Shortly before Russia re-invaded Ukraine more than four years ago, I went to Mariupol to get a sense of what the response would be and met Ruslan Pustovoit, call sign “Spider,” who was organizing a volunteer defense force for the Ukrainian city. He kept a copy of a World War II Nazi SS officer’s hat on his wall.
Talking to Spider it soon became clear that if he had any politics or ideology at all, it was anarchy. A self-confessed former mob enforcer and ex-con, he’d spent the previous eight years fighting, often behind enemy lines, earning military honors and more than 60 pieces of shrapnel to dislodge from his body. The hat was a middle finger directed at the Russians, who were forever calling Ukrainians fascists. In context, it made a kind of sense, but it was dumb. It fed a stereotype useful only to Ukraine’s enemies.
The same can be said of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision last month to rename a special forces unit after the controversial World War II Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. That attempt to connect today’s war with those fighters of more than 80 years ago has sparked a bitter dispute with his Polish peer.
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