A letter from Kharkiv

This letter was shared to Twitter today by Steven Seegel, a historian at the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. The letter was unattributed, but for the urging that we "read this letter from an academic from Kharkiv." We're sharing it here to the Press blog in case the letter vanishes from social media.

The Russian army cleans Ukrainian cities off the face of the earth. Destroying key infrastructure so that there is no water, light, heat. Rescuers can't dismantle the debris under the shelling. The Russian army is squeezing the civilians out of the cities so that they can then fight the rest as if they are terrorists. Yesterday, many of my Kharkiv residents became refugees. This is what happens in life: just yesterday you were finishing an article and making plans for your vacation, and today you are standing with a bag at the station in Poltava (a good city, I've been trying to see a long time ago), with your scared children and a cat in a carrier. I didn't have time to drive in to pick up my mother (no gasoline, traffic jams and debris everywhere, burned cars and again shelling). And there is a chance to start your life with a clean leaf, but you are somehow not very happy about it.

What's on my mind today? What is more terrifying than the destruction of my country by the request of a nuclear-button maniac will be a new world in which such crimes remain unpunished. The defeat of Hitler's Germany and the trial of Nazi criminals have created confidence in several generations of Europeans that there is a global moral order in which evil is punishable. But for justice to prevail, a military defeat of the criminal regime is necessary, and there are problems with that in the nuclear era. So as soon as the maniac has a remission period, Western politicians will sit with him again at a very long table. 

This is and will be the collapse of the world order, the real end of history. The thought of my children and grandchildren having to live in this world of evil conquering makes me physically sick. END

Let us hope that this belief in "a global moral order in which evil is punishable" is not unfounded. No; let us demand that if this moral order is not presently existing, that we can work together, as individuals and institutions and nations, to bring it into being without delay.