08.03.2025 / Consistency

This moment is no less alarming than February and March 2022. In fact it is much more terrifying. For you don’t hear explosions outside your window. I do, of course, even as I write this, but they don’t elicit the same bodily response, they’ve become familiar. Have you noticed how you fall into a rhythm of reacting to the latest news? And when there’s finally a day that’s a bit quieter, just a trickle instead of a flood, you don’t quite know what to do with yourself. Of course you have a thousand things to do (not to mention vacuuming and laundry) but these things are not attacking you the way russia does or trump’s slash-and-burn attitude toward everything that wants to live freely wreaks havoc.

“This is / not spring / not spring

just burnt homes / just burnt cities / just burnt bodies.”

This is the beginning of a poem by Maksym Kryvtsov, who was killed last year defending Ukraine from russia’s invasion. When I’m not urgently responding to world events in Facebook I’m urgently translating Ukrainian poetry.

Last week my friend Sasha Dovzhyk wrote from the US with a request to help her translate some verses into English. She wanted to read them in public that evening. There was no advance warning because who could have predicted that the night before the son of the poet Svitlana Povalyaeva would be killed while performing his duties as a drone pilot in the AFU. I cleared the table, opened my computer, and got to work. I translate Ukrainian poetry because russia keeps killing my fellow Ukrainians.

Poems by Svitlana Povalyaeva from Partly Cloudy with Clearings, in my rough translation

Spring feels off this year. The trees are gray — not green. The sun is too bright, glaring in through the windows, and outside the warm air feels stifling. The air is still dirty. After three years of non-stop russian airstrikes, it’s like the residue of explosions all over Ukraine has accumulated past a threshold where nature can renew itself.

This war was launched by humans, by the political leadership and people of the russian federation, and now the US politicians leading the American people have decided to change sides and change the conversation. Instead pursuing a just end to the war of aggression unilaterally launched by russia, the Trump regime is struggling to coerce Ukraine into a “deal.”

A Ukrainian friend asked me on Tuesday to explain how one man could single-handedly halt all deliveries of military aid to Ukraine. “There must be some kind of procedure, institutions,” she wrote. “I’m floored.”

I spent hours searching the Internet, reading the major news articles about Trump’s directive; learning about the legal mechanisms behind executive orders (DJT has signed 89 since taking office January 20, 2025); pondering the options for overturning them through congressional legislation or the courts.

But I think she was asking something more fundamental: how is it that in the US — with its exemplary history of checks and balances, centuries of spirited fight to prevent tyranny, a tradition of defending democracy not only at home but also around the world — how could one man suddenly diametrically reverse US foreign policy? After three years of supporting Ukraine in defending itself against russia’s war of aggression, the US under DJT is partnering with russia to deny Ukraine’s sovereign existence, while disregarding all the violations of international law and war crimes russia has committed as if they had never happened.

This is unprecedented. But the issue is not just the mechanics of US government in 2025.

The thing at the root of my friend’s question is something I’ve heard from many Ukrainians in countless variations on FB this week — in crystal clear English, directly addressing their American friends: why are the streets of American cities and towns not flooded in protest?

This is something that Ukrainians, who have had to fight — and who are still fighting — for every speck of freedom they claim as their own, do not understand. The teacher of Ukrainian and English, who began supporting Ukraine’s defenders as a volunteer in 2014, and found herself on one of russia’s public “kill lists” of active members of Ukrainian civil society in 2016, and now serves in the AFU. The member of PEN Ukraine, an author, translator, political analyst and mother of three children, currently a paramedic in the AFU. The poet, who first lost her son, Maidan activist Roman Ratushny, in battle in 2022, and lost her second son, Vasyl, last Friday. I could go on and on.

How could these Ukrainians not be utterly baffled by the speed and ease with which the US’s new leadership is turning on its partners, its ostensible principles, and its own people? But who — and what — is getting in the way?

It’s true that the mechanisms we’ve relied on to influence the US government are broken. While Ukrainians have lifetimes of experience with political mechanisms that work against them. So take courage from the evidence that people’s ingenuity and perseverance can make limited resources go a long way.

I know that plenty of you, readers, are getting out to demonstrations, organizing events and campaigns, voicing and acting on your principles. You have every right to implore and demand that your fellow citizens — and elected officials — join you if they are not on board with the way the country is being run. Keeping quiet will not protect you from losing your job or being deported. It guarantees you absolutely nothing except complicity.

PS One way to resist the Trump regime’s efforts to disorient those who might stand in the way of its plans is to uphold consistency.

I urge you — yet again — to support the military drone missions of the Birds of Fury, who’ve been refining their technological prowess for nearly three years. See: https://zlyizbir.org.ua/en/

Also, The Guardian has been my constant source of sensible, real-time reporting on events in Ukraine, Europe and now in the US since 2022. Everything they publish is freely available, so it’s worth making a contribution to support this invaluable service.