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Matinee: Zelenskiy's Address to the Russians Share This on LinkedIn   Tweet This   Forward This

26 February 2022

Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?

Oddly this week, we escaped our fantasies to visit the real world that, it turns out, was not so ordinary. And we've returned to present the 437th in our series of Saturday matinees with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's address to the Russian people.

In 1:25, his speech lays all the cards on the table in what is a most unusual conflict.

Putin's war against Ukraine may be the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II but, as some commentators have noted, we haven't seen anything like it before. Simply because it is taking place in the smartphone era.

The observation usually refers to citizen journalism on the streets of an embattled city or country. But documenting events is not all this new era has spawned.

In researching today's matinee, we wandered off into the weeds looking for something appropriate on the subject and found ourselves knee-deep in mud.

On the positive side, it seems everyone with a pulpit has posted a prayer for Ukraine. But it seems tone deaf that every show with advice about where to invest your money has done a segment on what the war in Ukraine will do to your retirement fund. And on the even sadder side, quite a few people find this to be an excellent occasion to ask for donations.

But it gets worse. As NPR's Bobby Allyn reported yesterday, "Russia's invasion of Ukraine has unleashed a flood of misleading and false material on TikTok." Some of the "live footage" is actually from old conflicts, movie scenes and video games.

Funny. We always thought it would be better to fight wars at computer consoles instead of in the streets where innocent people can get hurt.

Among the more sobering analyses we came across this week was the NewsHour's Nick Schifrin's interview with Michael Kofman, a senior fellow for Russian studies at the CNA, Center for Naval Analyses.

As he put it when asked about what to expect next in the conflict, "There's nothing more confusing than war."

But Zelenskiy is not confusing. If we are attacked, he says, if the Russian army tries "to take our country away from us, our freedom, our lives, the lives of our children, we will defend ourselves."

They have done just that.

And while we mock the investment programs and ignore the pleas for donations, we join in the prayers for the people of Ukraine and the protests against Putin's war.


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