Refuting the Lies Behind Putin's Illegitimate Invasion

Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine has waged another misinformation campaign to justify his illegitimate invasion. But this time around, we can’t afford to buy in. The war will be won with weapons, but history will judge truth from falsehood.

I am the son of Ukrainian-Jewish refugees. My entire extended family lives in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where they face artillery bombardment and threat of ground force invasion. Even worse, Russian president Vladimir Putin now threatens to prepare his nuclear arsenal.

My family are no strangers to bloodshed. My great grandparents perished in the Holocaust and on the battlefields of World War II, fighting over the same land as today. My parents escaped Soviet antisemitism from Russians and Ukrainians alike. But even they find Putin’s purported “denazification of Ukraine,” one of his primary justifications, laughable and insulting.

Most of modern-day Ukraine was part of the “Pale of Settlement,” where the Jews of the 19th and 20th century Russian Empire were confined to live, and where they faced many violent pogroms. It is true that these Jews became prime targets of the Nazi genocide, often aided in their atrocities by Ukrainian nationalists like Stepan Bandera. Their hatred of the Soviets, fueled by the millions who perished in the Holodomor, inspired Ukrainian nationalists to collaborate with Nazis.

It is also true that there still are far-right ultranationalist groups represented in the Ukrainian parliament today, as there are in most democratic countries. But that’s the thing—Ukraine is a democratic country. They’ve voted in a Jewish president, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, who hails from the same former shtetl as my grandparents. The Ukrainian people are able to choose their leaders, and they’ve voted for progress.

Russia, on the other hand, is a totalitarian regime that has arrested over 5,500 of its citizens for peacefully protesting in the past few days. The Russian government considers identifying as LGBT in public a crime, and it has consistently attempted to silence and assassinate its critics, like Alexander Navalny, who, after surviving a Kremlin-sponsored poisoning attempt, is being tried in a Russian kangaroo court for more bogus charges. When you see a democracy helmed by a Jewish President being invaded by a homophobic dictator, which side would you call the fascists?

Similarly, Russia’s casus belli of the defending the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukraine is equally farcical. Following the 2014 ousting of pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (and possibly emboldened by their doping-fueled Olympic medal count), Russia invaded and took Crimea. They’ve also helped supply the separatists in Eastern Ukraine with the weapons they used to accidentally shoot down a passenger plane, murdering 298 civilians.

Since then, the war over these regions has simmered between Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed separatists. A few days ago, as a prelude for the invasion, the Russian Duma voted to recognize the independence of the regions, giving the Russian military the charge to “keep the peace” against the Ukrainian forces. Notably, the borders they recognized for the separatist region were much further back than where the Ukrainian military had been fighting for the past years. In other words, all of a sudden, the Ukrainian army was now an aggressor in the eyes of the Russian government (without having moved an inch!), and Russia had its flimsy justification to launch the invasion they had been preparing for months.

Russia has, time and again, railed against Western Imperialism while slowly trying to expand its own empire. The “what-aboutism” and misinformation is from the same tired playbook that the Russians used to influence the 2016 election.

The US, Western Europe, NATO, Ukraine and democracy at large are not perfect. We have far-right, bigoted elements of our societies. My parents escaped Soviet antisemitism to see our local synagogue in Pittsburgh attacked. But at least we can vote, and by doing so, recognize our imperfections and work to correct them.

For instance, after our foolhardy wars in the Middle-East over the past decades, many Western powers have been understandably weary to get involved in Ukraine. We’ve slowly learned not to meddle in other country’s affairs-- meanwhile Putin has learned to do just that. Unaccountable to his people or to the truth, he has woven such a spindle of lies that he caught himself—delusionally calling on the Ukrainian military to rise up against its own government. And all the while, the GDP of his country has plummeted, and Russia is increasingly held together not by his popularity but by his totalitarian apparatus.

Unlike Ukraine’s democratic leadership, Putin is not accountable to his own people or even to basic international norms. If we do not speak out now and implement all the financial tools we have to deplete his apparatus and put an end to his regime, an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe may await us all.

Adam Barsouk is a medical student, cancer researcher, and writer whose work has appeared in Forbes and theWall Street Journal among others

“When you see a democracy helmed by a Jewish President being invaded by a homophobic dictator, which side would you call the fascists?”

https://www.glaad.org/whereweareontv21
Where We Are on TV Report – 2021-2022

The Where We Are on TV report analyzes the overall diversity of primetime scripted series regulars on broadcast networks and looks at the number of LGBTQ characters on cable networks and streaming services for the 2021-2022 TV season.

Below are some of the most remarkable points GLAAD found in its research this year. Download the full report now to read more.
• This year’s study found that of the 775 series regular characters scheduled to appear on scripted broadcast primetime programming for the 2021-2022 season, 92 characters (11.9 percent) are LGBTQ. This is an increase of 2.8 percentage points from the previous year and marks a new record high percentage of LGBTQ series regulars on broadcast. There are an additional 49 LGBTQ recurring characters on the platform for a total of 141 LGBTQ characters on broadcast.
• On primetime scripted cable series, GLAAD counted 87 series regular LGBTQ characters and 51 LGBTQ recurring characters, totaling 138 LGBTQ characters on primetime scripted cable originals this season. This is an increase of 20 characters from the previous year.
• GLAAD has added five new streaming services to its count this year – Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Peacock – in addition to its ongoing counts of scripted originals on Amazon, Hulu and Netflix. On original scripted programming on those eight platforms, GLAAD counted 245 LGBTQ series regular characters and 113 LGBTQ recurring characters, bringing the total to 358 LGBTQ regular and recurring characters.
• Of the 637 LGBTQ characters counted in this report, there are two asexual characters, one on HBO Max’s genera+ion, which has since been cancelled, and one on an upcoming streaming series.
• Bisexual+ characters make up 29 percent of all the LGBTQ characters on broadcast, cable and streaming. This is an increase of one percent from last year’s study. This number still heavily favors women, with 124 bi+ women, 50 bi+ men, and nine bi+ non-binary characters.
• This year, there are 42 transgender regular and recurring characters across all of broadcast, cable, and streaming. They are made up of 20 trans women, 14 trans men, and eight trans characters who are non-binary. 41 out of the 42 are played or voiced by trans actors. There are a further 17 characters who are non-binary and not transgender.
• Of the 775 series regulars on primetime scripted broadcast series, 47 percent (360 characters) are women, an increase of one-percentage point from last year and a new record high.
• Of all primetime series regulars on broadcast, 50 percent (390 of 775) are characters of color, a four- percentage point increase from the previous year and a new record high for POC representation on broadcast. Racial diversity of LGBTQ characters on broadcast and streaming also increased, while cable saw a decrease.
• Series regular characters with disabilities counted a decrease, down to 2.8 percent (22 of 775) from 3.5 percent last year. This number falls far below the actual number of those with disabilities in the United States.
• The number of characters living with HIV across all platforms has decreased from three to two.

Interestingly, just like the author, I am Jewish and my paternal grandfather’s family was from what is now Dnipro. My grandfather’s father was murdered by Stalin’s NKVD goons, and one of his brothers was murdered with his family by the Germans. Though there is a long history of Ukrainian anti-Semitism, today’s Ukrainians are not to blame for their ancestors’ actions - and the fact that they elected a Jewish President says that things have changed a lot.

Though those people of my family descended from my great grandfather are no longer in Dnipro, nor in Zhitomir where my grandmother was born and raised, seeing these cities being bombed by the Russians is heart-wrenching. It does (posthumously) validate the decision that many of my relatives made to leave, but for those more distant relatives, and those not related to me who are living there, my heart breaks.

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