Thread by @MelaniePodolyak

It was just a casual, throwaway description. Last September, the New York Times reported on a series of daring operations by Ukrainian special forces to evacuate civilians from Afghanistan.

U.S. troops had left Kabul, and the Taliban had taken complete control. “Enter Ukraine,” the article read, “a small but battle-hardened nation.”

Even today, as Russian troops amass along Ukraine’s borders and threaten a dramatic escalation of their undeclared 8-year war, most Americans would pass over that word: small.

This is a big problem. Ukraine is the largest country by territory within the European continent. Its population is roughly the size of Spain’s. Take even a cursory look at any map — Ukraine is anything but small.

To contest the Kremlin’s cascading aggression, start by revising your mental map. Ukraine is a large country of persistent strategic and intellectual significance, and not only because of its human capital, abundant economic potential or pivotal position between Russia and the EU

Beyond the questions of what they have and where they are, Ukrainians are important for what they do and what they have done.

The truth is that Ukraine’s political and cultural agency has helped shape and reshape the map of Europe for generations. Indeed, Ukrainians have played an active part in the demise of not one […] but four different empires, including Austria-Hungary and the Soviet Union.

This role has not been incidental. It has been hard won, driven by a modern national identity primarily based not on ethnic or religious affiliation, but on an idea: universal democratic freedom.

This idea may strike some as saccharine or strange. After all, the image of Ukraine in the West is often one of rapacious oligarchs and corrupt, feuding politicians — and not without good reason.

But look beyond Ukraine’s recent history of government and elite intrigue, and you will see a vibrant, grassroots civil society that embodies the egalitarian agenda of Ukrainian civic nationalism.

So what do we see when we take modern Ukrainian nationhood seriously, on its own terms? We see a social and cultural movement with an anticolonial backbone and a suspicion of state institutions led by strongmen.

We discover that, in the realm of political values, Ukraine is not Russia’s cousin. It’s Russia’s competitor.
politico.com/news/magazine/…