On air strikes and coalitions
I’m writing this as my friends are walking on asphalt covered with ash from Russia’s massive overnight missile and drone attack on Kyiv. Walking their dogs in the neighbourhood, walking to work where they report on the destruction, walking to a culture festival which commemorates our fallen friends. There’s a thick smoke hanging over the capital, they tell me.
In June, Russia launched a record-breaking 5337 kamikaze drones against Ukraine, resulting in hundreds of civilian casualties. Below you can see what a kamikaze drone looks like. Despite Russia’s escalating attacks, the U.S. has decided to halt shipments of Patriot missiles and other weapons to Kyiv.
Being Ukrainian feels lonely most of the time.
Being Ukrainian also feels maddening.
While the rest of the world has successfully moved on from taking note of a genocide perpetrated against your people, you can’t help but take note of a certain trouble about to hit the rest of the world. Pointing to the black cloud, captured so poignantly in Oleksiy Sai’s installation for the Burning Man, you keep screaming, ‘It’s already here!’ into the void.
The Sky News excellent podcast The WarGame which simulates Russia’s attack on the UK elicits surprising emotional reactions. To be frank, I’ve been mentally preparing for the bombing of London for at least three years. While living through Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I thought I’d feel nothing when the war spills over my country’s borders. Yet listening to a simulation of a strike on the Oxford Circle, I cried angry tears and muttered ‘You are so dumb’ into the collective face of my beloved UK-based friends and colleagues.
You have been warned so many times. You have waxed your ears and now the blasts in the heart of your capital will take care of your hearing issues.
I hope this rehearsal will help me keep my cool when the attack happens. If I am still alive then, I hope to master some generosity of spirit and make myself useful. And since I’m currently still around, I’ll reiterate for the benefit of my sleepwalking friends: instead of treating meaningful solidarity with Ukraine as a charity project, you need to build a coalition with us and do it for your own sake. The wording used by the Black Studies star Fred Moten in The Undercommons aptly conveys the message:
coalition isn't something that emerges so that you can come help me, a maneuver that always gets traced back to your own interests. The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it's fucked up for you, in the same way that it's fucked up for us. I don't need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly.
The quote ends with even stronger language which, as the head of a cultural and research institution, I’m obliged to omit.