Timothy Snyder

Crossing a line…

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This is an essay I wrote on the night train from Kyiv to Zaporizhzhia a week ago. Please feel free to share this with those who might want or need to hear this. If you are thinking as I am about how to help Ukrainians just now, consider Come Back Alive (Ukrainian NGO that supports soldiers on the battlefield and veterans), United 24 (the Ukrainian state platform for donations, with many excellent projects),RAZOM (an American NGO, tax-deductible for US citizens, which cooperates with Ukrainian NGOS to support civilians), and Documenting Ukraine (a project I help run that helps to give Ukrainians a voice, also tax-deductible for Americans).

I am on a night train from Kyiv, bound for Zaporizhzhia, a city in the southeast of Ukraine which is about twenty miles from the front. Russian missiles take about thirty-five seconds to hit the city, and the take civilian lives. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region. In September of 2022 the Russian parliament proclaimed the annexation of the region as a whole.

That front is a line that runs through Zaporizhzhia region, and indeed across the east and south of Ukraine. My train rushes southeast, towards that line. Its passengers, civilians and soldiers alike, know what lies on the other side.

Given the nature of Russian occupation, Ukrainians are fighting not only for their lives, but for a certain idea of life in freedom.

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Decapitation Strike (December)

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Timothy Snyder asked his readers “to share this post with people who might benefit from reading it” and appended a note at the top of his essay: “I wrote this two weeks ago, on 15 November. This update accounts for things I have learned since, and for Trump’s further appointments, who confirm the thesis.”)

Each of Trump’s proposed appointments is a surprise. It is comforting to think that he is simply a vengeful old man, lashing out this way and that. This is unlikely. He and Musk and Putin have been talking for years. And the whole idea of his campaign was that this time he had a plan.

We should be wary of shock, which excuses inaction. Who could have known? What could I have done? If there is a plan, shock is part of the plan. We have to get through the surprise and the shock to see the design and the risk. We don’t have much time. Nor is outrage the point. Of course we are outraged. But our own reactions can distract is from the larger pattern.

The newspapers address the surprise and the shock by investigating each proposed appointment individually. And we need this. With detail comes leverage and power. But clarity must also come, and quickly. Each appointment is part of a larger picture. Taken together, Trump’s candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.

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