose touch with the basics.

Why do we all need to stand by Ukraine?

I want to go past geopolitics, which may sound like a subject for experts. Under all of this, there is something painfully human.

And it brought me the image of a boss who humiliates an employee, then says the employee is too sensitive.

The older brother who hurts the younger one, then tells the family he only wanted respect.

The bully who hits first, then acts wounded when the other person finally raises a hand.

Have you ever been in that place?

Have you ever seen it happen to someone you love?

This is the definition of abuse at the personal level.

And I say that so now you know what is happening to Ukraine.

At the level of a nation.

The mechanism is disturbingly the same.

Russia does not simply attack Ukraine.

It destroys our cities and calls us a brother nation. Steals our children and says it is protecting them.

They invade our land and say we are the threat.

They bomb us through the night and then, guess what, tell the world Ukraine does not want peace.

The abuser always wants control over the story.

They do not simply want to hurt you, they want to explain your pain for you and to decide what your anger means.

Russia bombs a maternity hospital, and within an hour some ambassador is at some microphone explaining the maternity hospital was a “military base.”

Russia invades us.

And still half the world is asking what we did to provoke them.

They kill our people, then ask why we are preventing peace.

Peace.

That word should be sacred, but Russia uses it like a dirty cloth thrown over blood.

What Russia calls peace is simple: Let them keep what they stole. Let them keep what they broke. And from now on, let them come back whenever you disobey, and call you family while treating you like property.

That is the abuser asking the room to help hold the victim down.

And this is where I think many good people need to be careful:

Good people want war to end, of course they do. No decent person wants another child killed, another city burned, another mother waiting for a message that will never arrive.

But abusers know how to use good words. Family, peace, negotiation, brotherhood. Each of them can be used as a weapon.

Anyone who has ever been bullied knows this.

Anyone who has ever been mocked, diminished, cornered, blamed for their own wound or for nothing, knows this.

Anyone who has ever heard “look what you made me do” knows this.

Ukraine hears it every day:

It’s all your fault.

You are dying because you choose to die.

We almost start to think if we are in fact the ones to blame.

So I write this also for me.

To read.

To remember:

Russia chose this. Russia is still choosing this.

If this happened to you in your house, you would call it “crazy-making.”

You would call your sister and ask her if she remembered what really happened, because you needed someone outside your own head to confirm that the floor was still the floor.

We are calling our sisters here.

We are asking the world to remember what really happened and is happening at this moment that I write you.

We are not the weak ones in this war.

Russia is.

Russia is morally weak in the way every abuser is morally weak. Strong enough to break a smaller body. Too cowardly to face what he is.

Too dependent on lies to stand in the light.

But we are the country that turned the lights on and refused to turn them off.

Ukraine is the person still standing in the room after everyone expected us to fall.

Ukraine is the voice saying, with blood in our mouth, this is my home.

So name the abuse.

Name the lie behind the word peace.

If you have ever been in a room where someone tried to rename your reality while you were standing inside it, you already know which side you are on.

You knew before you read this.

I am only saying out loud what your own life already taught you.

—Viktor

🇺🇦

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If we happen to lose this war to the abuser, this journal will at least stand as proof that we never bent to those who called us brothers to destroy us.

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