No one would have bet on the Ukrainian people, on the attachment to democracy of such a fresh nation, still testing itself
a year has passed since the dawn of February 24, 2022. Do you still remember what you thought when you woke up that morning, what you felt at the news that a war had broken out in Ukraine, the war in Europe? Bombardments and tanks with a red Z on their flank launched to conquer an airport from which to overflow towards Kiev, Odessa, perhaps up to Lviv? Cities frozen in our memory that we ran to recover on the maps, archived in our analog binders at the end of the story. Or, if not quite history, at least some cold war stories.
We certainly know what Vladimir Putin was thinking in the Kremlin, at the corner of that immense table whose measurements we would have learned to take. He thought it would be a special operation, one or two weeks, a descent against the direction of a handful of years (independent Ukraine since 1991) but in the millennial groove of undivided / indivisible Great Russia. And then, at the other corner, sitting on a green wooden stool, there wasn’t a real leader, a captain or a tsar, but a former actor who had become president of the Republic in a TV series and then in life. How long could a reality descended from fiction last?
Not a month, not a whole year… No one would have bet on the Ukrainian people, on the attachment to democracy of such a fresh nation, still trying itself, on its ability to remain united under siege and to fight – bolstered by the weapons and technology of many allies, of course, but basically alone on the ground – at every village or strategic crossroads, even when the battle is gathered within the perimeter of a football field that is moved forward and backward in the desolation. As happened during the First World War, when nothing new seemed to arrive from the front. No one would have imagined having to count so many dead under bombardments, artillery shells, missiles. And to witness the conscription of thousands and thousands of young Russians, destined to become – metaphorically speaking – cannon fodder.
Three hundred and sixty-five days after the first dawn of war over Kiev, we are here to offer you an insight into the conflict that changed the world: the consequences that have affected our days month after month and the scenarios that will unfold in 2023. Tormented by many questions and looking for some possible answers, we know that what Raphal Glucksmann said a winter ago still applies: if the Russians lay down their arms, the war will end; if the Ukrainians do it, the Ukraine ends.
February 23, 2023 (change February 24, 2023 | 11:53 am)
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