{"id":3802,"date":"2022-06-25T10:31:42","date_gmt":"2022-06-25T10:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/the-war-continues-are-we-still-following-news-urix-foreign-news-and-documentaries\/"},"modified":"2022-06-25T10:31:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-25T10:31:42","slug":"the-war-continues-are-we-still-following-news-urix-foreign-news-and-documentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/the-war-continues-are-we-still-following-news-urix-foreign-news-and-documentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"The war continues. Are we still following? – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last weekend I was a spectator to the cruelty of the war. I saw high-ranking officers inciting private soldiers to heroic, hopeless efforts. I felt the banging of the artillery in the diaphragm while the smoke sweated in my eyes. I heard the desperate cries of those who sighed on the ground after being hit. When it was all over, I applauded. The battle I applauded took place in the heart of Europe 207 years ago. This morning it was recreated by eager men (and some women) in contemporary costumes on the battlefield of Waterloo. My son thinks it’s exciting with Wellington and Napoleon – with his army. History is important, so I thought it could be both an educational and exciting Sunday outing. THE LION ON THE HAUGEN: The Waterloo monument in honor of the Prince of Orange. Photo: Simen Ekern Slagmarken is a half-hour bus ride from the center of Brussels. It is easy to find, because the forty meter high L\u00f8vehaugen is visible from a long distance. The grassy hill, with a lion statue at the top, is erected in honor of the Prince of Orange, commander-in-chief of the Dutch troops who fought under Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. It’s magnificent, or awkward, a bit depending on how you look at old battles. The peculiar author W. G Sebald, for example, considered the lion monument to be “the very definition of Belgian ugliness.” For what’s inside this pile, really? Has it been raised over the bodies of the thousands of people who ended up lifeless on the ground here? Is not it a mountain of death? “We, the survivors, see everything from above, we see everything at the same time, and yet we do not know what it was like,” wrote Sebald, after seeing a panoramic painting that was a main part of the exhibition at the Waterloo monument before a new museum came into place a few years ago. Now I was sitting there, in one of the stands that had been erected by the fields, with a privileged view of the old battle. My son thought it was very exciting, and once we were there, I stayed away from the temptation to make admonishing statements about the brutality of the war. I had gone there voluntarily. Still, the show was more lively than I had imagined. It became difficult to get away from the fact that there is something strangely unpleasant about seeing such a war theater at the same time as there is actually a war going on in Europe. A war most of us observe from a distance. We see everything from above, we see everything at the same time, and yet we do not know what it is like. AT THE DESK: The war seen from the European Council building Drones tonight When Russia invaded Ukraine, I began a new commuter life. At least that was how it felt the first time, when everyday life became continuous shuttle traffic between NATO headquarters and the EU Council building in Brussels. Crisis meetings, gloomy faces and a vaguely formulated fear of doom. The questions I asked were questions I had never imagined as necessary parts of my reporter’s repertoire. Will NATO defend Sweden if Putin invades? How big is the danger of nuclear war now? What will NATO do if chemical and biological weapons are used to kill Ukrainians? The questions would have seemed absurd a while ago, but became strangely natural. NEW QUESTIONS: news’s \u200b\u200binterview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on 25 February A few days began with Nyhetsmorgen at seven o’clock and ended with Kveldsnytt, with a kind of continuous flow of live broadcasts throughout the day. It can be difficult to distinguish between what you have just said and what you intended to say. Which banks were covered by the SWIFT boycott again? Where should all the new NATO battle groups be deployed? And how do you really describe Germany’s dramatic change of line in defense and foreign policy in 30 seconds? Did I do that in the previous broadcast, maybe? The first couple of weeks I got tired and dizzy. But we are talking here about a very banal fatigue and dizziness, of course. I did not sit in a bomb room in Kyiv, I did not see corpses in the streets, I did not talk to raped refugees. I should just try to keep a cool head in suitably tempered press rooms and headquarters, with immediate access to a coffee machine at all times. The amount of information and the number of live broadcasts can consume, however. And then this hellish seriousness, which a couple of evenings gave way to for fear of nuclear accidents, nuclear war and general apocalypse. Was it over now? Everything? It was a bit like working during the pandemic: an all-consuming theme dominates the whole working day, but also the evenings and nights. Instead of relaxing with a TV series late at night, I sat and clicked on grainy images of Bayraktar drones destroying Russian tanks. Distance warfare can become a morbid obsession. Eventually, however, it became possible to think of something else again. The war ends up in the background, if you do not live in it. There are other things happening in the world. Norway beat Sweden in football, I saw. And then there is chaos at the airport in Amsterdam. Soon it’s time to get infected by the latest Omikron variant. Besides, it is this galloping inflation, and sky-high energy prices, of course. The last two cases are fairly closely related to the war. European politicians are eagerly trying to show the connection. One of the most cited attempts was made by Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi earlier this spring, when he asked the country’s inhabitants to choose between peace and turned on air conditioning. It is not without costs to help Ukraine, Draghi would explain. In DAVOS: Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke at the World Economic Forum this year. Photo: Markus Schreiber \/ AP Zelenskyj’s challenge When Volodymyr Zelenskyj spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the end of May, he was quite clear on what the challenge was: Our task is to make sure that the world does not get tired of the war, he said. He needs the eyes of the world to be focused on what is happening. He knows that politicians will be hesitant about more support if voters think the price to pay is too high. It may already be happening. A new far-reaching survey conducted by the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations reveals a shift in Europeans’ attitudes towards the war in Ukraine and what to do with it. “The great dividing line in Europe,” write the researchers behind the study, “goes between those who want an end to the war as soon as possible, and those who want to continue fighting until Russia has been defeated.” Peace at all costs is set up against a just peace. It is a dilemma with relevant arguments both about what prolongs the war and what is a fair end, but I will leave that discussion here. What I noticed was the extent to which Italy stands out. There are many more who believe the United States is to blame for the war in Italy than in other countries. There are many more who want an end to arms aid to Ukraine. I have not researched this, but I think it has to do with the peculiar Italian media coverage of the war. Russian propagandists have appeared on long talk shows in prime time, with what have at times been quite absurd appearances, on a scale unlike any other Western country. At the same time, representatives of the Five Star Movement, one of the parties in government, have constantly argued against Prime Minister Draghi – he with peace and air conditioning. They want an end to the arms embargo on Ukraine. Some have blamed NATO, or demanding Ukrainians. They want peace, at all costs. This week one of their own got enough. Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio withdrew from the party, creating a new party instead. He believed that the Five Star Movement was driving irresponsible populism in its Ukraine policy. “The war is not a media show,” he said. But the war coverage in Italy has sometimes looked most like a media show, or a kind of absurd theater where it has been difficult to get to the bottom of what roles the actors play and why. POWDER SMOKE: The cannons are loaded in Waterloo, 207 years later. Photo: Simen Ekern Sunset in Waterloo Back on the plain in Waterloo, the roles were at least clear. The battle was finally decided as well, after a rough final sprint. Napoleon lost again this year, it turned out, even though it looked even for a long time. This very war in Europe could once again become a distant memory. And in the souvenir shop, they sold beautiful tin soldiers and t-shirts with no hint of blood stains.
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