I saw a video by some left-leaning western guy, where he spoke in the manner of a food review blogger about โwhy it is hard for him to support Ukraineโ. The title alone already sounded absurd, as if Ukraine were some kind of football club or TV show. And yet, all of his points were about Palestine and Israel.
I wanted to talk about this, because posts like this are not new or rare. They have existed for a long time and have already turned into real political views that affect Ukraine, cause this type of leftist tends to see any genocide or war happening in the world right now only through this lens.
Beyond that, such people often try to prevent Ukrainians from calling Russiaโs actions genocide. For them, forced russification as the destruction of identity, the kidnapping of children, mass graves, and torture of both civilians and soldiers do not qualify as genocide, because, as they say:
Ukrainians and Russians are one people, or at least very similar โ so what value does Ukrainian identity even have?
There is genocide in Palestine, so Russians probably cannot be committing one as well โ as if there were some quota for genocides in the world, and all genocidal actions must be interpreted through the IsraelโPalestine framework.
The first point can partly be explained by the fact that many such leftists have a soft spot for Russia as the โsuccessorโ of the Soviet Union (the fact that there were 14 other republics is treated as a detail), which they see as opposing the main evil of the world โ the United States.
For them, the Holodomor was not a planned genocide either, which makes it even easier to frame Russiaโs invasion of Ukraine as a conflict between two empires on the territory of a colony (Ukraine), where โunderdevelopedโ Ukrainians are not educated enough to understand this.
This perspective not only reveals imperial thinking โ just shifting depending on which โgreat powerโ one supports โ but also a complete lack of knowledge about Ukrainian history. Moreover, similar imperial views existed among Russian communists themselves, so for Ukrainians this โcoincidenceโ is not surprising.
Returning to the obsession with counting victims, these people fail to understand that what is happening in Ukraine is a different type of genocideโone taking place against a modern European state with its own army, statehood, and economy.
Ukraine is also the largest country fully located in Europe (Russia is larger, but partly in Asia).
I understand that for those who only heard about Ukraine after 2022, the country comes as something of a surpriseโthat it even existsโand based on this, instead of understanding that Ukraineโs attempts to represent itself internationally and to decolonize have long been perceived by Russia as a direct threat, to which we can already see how it responds (not to mention that Russia has continuously influenced Ukraine politically and through propaganda even after the collapse of the USSR), they simply assume that Ukraine is a โthird worldโ country, and that this is precisely why they had heard so little about it before, or only in a negative light.
Therefore, in their view, genocide there must look like what they imagine in such countries.
And if it does not, then it is not genocide. Sometimes this even leads to claims that Russia is โcarefulโ, โkindโ and only strikes military targets while following the rules of war.
Because of this, under posts by English-language Ukrainian media or international news about deaths in Ukraine, you can often see comments like: โItโs worse in Palestineโ, โWhat about Palestine?โ, and so on. At the same time, Ukraine is blamed for choosing the โwrong pathโ.
Antisemitism in a new form
I would never have believed that antisemitism could affect not only Ukrainian Jews but Ukrainians in general. But just as the Soviet Union portrayed Ukrainian nationalists (which often meant anyone who wanted to preserve Ukrainian identity and statehood) and Jews as enemies working together, history seems to be rhyming again.
Under posts about Ukraine on social media, one can often see comments like these:
Where the main line of reasoning is that jews have taken power in Ukraine.
At the same time, Ukrainian jews are not even seen as existingโthere are only โthose sameโ jews, who supposedly have no real connection to Ukraine, yet somehow appeared there.
This may seem like a right-wing narrative, but it is also adopted by some leftists, who combine it with older views that Ukraine is a colony controlled from the outside.
At the same time, Ukrainians are portrayed as nazis who, without resistance, cooperate with these same jews and fight against โother whitesโ reducing it to a war of whites against whites.
Continuing this idea, many leftists of this type fail to see Ukraineโs struggle against Russia as a form of anti-colonial resistance, despite the fact that it clearly has all the characteristics of one and is not limited to the current invasion alone.
In reality, much of Ukraineโs history with Russia revolves around this dynamic.
Beyond what has already been mentioned, there are also facts such as Russia resettling its own citizens into the homes of Ukrainians in occupied territories, while those who remained could not even bury their relatives without obtaining Russian passports. Russian soldiers went door to door pressuring people to accept Russian citizenship, so that later it could be claimed that there is no Ukrainian population leftโthat these are โhistoricallyโ Russian lands.
For many of these leftists, all white European nations are seen as having a colonial past.
Therefore, in the case of IsraelโPalestine, where they believe it is easier to apply a framework that also includes race, UkraineโRussia becomes harder to interpret and is reduced to a conflict between two equally privileged groups.
Because of this, I have heard multiple stories from Ukrainians who attended international discussions on decolonization and related topics, where activists would openly argue that Ukraine does not belong there, or say similar things in private conversationsโeffectively pushing Ukrainians out of such spaces.
As a result, Ukrainians often find understanding mainly among those who have had direct historical experience with Russia, while at the same time not being active participants in Western decolonial movements (with the exception of active support for the Iranian people against the Iranian government, but this is still a different case).
This leads to misunderstandings between Ukrainians and this type of leftist movement.
Many Ukrainians have noticed that even numerous left-leaning organizations either failed to take a pro-Ukrainian stance, or shifted to calls for โimmediate peaceโ where no one is to blame except politicians, or simply stopped talking about Ukraine once it was no longer a trend.
Some even openly repeat Russian narratives framed as resistance to a dominant West claimingโafter absorbing such propagandaโthat Ukraine blindly admires America, rather than recognizing that Ukrainians have no illusions about either countryโs history or present actions, and cooperate with the United States largely because it once guaranteed Ukraineโs security in exchange for giving up its own means of self-defense. Even this is often interpreted through an imperial lens, where Russia is seen as having โalliesโ (such as North Korea, Belarus, or the Iranian government), while Ukraine is portrayed as having only โmastersโ.
At the same time, these movements demand that Ukrainians actively participate in pro-Palestinian activism and maintain a kind of moral โpurityโ in every actionโdespite everything described above.
In other words, there is not even a real dialogue between Ukrainians and Palestinians where shared experiences could be understood. Instead, the entire discourse takes place between Ukrainians and Europeans and Americans, who consider themselves to be speaking on behalf of Palestinians andโimportantlyโhave the privilege of political influence over Ukrainiansโ lives, a privilege that Ukrainians do not have in return over them.
These dynamics are further complicated by Russian propaganda, which is highly effective at adapting to different political audiences.
For example, it is rarely mentioned that Ukraine delivered 1,000 tons of wheat flour to Palestine as humanitarian aid while being at war itself. Instead, statements by President Zelenskyy are selectively quotedโsuch as โUkraine will become like Israelโโwithout the full context, where he spoke about strengthening defense while preserving Ukrainian identity and style, not about literally becoming Israel, and also mentioned other countries. Most importantly, that statement was made even before October 7.
While the history of Israel and Palestine goes back much further, many of the same people only heard about Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and did not study its history, or even recall the events starting in 2014. Nor do they mention that Ukraine recognizes Palestine as a separate state.
In the end, this results in comments like one I saw under that video, where a girl wrote that Ukrainians โbarely post about Palestineโ and only talk about Ukraineโeven those who fled as refugees. There were also remarks that countries bordering Russia care too much about Ukraine and not enough about Palestine.
So this is what I want some people to finally understand:
Ukrainians exist and are fighting for their survival outside the context of IsraelโPalestineโwe are not like either of those countries; we are ourselves.
Whatever the outcome of relations between those two countries may be, it will not stop Russiaโs invasion of Ukraine.
And please, do not demand from Ukrainians a level of moral purity where, even while dying or protecting our loved ones, we are expected to think about someone else and take on a more active role in fighting for others than even people who are not living through any war.
