Shortly before Russia re-invaded Ukraine more than four years ago, I went to Mariupol to get a sense of what the response would be and met Ruslan Pustovoit, call sign ¡°Spider,¡± who was organizing a volunteer defense force for the Ukrainian city. He kept a copy of a World War II Nazi SS officer¡¯s hat on his wall.
Talking to Spider it soon became clear that if he had any politics or ideology at all, it was anarchy. A self-confessed former mob enforcer and ex-con, he¡¯d spent the previous eight years fighting, often behind enemy lines, earning military honors and more than 60 pieces of shrapnel to dislodge from his body. The hat was a middle finger directed at the Russians, who were forever calling Ukrainians fascists. In context, it made a kind of sense, but it was dumb. It fed a stereotype useful only to Ukraine¡¯s enemies.
The same can be said of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy¡¯s decision last month to rename a special forces unit after the controversial World War II Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA. That attempt to connect today¡¯s war with those fighters of more than 80 years ago has sparked a bitter dispute with his Polish peer.
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