War weighs heavily on the soul of even the most hardened observer, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is no exception.
Often, when called upon to address such complex conflict-related situations, analysts endure a kind of weary cynicism, having repeatedly provided the same narrative-based facts to the same audience without seeming to have moved the needle of public perception. One of the reasons for this melancholy is that both the interviewer and the interviewee have often gone over the same ground in what seems like a never-ending cycle of gloom and doom.
Then, out of the blue, something changes! You are called upon to lay out the same old set of facts to someone who is new to the story, to someone whose spirit hasn’t been dulled by the repetitive ravages brought on by covering the death and destruction of never-ending conflict. To someone for whom the insanity and horror of war, and the complexity and hypocrisy of the politics that serve as its intellectual foundation is a new, terrifying and confusing experience.
At that moment, the old analyst inside you reawakens. You are reminded why you got into this business to begin with. You are challenged by questions so innocent and pure that you are compelled to reexamine the assumptions that had calcified your own assessments, past and present.
I am that old analyst, and Ania K is my welcomed fellow traveler. In this book we take you on a journey of discovery and rediscovery, borne from the probing questions of someone new to the intricacies and duplicities of war and yearning to understand. Here you will find the answers of someone whose dulling senses have been galvanized by the challenge of putting into perspective problems for which there once had seemed to be no solution, and yet, upon this reexamination, now become comprehensible—and even solvable.
Covering Ukraine: The Scott Ritter interviews through the Eyes Of Ania K. is a unique and timely addition to the literature on the conflict in Ukraine. It offers a fresh look at complex problems that will empower and entertain the reader with new insights and sharp analysis of a war few understand—which as such is doomed to continue in perpetuity, the living manifestation of the age-old adage, “You can’t solve a problem if you do not first properly define what the problem is.”
In this book, Ania K. and I embark on a journey to properly define the problems manifest in the Ukraine conflict, and together, we struggle to find a solution.