The War in Ukraine Sheds Light on the West’s Hypocrisy

Source: Алесь Усцінаў via pexels

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has only brought out the worst of Western media. Politicians, journalists and civilians alike have expressed Eurocentric views about the nature of the war, revealing deep prejudices and ignorance about other global conflicts.

As of March 30, four million Ukrainian refugees have fled their native country, which remains immersed in war with Russia. Countries bordering Ukraine including Poland and Romania have welcomed these refugees with open arms. This is a stark difference to the treatment of Syrian refugees in the 2015 crisis, as an example. 

Amidst a civil war, 1.3 million Syrian refugees escaped to Europe for asylum back in 2015. Meanwhile, countries like Hungary closed their borders to the Syrians, despite now hosting 600,000 Ukrainian refugees. It would seem attitudes towards displaced migrants have shifted in the last seven years, but there may be more to it. 

"These are not the refugees we are used to... these people are Europeans. These people are intelligent, they are educated people,” Prime Minister of Bulgaria Kiril Petkov said about Ukrainians.

Bulgaria has accepted tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since the conflict with Russia began, while Syrians have been leaving the Balkan state for years now because of relentless racism and Islamophobia.

On social media, in the news and in conversation, there is global outrage toward Russia for its violation of Ukraine, and rightfully so. However, similar to Syria’s situation, countries like Afghanistan, Palestine and multiple African nations have been fraught with war, displacement and occupation for decades now. The difference in this situation is that the West is doing the war-mongering, so the death and destruction in Africa and the Middle East is not as important to Western media.

 “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed,” Former Deputy General Prosecutor of Ukraine David Sakvarelidze said on BBC.

These sentiments being expressed on international television by a political figure is chilling. Empathy for people affected by war should transcend race. Racism and white supremacy has enabled this kind of ignorance to exist, which has revealed the very ugly truth that unless you are white and European, your suffering is not important to some.

While most refugees out of Ukraine have been accepted in other countries by the thousands, not all have had the same experience. People of color, both Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian, have been turned away at borders, denied resources such as food and blankets and forced to wait for white Ukrainians to board trains out of the war torn country. Several African students who were residing in Ukraine when the invasion began have been detained in holding facilities, their phones confiscated with little information of when they will be released.

Journalists have also expressed their feelings on the significance of the war in Ukraine, which illustrate the ignorance of some individuals. CBS correspondent Charlie D’Agata even said that, “[Ukraine] isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.”

D’Agata has since apologized for his words. However, the sentiment is still shared by many others that somehow “civilized” Europe is above war, unlike the Middle East, where war is propagated by the United States and European countries. This harmful notion not only perpetuates ideas of white supremacy, but blatantly illustrates the hypocrisy of the West.

In the early days of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs shared with the public how to make homemade bombs, called Molotov cocktails, against the Russian military. A Ukrainian brewery even began producing the explosive in response to the call to arms by the government. Other resistances around the world have used Molotov cocktails as weapons as well, but the reaction was wildly different. Palestinians and Iraqis have been branded terrorists and shot in the streets for using Molotov cocktails against invaders, while Ukrainanians have been praised – directly as a result of race.