Monday, 3 February 2025

Archaeology of All of Our Days

 This is Vovchansk, Ukraine. Its population was 17,459 before the Russians decided to "liberate" them.

Ukraine did not get the help it needed, when it needed it, to make the Russians respect the borders of the neighbouring sovereign country. And this is what they are doing on foreign soil, obliterating life, lives, homes, anything Ukrainian. Ethnic cleansing in the way the Russian Empire (from the territorial annexations of Ivan the Terrible onwards), the Soviet Union always did. The rapes and decapitation are a relatively new addition to the old repertoire of brutality and terror. These wall stubs, shattered pavements rubble and broken trees are the archaeology left by all of us. In future they'll ask "how could people stand by and just watch this happen to an ally?" How could we? I have just translated the obituary of another Ukrainian archaeologist colleague fallen in this senseless war. How could we? Why did we?

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