Lord, all day yesterday and since this morning I've been reading the howling about Netanyahu endorsing Orbán. And off it went. They're practically ready to launch a crusade against Orbán and Netanyahu. The crusade will end, as always, with a whimper. The Druzhba pipeline will restart. Relations with Hungary — and even with Orbán — will have to be maintained. Because in a world where strength and power are what matter, Orbán of tiny Hungary figured this out long ago, while the mighty strainings of great Ukraine somehow cannot absorb the key lesson of world history: it's good and important to be a moral person or organization, but if you have no brains, and consequently no economy, and consequently no ability to maintain an army — then it's you getting fucked, not the other way around.
Israel understood that the Torah isn't much of a shield when they're sending you to the gas chamber — and while life with a nuclear bomb and the Torah can't be called easier, exactly, it is safer.
If Trump is friends with Orbán, then it costs Netanyahu nothing to say Viktor's a great guy. In Trump's emotional worldview, it will be registered that my friend is friends with my friend — which means I'm doing great, picking people like that.
What matters to Netanyahu isn't what Ukraine thinks about this, but what the American military is doing in Iran. Because without it, Netanyahu could never have done what he's already done. That's how it works beyond the fog of Ukrainian blindness. Jews drew conclusions from the Holocaust. We drew none from our Holomodors.
We didn't even draw any from the last one — last winter. We relaxed our backsides and now pontificate with moral aplomb about how wrong it is for Netanyahu to kiss Orbán on the gums. Next winter, Orbán and Netanyahu will almost certainly be just fine. We, guaranteed, will not. And things may turn out such that we'll be begging the despised Orbán for 400 megawatts to keep two Vinnytсias and one Kropyvnytskyi from freezing. Or do you think that faced with the dilemma of freezing 200–300 thousand people versus going hat in hand to Orbán, preserving our pride will matter more?
The trouble is, human history is full of moral cemeteries that nobody remembers. I remember walking through an overgrown Armenian cemetery near Lake Van, and the thought struck me — here was a great civilization, and now try to figure out who lies here. Nobody even remembers what kind of people are buried in this ground.
But people do remember Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Talleyrand, Suleiman the Magnificent, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Roosevelt, Churchill, Peter the Great and other historical figures — who were, more often than not, far from morally pure, yet distinguished themselves by their clear-eyed understanding of human nature and of themselves.
Ukrainians need to grasp that if Ukraine disappears, no one will particularly weep — as has already happened more than once. Just as no one wrings their hands over those Armenian graves near Lake Van.
But if Ukraine survives through pragmatic maneuvering with Trump, Netanyahu, and even — God forgive us — Orbán, then at the very least our children and grandchildren have a chance to live in their own country. The thought is simple, even obvious. And yet, apparently, beyond many people's reach.