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Are You Willing to Fight in Ukraine?

Most of us aren’t willing to give up our creature comforts to combat climate change, so why are we so comfortable asking Ukrainians to die for a good night’s sleep?

B Kean
8 min readMay 4, 2024
Courtesy of Bloomberg

This image shows the city of Avdiivka. Less than 1,000 residents remain in the ruins of the town seen above. In 2022, 40,000 residents celebrated the New Year in this rural city-like town. Tables were filled with the famous salad “Oliv’e” and probably an assortment of dishes with salted and lightly pickled herring. Now, those tables are in ashes, and their owners are long gone.

Meet Avdiivka before the war. This was the town none of us had ever heard of before late 2023, and none of us dared consider ourselves gods over in the way we do many other unmemorable villages like it. It will take years, even decades to rebuild this small, almost-nothing of a town on the edge of nowhere. There is a chance, however, that it will never be rebuilt. For the sake of the former residents, let’s hope it does get rebuilt. And for the sake of humanity, let’s hope those who destroyed it suffer.

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B Kean
B Kean

Written by B Kean

The past holds the answers to today’s problems. “Be curious, not judgmental,” at least until you have all the facts. Think and stop watching cable news.

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