UKRAINE & WHITE SUPREMACY

I was indifferent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine at first. It’s war. It shouldn’t happen but it does. Somewhere in the cause of the war the I started noticing the indignity endured by minority groups and the black or brown foreigners at the hands of Ukrainian officials. Then the western media headlines became insensitive. It is at this point of the discourse around the ongoing war that I felt I had enough skin in the game to go from apathy to caring a bit about it.

I started looking into Ukraine to see if has a known history of ethnic tensions and conflict. I found out that Ukraine is actually a multiethnic country. I also learnt Human Rights Watch has reported that "racism and xenophobia remain entrenched problems in Ukraine". It was all beginning to come together.

The documentary Winter on Fire was recommended to me. It's a a 2015 documentary film about the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine from 21 November 2013 to 23 February 2014 produced by Netflix. I watched it and my heart was moved by the resilience of the Ukrainian people. But then I made the mistake researching the reviews by critics. Critics Lev Golinkin, Amy Cooter and Jay Weissberg criticized the film for showing several symbols and flags described as "neo-Nazi symbols used by extreme right wing protesters, left uncommented in the film." In other words, the Neo-Nazi's were edited out. Purposely?

I searched the internet. I read through articles from the Maidan Protests period. Which brings us to this episode where I narrate my internal grappling with all of that and more. It certainly wasn't easy.