Moral Equivalence between Russia and Ukraine?

Tom Kando

I still watch the news and I still read the newspaper every day. This is a bad habit. The news is repetitive and depressing. The major progressive channels (CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, etc.) devote most of the time to Donald Trump and the lawsuits against him, ad nauseam. Overseas, the Ukraine war remains a main topic, with no end in sight. 

The Ukrainian situation bothers me a great deal. 

Maybe it’s because I come from Eastern Europe. Maybe because I spent the first decade of my life in a war not unlike the current bloodbath in Ukraine, and its aftermath. Maybe because Russia was doing to Hungary, my country of birth, the same thing it is doing to Ukraine now: raping it. 

Russia started its unprovoked attack on its peaceful neighbor in February 2014, when it conquered Crimea. It resumed its invasion in February 2022, attempting to annex the entire country, an effort that goes on unabated. 

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When the current assault began over a year and a half ago, the media were able to document clearly that Russia’s behavior was as unprovoked, unjustified and cruel as Hitler’s assaults upon Germany’s neighbors had been at the outset of World War Two. We saw on television entire cities pulverized, thousands of women, children and other innocents killed, millions of Ukrainians forced to flee from their country, farcical elections held by Russia, attempting to legitimize the annexation of territories, the deportation of Ukrainian children to re-education locations in Russia.

For once, American public opinion displayed moral clarity. If ever there was a conflict where the contrast between culprit and victim was clear, this was it. As clear as rape and unprovoked murder. And the public saw it. 

Whenever you click on a web portal such as Yahoo or AOL, you get a multitude of articles of the hour, articles which address the day’s most salient issues and change rapidly. Many of these quicky articles are about the Russia-Ukraine war. They are, by and large, professional and intelligent, reproduced from respectable news media such as Reuters. They are usually followed by hundreds or thousands of readers comments.

As a sociologist, I remain interested in public opinion. One way to get a sense of how the public feels is to scroll through some of the thousands of comments that follow such electronic articles. Of course, this is absolutely not a representative sample. But it is far richer and better than the traditional letters-to-the-editor still found in most daily newspapers, because it is much larger and practically every submission is accepted. 

So I occasionally examine this source of information. 

I did this a few times after this war began in 2022, and I have done it again a few times recently. To my great sorrow, I found a huge change in public opinion regarding Ukraine: in 2022, the vast majority of readers expressed outrage at Putin and strong support for Ukraine. 

This is  no longer the case. The majority of comments are at best isolationist. At worst, they see moral equivalence between Russia’s actions and American imperialism, between Putin and Biden. Most of the comments deplore our expensive military aid to Ukraine, arguing that this only benefits our military-industrial complex and our merchants of death, that America should take care of its own domestic problems rather than squander its resources on a proxy war in far-away Europe waged for capitalist profit 

The conspiratorial frame of mind of so many people is back. Accordingly, those responsible for this war include the CIA, NATO, Joe Biden and his son, the Pentagon and the American military-industrial complex. Not all the comments have this sort of slant, but over half of them do. 

As I said, maybe my sample is not representative. Some polls suggest that a majority of Americans still support Ukraine. Maybe. But it does appear that support is declining, especially among Republicans. Maybe Russian disinformation is at work here. 

All I know is that a year and a half ago, I didn’t come across a multitude of comments criticizing our government’s support of Ukraine. Most of the readers were highly supportive of strong economic and military support for Ukraine. Today, no more. 

Today, many Americans are against everything. Many oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and also oppose resisting the invasion. Some comments express outrage at BOTH too much military assistance to Ukraine AND insufficient assistance. Anger and frustration are the common thread. Many comments are confused and contradictory, demanding simultaneously that our government do both more and less. 

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Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t wish to prolong this war, or God forbid escalate it. It is essential that peace negotiations begin ASAP. At least an armistice of some sort, one that stops the bloodletting, as it stopped in Korea seventy years ago. Obviously, both sides must compromise. Ukraine will not regain all that it has lost, but it should survive. 

I did not write this article in order to recommend specific action. I am not qualified to do that. Russia may well win, and the world may have to accept that. Nuclear war is out of the question. But this doesn’t mean that there is moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine. 

Consider the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. The Fascists won, but the world was never hoodwinked into believing that the Spanish Republicans deserved to lose. 

Today, I am disturbed when I take the pulse of American public opinion: There has been a significant change in the narrative pertaining to Ukraine: There is now much more talk of moral equivalence. This is very wrong.  leave comment here