Commentary on Political Economy

Monday 28 February 2022

Guerre en Ukraine : depuis la Pologne, ils sont des centaines à retourner au pays pour défendre leur « terre »

Au sein de la communauté ukrainienne polonaise, qui compte près de 1,3 million de personnes, de nombreux hommes ont décidé de partir combattre l’offensive russe.

Par 

Publié aujourd’hui à 04h29, mis à jour à 07h16 

Temps deLecture 4 min.

Article réservé aux abonnés

Un volontaire polonais s’apprête à partir combattre en Ukraine contre l’armée russe, à Medyka, en Pologne, le 26 février 2022.

La gare routière de Varsovie-Ouest, en ce lundi 28 février froid et ensoleillé, fourmille plus que d’habitude. Les langues ukrainiennes et russes dominent le brouhaha ambiant. Un bus du réseau de transport municipal a été converti en point d’informations et d’aides de premières nécessités pour les réfugiés arrivant de toute part.

Entre les passants, on distingue des hommes, attendant souvent seuls à côté de leurs bagages, cigarette aux lèvres, le regard fuyant dans le vide. Ce sont pour la plupart des volontaires ukrainiens, prêts à prendre le chemin inverse pour défendre leur pays. Depuis la gare ferroviaire voisine, ils arrivent de toute la Pologne.

Suivre notre live : Guerre en Ukraine, en direct : un convoi militaire russe d’une soixantaine de kilomètres se dirige vers Kiev

Trois minibus arborant le drapeau ukrainien attendent à l’entrée du parking. « Pour nous ce sera un aller simple », lance Sacha Hryc, mimant un tir de fusil. Ce chauffeur s’apprête à conduire huit volontaires dans la région de Dnipro, dans le centre du pays, à vingt heures de route. « Les Moscovites n’ont qu’à bien se tenir ! L’esprit de résistance est fort. Poutine nous a sous-estimés, il s’embarque dans une sacrée galère. »

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Depuis le début de la guerre, c’est une quinzaine de minibus quotidiens qui prennent ainsi la route de l’Ukraine. Un important réseau de covoiturage s’est également mis en place, amenant gratuitement des combattants jusqu’à la frontière, et revenant à Varsovie avec des femmes et des enfants réfugiés. La veille, près de deux cents personnes auraient ainsi pris la route vers l’Est.

« La vérité est de notre côté »

Ivan Panasiuk, 36 ans, s’apprête à embarquer. « On ne peut pas rester là à rien faire. A présent plus rien ne compte, à part défendre notre terre. » Il vient de la région de Volhynie, dans l’ouest du pays, où il a laissé sa femme et sa fille. Il travaille depuis sept ans en Pologne dans le secteur du bâtiment. « J’ai fait l’armée et j’ai toutes les formations militaires. Je veux m’engager dans l’armée régulière. Je passe voir ma famille et je me dirigerais vers le front. » Emu et la gorge serrée, il dit qu’il prend la bonne décision parce que « la vérité est de [leur] côté. » « Gloire à l’Ukraine ! », s’écrit-il. La porte du minibus se referme.

La veille, lors de la manifestation de soutien à l’Ukraine devant l’ambassade de Russie à Varsovie – elle a réuni un millier de personnes –, Myroslava Keryk, la cheffe de la fondation Nasz Wybor (« Notre choix »), la principale organisation ukrainienne en Pologne, a pris la parole sur l’estrade, en larmes. « Il y a encore cinq jours, je ne pouvais imaginer que j’allais aider mon mari à faire son sac pour qu’il parte à la guerre. Ça a été le plus dur jour de ma vie. Il y a beaucoup de garçons comme lui. Gloire à eux ! » « Gloire aux héros ! », a répondu la foule, reprenant la devise sacrée ukrainienne. Le même jour, Myroslava avait annoncé la nouvelle en postant une photo sur les réseaux sociaux avec son mari et sa fille de dix ans. Tous s’efforçaient de sourire.

Lire aussi  Article réservé à nos abonnés Guerre en Ukraine : à l’ouest de Kiev, les habitants de Jytomyr organisent la résistance

Son mari, Yuriy Taran, 43 ans, est sociologue de formation, diplômé avec mention de la prestigieuse Académie Mohyla de Kiev. Depuis plusieurs années, faute d’avoir trouvé sa voie, il occupait à Varsovie des emplois alimentaires. Lors de l’explosion de la guerre dans le Donbass, en 2015, il avait hésité à s’engager, mais avait considéré que ses capacités d’aide à l’Ukraine étaient plus utiles depuis Varsovie que sur le front.

« Cette fois-ci c’est différent, c’est une question d’ampleur, nous confie-t-il, joint par téléphone. J’ai pris cette décision par sentiment de responsabilité et de protection vis-à-vis de ma famille. Même s’ils sont en Pologne, c’est une manière de les protéger. » Le plus difficile, dit-il, a été la discussion avec sa fille. « Quand elle a vu mon sac à dos, elle a compris. C’était une scène comme dans un film. J’ai dû lui expliquer calmement. Elle a pleuré beaucoup, puis s’est calmée. Allez savoir ce qui se passe dans la conscience d’un enfant de 10 ans… »

« Guerre fratricide »

Dans ses paroles et le timbre de sa voix, Yuriy fait preuve d’un calme stoïque étonnant. « Même si je ressens beaucoup de colère, j’essaye de mettre tous ces sentiments négatifs de côté pour me concentrer sur ce que j’ai à faire. » Il est désormais actuellement hébergé dans la ville de Lviv, à l’ouest du pays. Il s’est inscrit comme soldat volontaire au commissariat militaire, et il attend sa convocation. « Je suis à disposition, j’attends d’être formé. Mais je sens que ça peut prendre du temps. A Kiev, c’est différent, chaque homme se rendant au commissariat obtient immédiatement une arme et un gilet pare-balles. Mais la menace n’est pas la même. » Régulièrement, des bus pleins de volontaires partent de Lviv vers l’Est ou le Nord.

Lire aussi  Article réservé à nos abonnés Guerre en Ukraine : à Zaporijia, le front se rapproche et la population craint les saboteurs

Pour Yuriy, avec cette attaque brutalela Russie a « définitivement perdu l’Ukraine » et ne peut qu’inciter un maximum de volontaire à s’engager. « Il y a encore peu, les Ukrainiens distinguaient le peuple russe de ses dirigeants. Mais à présent cette distinction s’efface, il y a une haine grandissante. Cette guerre fratricide a bien le consentement de la population russe. Combien de protestations sur un peuple de 150 millions d’habitants ? Les Russes ont perdu l’âme des Ukrainiens. Ils se sont déshonorés en tant que nation et en tant que peuple. C’est pourquoi, notre résistance n’est pas près de s’éteindre. »

Deux jours après le début de l’invasion russe, près de 20 000 citoyens ukrainiens avaient passé la frontière en direction de leur pays. 

 

Germany’s ‘Putin-caressers’ start coming to terms with their naivety

Analysis: politicians who believed Putin could be ‘tamed by empathy and accommodation’ are having to hurriedly rethink their positions

The Reichstag building in Berlin

Prominent figures in Germany are coming under increasing pressure to publicly distance themselves from Vladimir Putin amid accusations that they are bringing shame on the country and themselves.

The range of so-called Putin-Versteher (Putin-understanders) – those who have sought to explain or justify the Russian leader’s actions – include figures from the far-left Die Linke and the far-right AfD, as well as members of the Social Democrats and some conservatives who have tried to keep him on side in the interests of their constituents and German energy security.

“Putin-Versteher are on the precipice,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Sunday (FAS) said, listing an array of German politicians it said were now paying the price for having mistakenly thought they could “tame Vladimir Putin with empathy and friendly accommodation”.

Gerhard Schröder
The former German chancellor and head of the Nord Stream 2 administrative board, Gerhard Schröder, emphasised Putin’s ‘clubbability’. Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/AP

The tabloid Bild went further, describing a range of politicians as “Putin Streichler” – or Putin caressers – saying over the past 20 years these included not just former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, but the former Social Democrat foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, now Germany’s president, the former state leader of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, and Angela Merkel, who it accused of pushing the building of Nord Stream 2 and holding back with sanctions even amid widespread evidence of Kremlin misbehaviour.

But the invasion of Ukraine has marked a turning point, with analysts concluding that many politicians had been stunned into a change of heart.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has now expressed regret over past policy failures relating to Russia. Photograph: Jens Schlueter/AFP/Getty Images

Germany’s former defence minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer implied that some Germans, including herself, had taken a shamefully naive approach towards Putin’s politics.

“I’m so angry at ourselves for our historical failure,” she wrote on Twitter. “After Georgia, Crimea and Donbas, we have not prepared anything that would have really deterred Putin.”

But many German politicians actively courted Putin, most prominently Schröder, who went out of his way to emphasise the Russian leader’s harmless clubbability.

Schröder, who is reportedly recovering from coronavirus, was called upon at the weekend to condemn the invasion or face being thrown out of the Social Democratic (SPD) party over his close business ties to Russian energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft.

In its strongest appeal yet to Schröder, Lars Klingbeil, the SPD’s co-head, a former close ally, urged him to cut all business ties with Putin. “This war starts with Putin and Putin only, and therefore it can be the only logical conclusion that you cannot do business with an aggressor, a warmonger,” Klingbeil said.

Rainer Arnold, a former MP and an SPD member who was the parliamentary group’s spokesman on defence between 2002 and 2018, went further, appealing to Schröder to “save the SPD and you yourself further sustained embarrassing and excruciating debates about your egotistical engagement with Putin, a man whose interests are just as egotistical as well as inhuman”.

Schröder, who had previously referred to Ukraine’s request for arms as “sabre rattling”, on Thursday called on the “government in Moscow” to end the conflict “as soon as possible” saying it was not in Russia’s security interests to pursue the conflict. But he stopped short of mentioning Putin or referring to a war.

Others associated with Nord Stream 2 appear to be rapidly distancing themselves from the project, which was halted by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, (also of the SPD) last week in direct response to the invasion.

Within the far-left Die Linke, Sahra Wagenknecht has admitted she was wrong to insist Russia was not planning to invade Ukraine. Insiders have said she had been forced into a rethink, particularly over sanctions, which she has rejected in the past.

Stephan Protschka of the AfD told the FAS he felt “deeply deceived” by Putin, which elements of his party have admired for standing up to the “imperial west”. He told the paper he had, at most, expected there to be a trade war between Russia and the west and had accordingly “stocked up with wood” for his oven heater in order to brave an energy crisis. “I had had a degree of understanding for the way in which Putin felt he had been driven into a corner,” he said. “But now my understanding has run out.”

 OBAMA AND MERKEL ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. THEY MUST BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE LIKE PUTIN.


‘Appetite comes with eating’: How Putin was emboldened in Syria

AP

Observers say Russia’s brazen military intervention in Syria and the impunity with which it was met emboldened Vladimir Putin. They say it gave him a renewed Middle East foothold from where he could assert Russian power globally, and paving the way for his attack on Ukraine.

“There is no doubt that the Russian intervention in Ukraine is an accumulation of a series of Russian military interventions in Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015,” said Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian journalist and senior diplomatic editor for Syrian affairs at the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

Putin “believes that America is regressing and China’s role is increasing and Europe is divided and preoccupied with its internal concerns … so he decided to intervene,” he said.

Displaced Ukrainians bound for Poland at the Lviv-Holovnyi railway station in Lviv, Ukraine. Ethan Swope / Bloomberg

Moscow’s 2015 decision to join the war in Syria was its first military action outside the former Soviet Union since the federation’s collapse. It saved President Bashar Assad’s government and turned the tide of the war in his favour, enabling the Syrian leader to brutally reassert control over much of Syria. Russian airstrikes often indiscriminately hit hospitals, schools and markets.

The war-ravaged country became a testing ground for Russian weapons and tactics that it can now bring to bear in Ukraine.

Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute focusing on Russia’s policy toward the Middle East, said Russia deployed a “multi-domain” approach in Syria, including long-range precision weapons and large-scale bombing campaigns, along with cyber warfare, disinformation and use of paramilitary forces.

Deploying its air power “has come to define Russia’s evolving way of war and Syria was an especially important illustration of this development,” she said.

Moscow also showed a canny diplomatic touch in Syria, creating arrangements with the West that forced an implicit acceptance of its intervention. It created joint patrols with NATO member Turkey which backed Syrian rebels, to enforce truces in some areas. It established understandings with Israel that allowed the latter to carry out airstrikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria. It set up a so-called deconfliction line with the U.S. to prevent mishaps between American and Russian planes flying in Syria’s skies.

At the same time, it sought to defend Assad on the international scene, dismissing as fabrications Assad’s use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs against civilians. Within Syria, Russia added a soft power campaign. In some areas, festivals were put on to popularise Russian culture, Russian national songs were played on Syrian television, self-serving propaganda was churned out and hot meals were served to civilians.

Max, a dual Syrian-Ukrainian national who hails from Syria’s coastal province of Latakia, recalled working for a week as a social media troll disseminating the “truth” about Russia’s positive actions in Syria. He and other Russian-speaking Syrians worked from an office set up in a local university.

A member of Assad’s Alawite ruling sect, he said he and others in his hometown were grateful when Russia intervened militarily in 2015, particularly as Islamic extremists had been approaching the area.

“Then Russians came and the front line was pushed way back,” he told The Associated Press in a phone call from Ukraine, where he is now stuck in an Airbnb in a residential area of Kyiv.

Max, who is now working for an international organisation in Lebanon, had flown to Ukraine to update his personal documents when he became trapped there by Russia’s invasion. He spoke on condition his full name would not be used for his safety.

Today, Max no longer buys into the Russian narrative. Many in his hometown in Syria, though, support Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Moscow continues to mount a sophisticated disinformation effort about its invasion.

Images coming out of Ukraine, including the harrowing mass flight of civilians, are stirring intense and conflicting emotions among Syrians at home and refugees across the globe.

Resentment runs deepest in the northwest province of Idlib, Syria’s last opposition-held bastion, where Russian airstrikes continue to this day. In a statement issued Monday, the opposition’s civil defence group known as the White Helmets group, deplored Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

“It pains us immensely to know that the weapons tested on Syrians will now be used against Ukrainian civilians,” it said, lamenting what it said has been a lack of support from the international community in holding Russia to account in Syria and elsewhere.

“Instead of standing up for international norms, such as those against the use of chemical weapons, the international community has tried to find ways to cooperate with Russia and to this day considers Russia a willing and essential partner in diplomacy,” it said.

Borshchevskaya said the lesson Putin took from Syria was that “the West will not oppose his military interventions” and it gave him a success to build on.

“Appetite comes with eating, and with each intervention he has grown increasingly more brazen, culminating in the tragedy we now see unfolding in Ukraine,” she said. “Just as what happened in Syria did not end in Syria, what is happening in Ukraine will not end in Ukraine.”

 

Le idee, i valori e il coraggio della popolazione ucraina

Epoi c’è il coraggio. C’è quella cosa di origine la più varia e di forme molteplici che si manifesta improvvisamente quando meno te lo aspetti e in chi meno te lo aspetti che è il coraggio. Sta nel coraggio la vera lezione e certamente la più preziosa, che l’Ucraina oggi dà al mondo. Non è solo l’impavida fermezza del suo presidente. È il coraggio di chi senza aver mai imbracciato un fucile va ad arruolarsi pur sapendo di fare un passo forse decisivo verso la morte ( e sono decine di migliaia); è il coraggio dei ragazzi e delle ragazze che nei parchi cittadini preparano le bottiglie molotov con cui qualcuno di loro correrà domani incontro a un carro armato nelle vie di Kiev o di Odessa; è il coraggio delle madri che da sole si rifugiano oltre confine cariche di figli accettando senza fiatare che i loro mariti e compagni le abbandonino per andare a combattere. È il coraggio dell’anziana signora che affronta un soldato russo armato fino ai denti dicendogli «che ci fai qui, che non è casa tua?». È il coraggio del gruppetto di marinai indifesi i quali, di stanza su un insignificante isolotto del Mar Nero, alla nave russa che gli intima la resa rispondono «fottetevi!» senza sapere la fine che avrebbero fatto.

Da dove viene il coraggio? Da molte parti certamente. Alla fine però, come quasi tutto, da una parte sola: dalle idee e dai valori. Dall’idea che abbiamo di noi stessi e della vita, dal valore che attribuiamo al Paese che ci sta intorno e in cui siamo nati, dall’idea che abbiamo della sua storia, di quanto è accaduto prima di noi a coloro di cui siamo i figli e i nipoti. Dal peso e dal significato che diamo a ognuna di queste cose.

E infatti dietro l’esempio di coraggio che oggi stanno dando l’Ucraina e la sua gente è facile indovinare un senso fortissimo di dignità personale e di appartenenza collettiva, si sente risuonare di un suono chiarissimo l’idea che vi sono cause per cui la vita può essere sacrificata nonché la convinzione che non deve essere tollerata la prepotenza di chi vuole imporci la sua volontà. Tutto questo, infine, amalgamato, per così dire temprato e portato a una temperatura altissima, dalla fiamma del patriottismo. Che non è l’orgoglio e la ricerca della potenza della propria nazione. È innanzi tutto l’amore per il proprio Paese, per la sua storia e i suoi costumi, e insieme il desiderio di vivervi da liberi, liberi di deciderne le sorti condividendole con gli altri che parlano la nostra stessa lingua ma con i quali siamo capaci d’intenderci senza bisogno di parole bensì con uno sguardo, con un semplice cenno del capo. È dal patriottismo, da questo alto e pur elementare sentimento del vivere e delle virtù civili, da questo legame che tiene insieme le società umane, che nasce il coraggio odierno degli ucraini.

Un coraggio che ci riguarda. Che — se non vogliamo nascondere la testa sotto la sabbia come gli struzzi — oggi interpella tutti noi, abitanti del pacifico e soddisfatto Occidente democratico. Che ne è del patriottismo nelle nostre società? Saremmo ad esempio noi italiani mai capaci, con la medesima abnegazione, con la medesima unanimità e unità d’intenti, di fare qualcosa di simile a quanto vediamo accadere a Kiev o a Mariupol? Risponda ognuno per sé. Ma se la risposta è dubitativa o addirittura un no, allora bisognerebbe chiedersi anche perché. Chiedersi ad esempio se il nostro discorso pubblico — al di là dell’algida e vuota ritualità di ogni cerimonia ufficiale — mostri di apprezzare realmente i valori che si accompagnano al patriottismo, se i protagonisti della nostra vita politica mostrino qualche coerenza personale rispetto a quei valori. Chiedersi, ad esempio, se questi valori medesimi, viceversa, non siano abitualmente circondati, specie nell’ambiente intellettuale e dei media, da un’ironica condiscendenza che li dipinge come qualcosa ormai fuori dal tempo. Chiedersi ancora, ad esempio, se dal nostro sistema d’istruzione i giovani italiani — ormai ridotti a non sapere quasi più nulla della storia del loro Paese — possano mai trarre qualche insegnamento che riguardi un sentimento di comune appartenenza a qualcosa.

I tempi che stiamo vivendo mostrano come possano mutare repentinamente i fatti, le idee e gli scenari che credevamo i più certi e consolidati. Quanto possa rivelarsi fragile, possa essere spazzato via in una settimana, tutto ciò che avevamo creduto fino a ieri. Molte cose di oggi insomma sono destinate a non durare più. Ma del coraggio e di ciò che lo alimenta è difficile che non ci sia più bisogno. «Alla fine — si legge nella pagina di un grande e inquietante libro, Il tramonto dell’Occidente — la difesa della civiltà è sempre dipesa da un drappello di uomini armati». Parole che valgono quanto valgono le profezie: ma se davvero fosse così, come faranno quegli uomini se non avranno coraggio, se il loro animo sarà piegato dalla paura?