Now that we’ve passed the opening phase of this war, the surprises just keep on coming. For me, the three biggest are the extraordinary acts of cruelty, courage and kindness that this war is revealing and inspiring.
I never had any illusions that once Putin launched this war, he’d stop short of doing anything to make sure that he could claim to be the “winner.” Nevertheless, it is stunning to watch how quickly he has tied himself into knots. In the space of three weeks, Putin has gone from saying that he came to liberate Ukraine from its “Nazi” leadership and bring Kyiv back to its natural home with Russia to crushing its cities and indiscriminately shelling its civilians to break their resistance to his will.
How does a leader go from one day saying Ukraine and its people are integral parts of the soul and fabric of Russia — with shared languages, culture and religion — to, when rebuffed, immediately pivoting toward turning the place to rubble — without any explanation to Ukrainians, the world or his own people?
It’s the kind of vicious madness that you see from a spurned lover or in an “honor killing.” And it’s shocking and petrifying to see it manifested by the leader of a superpower with some 6,000 nuclear warheads. There is something about this guy that portends more ominous surprises.
I am always amazed by the courage that seemingly average people manifest in war — in this case, not only by Ukrainians, but also by Russians who refuse to buy Putin’s lies, knowing that he is turning them into a pariah nation. So I marvel at the breathtaking courage demonstrated on Monday evening by Marina Ovsyannikova, an employee at Russia’s Channel 1, a state-run television channel, who burst into a live broadcast of Russia’s most-watched news show, yelling, “Stop the war!” and holding up a sign behind the anchorwoman saying, “They’re lying to you here.” She was interrogated and, for the moment, released — probably because Putin feared making her into a martyr.
Marina Ovsyannikova — remember her name. She dared to tell the czar that he had no clothes. What courage.
And finally, wars also reveal extraordinary acts of kindness. In this war, some came spontaneously and by leveraging a platform in ways that no one expected — the room-sharing site Airbnb. Executives at Airbnb say they basically woke up in early March to discover that members of their community were spontaneously using their platform in a novel new way — transforming its booking technology into a homemade, people-to-people, foreign aid system.
In about the last two weeks, according to the company, people from 165 countries have booked more than 430,000 nights at Ukrainian homes on Airbnb with no intention of using the rooms — but simply in order to donate money to these Ukrainian hosts, most of whom they had never even heard of. Airbnb has temporarily waived all guest and host fees for bookings in Ukraine, so those reservations translated into $17 million going directly to the hosts. Guests from the U.S., Britain and Canada are the biggest bookers. Australia, Germany and several other European countries round out the top 10.
In addition, as of Sunday, about 36,000 people from 160 countries signed up through Airbnb’s nonprofit affiliate, Airbnb.org, to welcome refugees fleeing Ukraine to their homes.
There is no way that America’s giant Agency for International Development, USAID, could have such an impact so fast.
Many of the Ukrainian hosts who have received these booking-donations have written back to the donors, forging new friendships and enabling foreigners to understand the impact of this war much more deeply. There is nothing like personally communicating with people in Ukraine who are hiding in their basement, while you are explaining why you are happy to rent that basement but never use it. It creates a community of kindness that alone cannot defeat Putin’s tanks, but it can help buttress those determined to resist them by reminding them that they are not alone — Putin is.
I do not find any of this surprising. I have always argued that globalization is not just about trade. It is about the ability for countries, companies and now, increasingly, individuals to connect and act globally. Human beings are hard-wired to want to connect, and the hard-wiring of today’s world is making it easier and cheaper for them to do so every day.
All that said, what makes the pleasant surprises in this war so surprising is that they were surprises to the people who were responsible for them. Just one caution, though. There will be more surprises — and they won’t all be pleasant.