Two Russias?
Sir: I have been turning Owen Matthews’s article (‘Putin’s rage’, 5 March) over in my mind since I read it, and I feel compelled to respond. I am married to a Ukrainian, so I have some insight into the relevant history.
After the Wall came down, my wife’s uncle Stephan visited us in England. He had spent 20 years in a Soviet gulag because his brother – my father-in-law – had fought against the Russians for a free Ukraine in the 1940s, during what they still call the Great Patriotic War. Unable to imprison him, they took his brother instead.
Recalling the perpetual struggle waged by Ukraine against its habitually abusive neighbour, I struggle with Mr Matthews’s reference to a Russia that is bigger, stronger and more durable than Putin, and am unable to decide whether it is a threat or a promise.
Your readers may like to read a translation of the Ukrainian national anthem. It was written by the Ukrainian poet Pavlo Chubinsky in 1863.
The glory and freedom of Ukraine has not yet perished Fate will at last smile upon the Ukrainian people. Our enemies will fade and die, like the dew is burned away in the sunshine, Our people will finally live happy and free in our own land. Until then we shall spare neither our souls nor our bodies to gain our freedom And prove our people worthy to be true Cossacks.
The enemy referenced here is, and always was, Russia. It is not Putin’s Russia.
Sean Reynolds
By email
Cossack mission
Sir: Andrew Roberts suggests that the assassination of Putin could be the most desirable outcome of the present crisis – desirable for Russia as much as for Ukraine (Diary, 12 March). At the conclusion of my recent book Stalin’s Vengeance, I describe from now-closed Russian archival material the mission assigned a tough and resourceful Cossack, Captain Kantimir.
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