THE SENSITIVE HEARTS OF EUROPE PULSED NOT AT ALL FOR UKRAINE, NOT FOR 8 LONG YEARS, UNTIL NOW

For Inna.

The effete, urbane and highly intellectual liberal classes of Europe are all of a flutter and have descended into a deep-frown seriousness over the “terrible situation” in Ukraine and the outrageously evil nature of Russia’s “aggression”.

This is the time they choose to involve themselves so very intently in the affairs of Ukraine, a nation they hardly gave any thought to or made any mention of previously. It is now they choose to pat the thought of a poor innocent Ukrainian on its blood-sodden head and usher him or her into their sumptuously decorated homes to sit by the fire.

The bleating of thousands of TV personalities across Europe is so loud you have to wear ear plugs to get any sleep at night. Their bleeding hearts are flooding every blue and yellow painted drain all across Europe.

But… where were these great intellects and huge hearts in the years 2014 and 2015 when other Ukrainians were dying in their homes, streets, schools and hospitals as mortar shells rained down on them? Where were the tears and cries of stop the war back then? I can tell you as I listened intently back then and heard not a sound from them. I sat at my computer screen sure that western news services couldn’t possibly avoid letting the world know what was going on. Surely that decapitated school teacher lying at the door of her school would make news that night? Or the schoolboy’s corpse with the two or three shrapnel holes showing clearly in his chest would merit something. He had been playing football with his school pal in the playground when his short life ended. But no, nothing. No intellectual bleeding heart shed a tear. No TV news editor thought he was a story. He didn’t even consider it.

All these hand-wringing, tearful souls that care SO very deeply now went on their way to their usual haunts, going to the theatre, having friends round, laughing heartily at the usual jokes happily and quite blissfully unaware of the flashes in the sky nearby and the whizz of mortars, undirected by any form of targeting, hit the nearest thing that got in its way, whether that be an apartment block, a hospital, school or very modest home. To those firing these things into the villages, towns and cities of the Donbass it didn’t matter at all where the mortar shells went, what lives and homes they ruined or who they killed. They were all ‘Moskals’ who lived there, weren’t they? All despised, loathed and virulently hated ‘Russians’. Every last man, woman and child of them.

But you may say, didn’t the great intellectual sensitives of Europe get themselves heavily involved in some peace process, demanding that the carnage stop and some justice be meted out to those doing these terrible things? I’m afraid they did not. I saw not a whit of change in them for an entire eight years until this sudden outburst of passionate disapproval and desire for “Help for Ukraine!”, along with “Weapons for Ukraine!” we see now. Not one of them urged the Ukrainian authorities to stop the bombing of the homes of fellow Ukrainians, not a word was heard from them… not a single word.

And did editors become incensed at the carnage that was daily to be seen in the communities under fire? Did intrepid mainstream news reporters show a shocked world what was going on? Was the nightly news full of grisly images of corpses in the streets, of burnt out and blasted apartment blocks? No. None of this. A deathly silence prevailed. And prevailed for eight long years. Eight years that were SO VERY long for those under fire, scared for their children and for themselves, scared to walk down the street or sit in their homes, retiring to basements to spend long hours as the muffled blasts of mortar shells and even the odd missile was heard or the crack of a sniper’s bullet.

A vacuum chamber of death was created for the Donbass. Blinkers and ear plugs were the order of the day for all mainstream reporters during those eight years except for the common refrain that “It is all the Russian’s doing!”. It was excruciating to live through those years. To see SO much pain and suffering, so many atrocities, utterly atrocious behaviour by those who saw glory in the Ukrainian nationalist cause stemming from its adherence to Hitler’s Nazis during WWII. The vicious hatred that spawned unconscionable violence was kept alive and free to haunt and horrify the people of Donetsk and Lugansk while the western world of elite liberal political and media life kept a hand over the mouths of their victims to muffle their screams.

But now… now we hear them wail in paroxysms of heartfull caring, with hearts so full of compassion they could burst, forcing from their liberal lips the demand that those who committed those crimes over the past eight years be given better weapons to kill more effectively and efficiently.

“Forgive them Lord for they know not what they do” ?

I’m afraid that will remain an enormous challenge for me after what I’ve seen and after all these people failed to do when it WAS so desperately needed. Let them wail and wet their designer underwear grieving for “Poor Ukraine”. Soon enough they will learn something of the truth they knew nothing of back then. Their tears will dry up. As an Azov neo-Nazi plunges a metaphorical knife into their bleeding hearts they will only then and very rapidly fall out of love with their new and fictitiously-imagined “friends” and “heroes” of Ukraine.