WATCHING TRUMPS CHOICE FOR IRAN INTERVENTION FROM UKRAINE.
Ukrainians have lived with a forever war - and lately Russia unleashed one of the heaviest attacks since the 2022 invasion..
I’m in Lviv after a seven-hour drive from Warsaw. This is the first day of a longer trip to Ukraine to report on accountability, war crime trials, and the limits of justice.
Lviv is remarkably calm. Reading the news here, a top story is a program for treating public squares in the city for ticks and warning residents to refrain from walking their dogs for a couple of days.
But dig deeper and the consequences of the war are here, too. The city council has called on residents to “refrain from entertainment events and celebrations” as the city mounts a funeral for three servicemen who died defending Ukraine from Russian occupiers.
A project to gather artists, educators, medical and social workers around the theme of art as a tool for healing will also offer free art therapy for relative whose loved ones serve in the military. A training center is announced for Ukrainian drone operators to learn how to shoot down “Shadeeds” drones - Iran’s contribution to the weapons of this war.
The war is here but at a lower volume than other parts of Ukraine.
But even here, it’s hard not to follow events in Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran. Is President Trump about to join Israel in striking Iran. Are we on the brink of another ‘forever war’ in the Middle East?
Ukrainians will tell you that Ukraine is what a “forever war” looks like. This conflict didn’t start in February 2022, but in 2014 and the sense here is that this conflict is far from over.
Just a day before we arrived, Vladimir Putin ordered a massive attack on Ukraine, one of the largest since 2022, including 440 drones and 32 missiles, targeting the capital, at least ten civilians were killed and hundreds injured.
The mass Russia attack followed the G-7 meeting in Canada where Reuters reported that the G7 did not issue a joint statement on the war in Ukraine due to opposition from the United States. A New York Times headline reflects another setback for Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived for the meeting hoping to meet Trump and get a commitment for more support.
“Instead, Mr. Trump left the global powers’ summit early, canceled his meeting with Mr. Zelensky, lamented Russia’s absence from the leaders’ get-together and rejected the idea of issuing a joint statement in support of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian officials called Putin’s punishing strike a deliberate message, “to make world leaders look weak.”
It’s hard to dispute the analysis – more so when world leaders appear to be absent as a new Middle East war is on the table.
The Israel-Iran conflict is already intertwined with Ukraine. Last week five Ukranians, including three children, were killed Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv when an Iranian missile hit a residential building. The family was from Odessa and had come to Israel seeking treatment for their seven-year-old daughter who is suffering from blood cancer, according to the Land of Good Deeds charity. An estimated 23 thousand Ukrainians citizens currently live in Israel, including 11 thousand who fled to Israel since the Russian invasion in 2022.
More crucial to Ukraine’s prospect to end this war, the prospect of a war in Iran could change Vladimir Putin’s standing on the world stage.
Russia has ties to both Iran and Israel. Trump has suggested that Putin could play a role in the current crisis.
“The Trump administration’s perception that Russian President Vladimir Putin has influence on Iran could be deemed more useful than securing any progress on a Ukrainian peace deal,” Kateryna Shynkaruk, with the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University told the Huffington Post.
an one more note: I am in Ukraine on a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation.