History has broken into a sprint. Changes that were imagined to be the work of generations, or even centuries, have happened in days. Geopolitical shifts whose impact will endure for decades have come in hours. All wars are accelerants, but Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is remaking the world before our very eyes.
Start with national identity. The way nations see themselves, and are seen by others, is meant to be the stuff of evolution: slow and gradual, the layers added in increments. And yet Russia’s brutal attempt to swallow up its neighbour has changed something profound in little more than a week.
When Putin set out his case for war, he rested it on the claim that Ukraine had no tradition of “genuine statehood”. That was gross, but it betrayed a prejudice that Putin did not invent. Long before the Russian ethno-nationalism of today, Ukraine was treated as something less than a nation. In the 20th century, it was caught between the totalitarianisms of the age, squeezed and bloodied by both Nazism and Bolshevism. Even in polite, western company, the view that it was merely a region of somewhere else persisted: it lived on, unconsciously perhaps, in those who called it “the Ukraine”.
That ended a week ago. Ukrainians have acquired a new place in the global imagination, as the embodiment of the spirit of national independence. Already their collective defiance and bravery in the face of a terrifying menace is the material of myth – ballet dancers grabbing rifles, data scientists digging trenches – that will be woven into a national story Ukrainians will tell themselves for centuries. Even when, for the rest of the world, that fades into history, one fact will be left: the unshakeable conviction that Ukraine is a nation, a wholly “genuine” one. Count that as just the first of many ways in which Putin’s mission has already defeated itself.
Some of the others are wholly unexpected. As recently as a fortnight ago, chastened by its past, Germany’s settled position was that it would play no part in a war in Europe. Now, hailing a “turning point in the history of our continent,” Germany’s chancellor is sending missiles and anti-tank weapons to help Ukraine, and massively increasing Berlin’s defence spending. There was a time when the prospect of a rearmed Germany would have sent tremors through Europe and beyond. But this week the bestselling Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari called German leadership in the current fight against Russian aggression “the best atonement” for Nazi crimes. This was no time to be neutral or to stay on the sidelines, Harari said: “What we need from Germany is to stand tall and lead.”
Berlin’s break from nearly eight decades of postwar restraint is perhaps the most concrete example of a phenomenon visible throughout Europe and across the Atlantic. After many years spent contemplating its own decline and decay, the west has rediscovered something like pride and purpose. For all its many flaws and well-documented failings, it has been reminded that its brand of freedom and democracy is preferable to the alternative: the tyranny and oppression meted out by Putin, whether in the form of bombs raining down on Ukrainian civilians or gags across the mouths and blindfolds across the eyes of Russian citizens. Over the last 10 days, those who thought Nato was a cold war anachronism have been given a refresher course in why it was invented and why it was necessary: to protect free nations from a mighty aggressor.
The same goes for the European Union. Britons, especially, came to associate the EU with trade at best, pettifogging bureaucracy at worst. When the EU won the Nobel peace prize in 2012, many scratched their heads with incomprehension. Well, there’s no excuse for bafflement now. Putin has jogged our memories that the EU was founded out of the conviction that the only future for a continent that had been at the centre of two world wars in 30 years was to come together: to share sovereignty rather than to kill for it. The sight of a khaki-clad Volodymyr Zelenskiy signing Ukraine’s request to join the EU, even as Russian forces approached, demonstrated again that for Europeans, the EU has always been about safety and peace. How shaming to think of the Eurosceptics who pretended the EU was some kind of foreign occupier, referring to it as the “EUSSR”. How shaming to think that the British contribution to this noble postwar ideal was to abandon it.
Even the way we think of history has changed over these last few days. Long disdained has been any analysis that places too much weight on the role of individuals: in place of the “great man theory” of history, scholars were meant to focus on the deeper, impersonal forces, the tectonic shifts that made the actions of this or that human being of secondary importance. And yet, most now agree that “Russia” has no burning appetite to seize Ukraine; few ordinary Russians are itching to bring hell and heartache to their neighbours next door. This war is instead the whim of one, possibly crazed, man. For all the hours spent and ink spilled analysing the geopolitics of Russia and its region, what it comes down to is Putin’s yearning for power and for a place in history, to be remembered alongside Peter the Great. Because of one individual and his strange psychological need, a million people are already refugees and whole cities are smouldering ruins.
Standing against him is a man who has inspired his nation and won admiration around the world. Perhaps Ukraine would have held out no matter who served as its president. Maybe the world’s sympathies would have been aroused even without a master communicator in Kyiv, who in a series of short, plain-spoken speeches has articulated a fundamental principle: that all nations have the right to define who they are and determine their own destiny.
Perhaps. But the presence of Zelenskiy, his refusal to save his own skin or put himself first – “I need ammunition, not a ride” – has not only galvanised his own people. It has given a moral clarity to this moment. In an unheroic age, he has become a global hero and, with Putin apparently eager to play his part as a cartoonishly evil villain, that has lent this conflict a simplicity that will easily be dismissed as simplistic, but has great power all the same.
None of this is any comfort to the families in basements, for the children without fathers. It doesn’t help them if history has picked up its tempo. Like all victims of war, they want nothing more than for history to leave them alone – and let them live.
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
