On June 21, 2025, I was on a bus from Kyiv to Warsaw when, around 2 p.m., I scrolled through Twitter and saw the breaking news: The U.S. had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. The strikes came far sooner than the two-week ultimatum Donald Trump had issued. But the news didn’t shock me.
Two days earlier, on June 19, the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh had reported—citing authoritative sources—that America would strike Iran that weekend. Given Hersh’s unmatched track record, I had no reason to doubt him. I’d even discussed the story with Peter Fabricius, my travel companion and a colleague at Daily Maverick. When I showed Fabricius the headlines, the soft-spoken journalist simply nodded and said, “Turns out your man was right, huh?” As usual, Hersh was.
“Preemptive strikes.” That’s how much of the Western media framed the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran—a defensive measure, they claimed, to stop Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. Not to destroy a nuclear arsenal, but to disrupt its potential creation. The justification was laughable, the actions illegal.
Not only was there no credible evidence Iran was pursuing nukes (especially amid ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations), but the hypocrisy was staggering. I couldn’t shake the parallel to Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine: another “preemptive” war sold as preventing NATO expansion, among a litany of other similarly sleazy excuses. The bitter irony? Iran itself enables Russia’s war machine, supplying Shahed drones that rain death on Ukrainian cities even as Tehran protests Western aggression!
The similarities didn’t even end there. Both campaigns sought to topple governments and install puppet regimes—ones obedient to the architects of their respective countries’ destruction. But most importantly, in my view, is the fact that both campaigns rest on the same flawed logic: that bombardment can deter sovereign choices rather than accelerate them. What appears to be lost in the minds of these imperial nations is that if history teaches us anything, then is the fact that when great powers bomb smaller nations to prevent self-protection measures, they achieve only one result: proving why such protections were desperately needed in the first place.
During that twelve-hour bus ride through Ukraine’s vast, darkened landscapes, I found myself fixated on this utter failure to grasp this simple but enduring historical lesson. It also struck me as extraordinary how world powers can engage in such obvious mutilation of language—how words are gutted of meaning, twisted into hollow slogans, and weaponised to disguise criminal motives in the gaudy costume of nationalism or security. It is Orwellian in the truest sense.
On June 22, Donald Trump concluded his announcement of the Iran bombings with a grotesque flourish: “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE.” Months earlier, Vladimir Putin claimed his so-called “Special Military Operation” aimed to “liberate” Ukraine from “Nazis.” The victims, of course, see through the lie. In Bucha, a city where Russian troops committed unspeakable atrocities, one woman told me, her voice laced with bitter irony: “Yes, the Russians liberated me. From my job. My home. My car.”
Expendables
It also never escapes me how little ordinary lives matter when nations decide to wage war or when warlords and autocrats struggle for power. Normal people —those who dream, work, and love just as I do—are reduced to abstract casualties, their suffering buried beneath headlines dominated by jingoistic frenzy and geopolitical posturing. Whether in civil wars like Sudan and the DRC, under authoritarian regimes or in the pursuit of imperial conquest—Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Israel’s slaughter in Palestine—the pattern is the same: human life is disposable.
People become collateral damage, a bureaucratic euphemism for the unimaginable: families erased, homes vaporised, futures stolen—all in service of someone else’s narrow, violent ambitions. Sometimes, I wonder: Has sending humans to Mars made us wiser? If we could see Earth from that distant vantage point—a fragile blue speck in the cosmic dark— how can we still engage in destructive activities such as wars that threaten to make Earth less and less habitable and its occupants increasingly restless?
War cannot be truly understood through a screen. When we read about bombings and occupations—whether in Bucha or the West Bank—we do not meet people. We see letters on a page, images on a screen. These may outrage us, as they should, but they cannot prepare us for the visceral horror of standing before survivors, hearing their voices, feeling the weight of their hands in ours.
That is why I am deeply grateful to the Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian Ministries of Foreign Affairs for sponsoring my trip—alongside ten other African journalists—across their countries from June 10 to June 22, 2025. It was only by walking the scarred streets of Ukraine, speaking to its people, and witnessing the ruins of war firsthand that I could begin to grasp the true cost of Russian aggression. No article, no broadcast, no tweet can replace bearing witness.
Small people matter
On a train to Lviv, from a southeastern Polish city of Przemyśl, winding through western Ukraine’s rolling hills, I met a nineteen-year-old boy—one of the war’s invisible casualties. He was trying to flee but had been turned back at the border, his papers inadequate, his hope thinning. His hands trembled; his eyes darted. The signs of shell shock were unmistakable.
He might have been the unlucky one that day, but he was far from alone. Over seven million Ukrainians have escaped since Russia’s 2022 invasion—a haemorrhage of people so vast that Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, could only chuckle darkly as he described it to our delegation. “A demographic disaster,” the jovial mayor called it, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. The full consequences? No one dares imagine them yet.
In Solomianskyi, where the Russians bombed a nine-story building on Václav Havel Boulevard on the night of June 16-17, 2025, we met a small boy clutching a flower. He was taking it to the rescue team, he said, joining dozens of volunteers clearing debris from the attack that killed 14 and wounded 117. “Our friend was killed here,” he told us quietly. Nearby, a shuttered store stood silent—its owner’s income severed, a family’s survival now precarious. Between 24 February 2022 and 31 December 2024, the UN Human Rights Office verified that 669 children were killed and 1,833 injured in Ukraine, many as a result of the extensive use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
Other buildings nearby bore scars from the blast; authorities admitted they didn’t know if these homes were still livable. If not, more families would join Ukraine’s 3.7 million internally displaced—a number that grows with each strike. War is not just missiles and rubble. It is a boy with a flower for a dead friend, a shopkeeper with no way to feed his children, and a country running out of places to call home.
In Irpin city, a woman—a professional photographer—told me how she cheated death on the Romaniv Bridge, fleeing through a storm of Russian bullets. Natalia Shapar’s face lit up as she showed me photos of what she’d fought to save: her two dogs, a cat, and a parrot, all proudly posted on Facebook.
That bridge, now called “the Path of Life,” was blown up by Ukrainian forces on February 25, 2022—a tactical sacrifice to stall Moscow’s advance on Kyiv. Hearing this, I thought of the Russian lie I’d once half-believed: “We don’t want to occupy the city.” In Bucha, a church worker recounted her family’s escape: three harrowing days on the road with her husband and young son, racing ahead of the atrocities Bucha would soon endure. She didn’t know then how right she was to run.
People of the camps
Listening to these harrowing testimonies allowed me to see myself in the eyes of the victims—the small people, the ones whose lives mean nothing to those drunk on colonial fantasies and imperial delusions. I felt their terror when the sirens wailed, their desperate scramble to drag their children into some dank basement, praying it wouldn’t be their turn to become another “collateral damage” statistic. My conscience was made clearer. I stand with the grieving, the hunted, the bombed.
No flag, no ideology, no “preemptive strike,” and no excuse whatsoever can justify slaughter—whether it’s Russia butchering Ukrainians to “stop NATO,” or America and Israel flattening Iranian homes to “stop nukes.” Like the British rapper who shut down Piers Morgan, my Ukrainian visit strengthened my loyalty to the people in the camps, under the rubble. To the ones whose names we’ll never know, whose funerals won’t make the news.
And so it is against this very backdrop that I challenge the Russians’ logic in attacking Ukraine, and why I believe their actions will backfire catastrophically. If Ukraine sees NATO membership as the guarantee that fewer of its people will be buried beneath Russian bombs, what possible reason would it have not to pursue that aim? If achieving this means Ukrainians can tend their gardens without sirens shredding the air; if it means more citizens can rebuild homes without fearing they’ll be obliterated by foreign missiles; if parents can cradle their newborns dreading only time’s passage, not incoming Tomahawks, then how could such military aggression possibly deter their pursuit? Would it not, instead, ignite their resolve?
This same unshakable resolve echoed through every conversation with Ukrainians and their European allies during our fourteen-day journey through the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine. Today, the demand for ironclad Ukrainian defence guarantees rings with unprecedented urgency. For Europe, Ukraine represents the critical bulwark against Russia’s insatiable imperial ambitions, a truth painfully familiar to Central and Eastern European nations that have endured centuries of domination under the Russian Empire, Soviet rule, and now Putin’s revanchist federation.
Disappointment
Yet this solidarity coexists with profound Ukrainian disappointment toward those European powers still hedging their military support, anxious about preserving future ties with Russia. Nowhere does this resentment burn hotter than among Ukraine’s youth, who carry the bitter legacy of their nation’s nuclear disarmament – that fateful exchange of warheads for what they consider to be worthless paper promises.
The young Ukrainians we met voiced crushing disillusionment with international institutions and global powers alike, watching as their peace-seeking nation made historic concessions only to be left vulnerable, betrayed, and fighting for its very existence. A brief but powerful talk by Melaniya Podolyak, a young, passionate Ukrainian journalist, at the youth gathering revealed just how deeply Ukraine’s youth understand their nation’s struggles and their own role in shaping its future. Their clarity of purpose was both heartwarming and profoundly inspiring to witness.
Many of them strongly believe that Russia would never have invaded a nuclear-armed Ukraine. The colonised world also knows this truth too well: there are strong feelings among African people, for example, that Libya was bombed because it disarmed, and North Korea is left alone because it didn’t. When the Americans and the Russians, and their allies, are convinced that military actions can prevent courses they don’t approve of, people of the world can rightly tell them that they don’t have the right to veto another’s alliances or arsenals.
Several Ukrainian officials revealed to us that NATO membership currently appears distant, yet they maintain a steadfast commitment to this strategic goal. In parallel, there persists a widespread optimism among Ukrainians about accelerated EU accession, which they see as vital for elevating living standards across their war-torn nation. One Ukrainian official expressed cautious hope about the French-British European defence initiative, explaining what it meant to Ukraine’s war efforts. “If this security framework materialises,” he told me, “it could significantly bolster Ukraine’s defensive capabilities against Russian aggression – potentially serving as a crucial bridge until NATO membership becomes feasible.”
What role can Africa play in supporting Ukraine’s cause? We posed this question to nearly every European and Ukrainian official we met during our visit – from Czech President Petr Pavel to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, among others. Their requests were remarkably modest. What they seek from Africa is solidarity and support for Ukraine’s struggle to realise its fundamental right to self-determination, a principle enshrined in the very foundation of the UN Charter.
They urge Africa to reject the notion that internationally recognised borders can be altered by force, or that one nation may dictate how another governs its internal affairs or shapes its future. Ukrainians remind us that self-determination was never inscribed in the Charter as mere poetry. It is a weapon forged to protect the vulnerable from the powerful, the oppressed from their bullies.
This principle either bites or it is meaningless. And the task falls to the world’s oppressed—those bound by shared struggle across colour, creed, and race—to ignite its words with fire until they scorch through the lies of empires.
Khalifa Said is the Editor-in-Chief of Dar es Salaam-based digital publication The Chanzo. He’s available at Khalifa@thechanzo.com or on X as @ThatBoyKhalifax. These are the writer’s own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of The Chanzo. Want to publish in this space? Contact our editors at editor@thechanzo.com for further inquiries.
