Volodymyr Zelensky (1978-) is the current president of Ukraine. In a past life, he was an actor and comedian. Now he leads his country against a Russian invasion.
Zelensky was born in the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine to a Jewish family. Family members perished in the Holocaust and his grandfather fought in the Red Army in WW2. At age 20, Zelensky won a comedy competition and began a career in stand-up. He transitioned to acting and, by the 2000s, was a household name, starring in the Russian rom-com ‘Love in the Big City’ (2005) winning Dancing with the Stars and voicing Paddington Bear.
In 2015, Zelensky produced and starred in the political satire series ‘Servant of the People’. His role was a high school teacher who posts a video criticising his country’s corruption and the ineptitude of its politicians. The video goes so viral it gets him elected president.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. In 2018, the television network ‘Kvartal 95’ formed its own political party named after the show with Zelensky as its head. Servant of the People won the next election with 70%. Zelensky styled himself much like his character – an everyman outside of the establishment challenging the oligarch class. Some say he is just playing another role.
Since 2014, Ukraine has fought separatists in its Russian speaking eastern territories. Russia is concerned about Ukraine’s increasing closeness with the West and fears it will join NATO, an American led alliance. Zelensky sought dialogue with Russia and unity between his country’s Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations while pushing for closer ties with the west. His tenure was middling in its effectiveness to combat poverty and corruption and, like any politician, he had critics aplenty.
On February the 24th 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Harnessing his charisma and stage appeal, Zelensky emerged an unlikely hero, as he urged his people to come together and fight a near-impossible foe. Tens of thousands of everyday Ukrainians have taken up arms, and make Molotov cocktails in the streets.
When the USA offered to airlift Zelensky to safety, he refused, saying he would stay and fight. While critics may claim his move as foolish and impractical, one should not underestimate its effect on morale. These days, many world leaders hide in bunkers, when threatened by protest or riot. The historical memory of the Holodomor, Nazi invasion and communism are still strong in Ukraine. Its citizens do not take independence for granted. In this regard, Zelensky is no different from the millions who would rather give their lives than flee.
Sources: BBC, CBS, Chatham House, New York Times, Politico
The 2010s were the second decade of the 21st century. It was a time of increased globalization, political upheaval and rapid technological advancement.
The Islamic State, an Al-Qaeda splinter group, took over half Iraq and Syria in 2014. In Iraq, they slaughtered over 8,000 Christians, Shiites, Yazidis and other religious minorities. By 2019 Kurdish and Arab militias had destroyed their short-lived ‘caliphate’ with Russian and American air support.
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Revolutions:
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The Crimean Khanate, founded by a descendant of Genghis Khan, ruled Crimea and the Ukraine from 1478 to 1783 and provided cavalry and slaves for their allies the Ottoman Empire. Russian settlement began after Catherine the Great conquered Crimea in 1783. Since then, the Tatar population has fallen from 83 to 15%.
Such was their hatred for Stalin and the USSR, some Tatars collaborated with the Nazis in WW2. When Stalin retook Crimea in 1944, he held the entire people accountable, even Red Army officers. The Soviets bound all the Crimean Tatars in freight trains and deported them to Central Asia. 20% died on the way and Stalin forbade anyone in Crimea from mentioning its lost inhabitants. The Tatars mourn the event every year on the 18th of May.
The Crimean Tatar language is related to Turkish, derived from the language of the Kipchaks, a people who once lived in the region. Before the Russian Revolution, the entire peninsular – Tatars, Russians and Jews alike, spoke it. According to UNESCO, it is now critically endangered.
The Turkic Migrations were the greatest population movement before Colombus. Throughout the Middle Ages, Turkic speaking nomads conquered and settled across Central Asia and Anatolia – assimilating some, replacing others. Once slave-soldiers, they came to rule the Muslim world.
Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan. 25,000 live on the island of Hokkaido and a further 1,000 in the Russian territories of Sakhalin and Kuril to the north. The Ainu are descendants of the Jomon people, who settled Japan over 20,000 years ago, long before the Yamato (ethnic Japanese) first arrived in 300 BC. Like indigenous people worldwide, centuries of institutional discrimination have critically endangered the Ainu way of life.
Most Ainu men, like their Jomon ancestors, have haplogroup D in their Y chromosomal DNA, shared with Tibetans, Andaman Islanders and Okinawans. By contrast, roughly 10% of Japanese ancestry comes from the Jomon.
Today most Ainu look Japanese, their mixed ancestry the product 20th century assimilation campaigns. An unknown number of Yamato – possibly up to 200,000 – have Ainu ancestry though many do not know it themselves. In the past, people concealed their heritage for fear of discrimination.
Traditionally the Ainu were hunter-gatherers. They hunted deer, foxes, seals, otters and other animals, fished salmon and grew vegetables and millet. One custom involved raising bears from cubs then, after a year, sacrificing and eating them in a public ritual. Bears were central to the Ainu’s animist faith. The Ainu believed spirits inhabited every aspect of the natural world, including animals, streams, mountains and trees, which were to be venerated and respected. The Ainu crafted clothing from furs, fishskin, cotton, bark and woven grass.
In 1868 the Meiji Regime formerly annexed Hokkaido, opening it to Japanese settlers, and started assimilating the Ainu. The 1899 ‘Hokkaido Aboriginal Protection Act’ forced Ainu to abandon hunting and fishing for agriculture and adopt Japanese customs and names. Speaking their native language and traditional practices like tattooing and animal sacrifice were banned. The law was not lifted until 1997.
Bashar Al-Assad and his Russian allies have begun their assault on Idlib, Syria’s last rebel stronghold. The days ahead are going to be bloody; likely the final chapter in a war that’s raged for 7 years.
From the Parapet 