Depression
And other recent drawings
Depression is a Drag. ©2023 ,William L. Brown.
It’s been a busy couple of months. Among other things, I put in an application to sponsor a Ukrainian refugee. A friend requested this and I’m more than happy to do it. I hope the application is approved and that it happens quickly. Some people have waited for months.
This particular friend, though already a refugee in Germany, is suffering from depression, as are many of my Ukrainian friends and students, right now.
One student in particular, who has been relentlessly positive up until now, is uncharacteristically downcast, which unnerves me. I count on him to give me upbeat news about war progress when I am discouraged, but now he’s been snagged.
The war, he says gloomily, could go on for five years. And what will five-years of casualties be? It’s already too much. The counter-attack is very costly in lives, and the Russians are well fortified. Ukraine has in a couple of places successfully inched through mine fields to breach Russians first line of defense. But, he is not celebrating. the second and third lines of defense, he says, are just as difficult, plus there are endless tunnels and bunkers - “like Vietnam.”
He thinks the winter will be like the last - with daily electricity, water and heat black-outs. Meanwhile the economic sanctions on Russia are not working, he says. Their economy is strong and growing as they find ways around sanctions.
The threat of conscription is hanging over him. Some of his company’s team members have been snatched by the military already. He doesn’t go out much. He’s afraid of being stopped by police or soldiers, and “they give me a paper.”
I read the public diary of my friend Ekaterina Minikova. She writes about her day-to-day life during war in Dnipro, Ukraine: her volunteer aid work, her regular work, her mom, her health concerns and other aspects from the mundane to the monstrous.
She is also feeling pessimistic. She says ”Counteroffensive is not a movie with a happy end. We will not have the happy end. We lost too many people.”
She writes, “We were talking about heavy loses at the front line and both agreed that it is a political decision not to win this war.…. Then listening to the ton of excuses why NATO can but wouldn’t interfere, why weapons can be delivered but wouldn’t, why sanctions can be effective but EU chips are in the brand new rockets.” This is another reference to sanctions, which have not been totally effective in blocking war technology.
Blockage, ©2023, William L. Brown
Westerners might say NATO is doing its upmost, given the circumstances. Personally, I say it’s not good enough, and some of it stinks. I’m tired of being “realistic” about the slow turnaround of political will to provide adequate weaponry and training. We’re still not there. Is the goal for Ukraine to win, or not? If it is, we need a plan that sees it through.
Russophobic Shark. ©2023, William L Brown
This is about the shark thing on social media. A graphic video of a shark dispatching a Russian swimming off an Egyptian Red Sea beach last June was factiously celebrated by Ukrainians and friends as an act of shark solidarity. Russian trolls charged “Russophobia.” The comments picked up again in September when sharks attacked and seriously damaged a Russian catamaran near Australia.
Bothered Bear. ©2023 William L. Brown
Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia are more numerous and effective.
LIberty Adrift, © 2023, William L. Brown.
On the occasion of Ukraine’s Independence Day, August 24, liberty and democracy world-wide are threatened by domestic extremism and authoritarian governments. Ukraine is the literal battlefield of this struggle. If Ukraine wins, world democracy will be strengthened. If Ukraine loses, democracy will be weakened, authoritarians and extremists will be emboldened.
Milking the Military, © 2023 William L. Brown
Ukraine’s minister of defense Oleksii Reznikov resigned in early September following procurement corruption scandals. It was revealed that suppliers tied to government and party officials made large profits by buying food and military clothing at one price, then reselling to the military at a much higher one. Summer coats were purchased and resold as more expensive winter coats, in one example.
Russian Ballot-box © 2023, William L. Brown.
Russia held regional and local elections including some in occupied parts of Ukraine September 10.
The weariness your friends feel is common., No one wants the horrors of war, and Ukraine has seen its share of them. Even those who greet war enthusiastically change their tune. Remember the crowds who cheered the war in 1914; the French army mutinied three years later. The US was tiring of the war with Japan four years after Pearl Harbor. That Western polities need to "screw their courage to the sticking place" should be obvious. I don;'t know what to tell Ukrainians, if I can tell them anything. Perhaps I can say, what I believe: Their country needs continued sacrifice; and, easy as it is for me to say it, so do we.