Media Coverage of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia
Do powerful countries have principles?
The fear that Ukrainians are experiencing these days is depressing. However, our sadness was partially interrupted when people started expressing their dissatisfaction with how the citizens of Ukraine received more political attention and media coverage from Western countries than the people experiencing war in the middle east. This is not to say that the people in question don’t stand with the individuals who are being terrorized in Ukraine. They do, but the difference is perhaps they understand that we must fight against all kinds of invasions everywhere not only when they happen to people who look like us (or to nations that have economic and political ties with our countries.) This debate sprung after some European reporters publicly announced that Ukraine was a “relatively civilized” nation, thus it required more attention than Middle Eastern countries which were described as somehow used to this kind of terror (more details about this were covered by Trevor Noah in the daily show’s episode War in Ukraine.)
In addition to those outrageous claims in the news, European governments announced that they were willing to accept refugees from Ukraine when they had previously expressed, only a short while ago, that they couldn't receive any refugees from Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq, Palestine, and all the other countries that are suffering from similar conflicts. Some Eastern European leaders even said that they don’t mind inviting “civilized” refugees to their lands as opposed to the ones that come from the middle east. Unfortunately, this can only be described as racist and hypocritical of western media and European governments.
The western boycott of Russia can also be described as another form of hypocrisy. We watched organizations such as FIFA expelling Russia from its sports competition. FIFA allowed teams to show their solidarity for Ukraine during soccer games after this very organization declared that “sports don’t mix with politics” when certain teams and players were punished because they tried to express solidarity with Palestinians and Yemenis. Furthermore, most organizations like FIFA never banned the U.S or France from any of their competitions when military actions were ordered in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and many other territories. This is to add that most European and American governments have already cut all sorts of political ties with Russia.
On the one hand, some Western countries want to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine because they are afraid that Putin is trying to expand Russian territories (or perhaps because Russia doesn’t give them access to its raw materials like Saudi Arabia: the country that has been bombing Yemen for so long now and was never stopped.) On the other hand, Putin claims he is protecting the people of Donbas from the Ukrainian government which has been oppressing them since the 90s. Many people in Donbas have expressed that they wanted independence from Ukraine which they were denied. We also know that the Russian government is afraid that Western countries, specifically the U.S, will use Ukraine to surround their territories with military bases as they did with Iran. The American flags in the picture below represent U.S military bases Surrounding Iran.
As we can see, most of these political actions seem to be driven by fear. Therefore, it is normal that we feel afraid today. My point is that I am extremely sad for Ukrainians as much as I feel terrible for the people of Donbas who deserve to choose not to be part of Ukraine. I also sort of understand the fear that drives the Russian, Ukrainian, and Western governments to protect their territories from each other given what has happened in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and Iraq. The law of the jungle persists in our “civilized world” and this is a taste of our failure to diverge from it. This war is about economic hegemony. Whether the U.S and its allies will continue their terror across the world uninterrupted or they will be surpassed by Russia and China who will most probably start a new world order that is also driven by fear. The only thing we know is that we are waiting for a drastic change that will somehow flip this fear-driven world and turn it into a world that is governed by love. Will this ever happen? I guess it is up to us to make sure it does.