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By Anastasia Lebedenko - A Personal War

I wish I said this phrase to a man who was screaming at me last Sunday, comparing me, Ukrainian, to a Palestinian. It took me a week to cry this situation out, and then another few days to try and put it into words. So, here’s a story of how an apartment viewing turned into a political fight and (sort of) a harassment case.

Ukraine is in a funny spot. It’s abandoned by the people on the left because they see the West as inherently bad, and refuse to see russia for the imperial hellhole that it is, sticking to its romanticised communist-dream past. Ukraine-russia war is not viewed through an imperial lens, because people cannot fathom the idea that imperialist agenda does not have a skin colour. It’s abandoned by the right because why should anyone get involved in a war that’s not theirs? Ukraine is seen as an altogether separate entity from the so-called West — what happens there has no real bearing on life of an average American or European, so it should be none of their business.

Ukrainians are even in a funnier spot — seen as too white to be suffering the consequences of imperialism, too Christian to be suffering from a religious persecution, too similar to the neighbours who attack them to be differentiated from them. We’re all the same, the Slavs, right? A vast and empty steppe full of Russian-speaking people (oh wait, do you have your own language?) Can’t you just divide up a territory, if you’re one of the same?