My Drone Leaflet to Russia
"At this moment your Ukrainian brothers and sisters are lying in mass graves; starving in cold, dark basements and nursing infants with third- and fourth-degree burns"
by Rich Herschlag
These past four weeks have been, for me and virtually any other concerned citizen in the West or just about anywhere else, a primer in helplessness. Coming on the heels of COVID, the invasion of Ukraine has reinforced a sense of doom that had just begun to lift. But the Ukraine crisis version of learned helplessness has in various ways dwarfed that of COVID. At the outset of COVID millions of practical thinkers corralled their families, consumed as much scientific data as was reasonable or tolerable, developed and continually refined a survival strategy, and bided their time at least until the advent of an effective vaccine. There was a seemingly unlimited amount of misfortune and inequity, but there was at the same time an element of self-determination that ultimately represented the line between sanity and meltdown.
The war in Ukraine has no such line. The only thing worse than watching young and old victims blown up on bridges, attacked in hospitals, and packed penniless onto trains headed for the border is not watching it. Either way, outside of donating spare dollars to reputable relief agencies there is not much at the moment the average Jane or Joe can do. So we fall prey to anger, speculation, and even the sort of vicarious vendetta animating Quentin Tarantino movies like Inglourious Basterds. If you’re Senator Lindsey Graham you do it in public because having already bowed down and worshipped Donald Trump in broad daylight you don’t really have a lot to lose.
But every now and then someone comes up with a wishful idea that isn’t crazy or entirely impractical. My dad’s was to send thousands of drones over Russia—particularly the more rural areas—and drop leaflets. One version or another of this tactic was used extensively in both world wars and the Korean War. An updated version might be very effective at going where social media and cell phone signals no longer can. A national drone leaflet program would provide American citizens the opportunity to stop tweeting for 20 minutes and craft their own missive to the Russian people. Here’s mine:
Hello. In case the phone calls, texts, Instagrams and remaining shards of Western media haven’t gotten through I’ve decided to drop you a note the old fashioned way. In just about the time it took this leaflet to fall from a drone to Russian soil, the Russian military has blown up another half-dozen apartment buildings, leveled four schools, bombed three hospitals and murdered 11 children. The victims for the most part look like you, sound like you, and share your ancestry. They have nothing against you and you have nothing against them, but you are all suffering for the same reason.
At this moment your Ukrainian brothers and sisters are lying in mass graves; starving in cold, dark basements; nursing infants with third- and fourth-degree burns; and heading to Poland, Hungary and Slovakia with only the clothes on their backs while being fired upon with heavy artillery. For the elderly it is often a death march and for the children a nightmare they will be unable to shake for the rest of their lives.
The war in Ukraine is in the very worst sense possible an atrocity, an ethnic cleansing, a genocide. It is 100 percent unnecessary. It is nearly 100 percent the fault of Vladimir Putin. Nonetheless there is blood on your hands. This utterly inhumane assault represents not only the end of their lives as they know it but also yours. As you may have heard through what is left of the grapevine, the West has responded by cutting off Russia from almost every previously existing financial association, with still more in the works. These actions are an attempt to leverage pain with everyday Russians while attempting at the very same time to walk a tightrope with a desperate man who has access to nuclear weapons.
Although your own suffering at this moment might pale in comparison to that of Ukrainians, in the coming weeks and months the gap will close both steadily and dramatically. Thanks to the kleptocracy Russia’s GDP was never more than a fraction of what it should have been and at about $1.5 trillion last year, less than Canada’s, a country with one fourth the population. Though your people are intelligent and hard working, this glaring disparity cannot be blamed entirely on the one-man tyranny you have collectively allowed to strangle your freedom, productivity, access to capital, and access to information for almost a generation. You must now ask yourselves, what happens when the Russian economy is cut in half? Then again and so forth? You will become Venezuela at best and North Korea at worst. This is not theoretical. Clearly, it has already begun.
The world is depending upon you. That is good news. That is bad news. That is reality. You personally are the only way out of a global downward spiral with your homeland at ground zero. Over 15,000 of your countrymen sit in prison for the act of protesting a grossly immoral and suicidal war. Putin’s government can continue to arrest and suppress 300 protesters here, 200 there indefinitely. What it cannot do is deal in any substantial way with millions upon millions in the streets defiantly. All unjust governments fold under such conditions, as the armed men and women enforcing the police state are merely your sons and daughters who cannot jump ship fast enough but who are at the same time understandably afraid to be singled out. They are counting on you. And so are we.
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