Lessons small countries can learn from the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Biased? Ukrainian refugees getting sandwiches at Poland’s Krakow Airport before boarding a plane to Zurich chartered by Swiss millionaire Guido Fluri on March 22. European governments and people have been a lot more welcoming towards Ukrainian refugees compared with how they have greeted refugees from other places in the past. — AFP

THE invasion of Ukraine, which Russia chooses to euphemistically call “special operations”, has produced several lessons for Bangladesh and other small nations, as much as it has, once again, exposed various negative facets of the existing world order, the fault lines in international relationships, and the skewed international system hogged by the rich and the powerful.

This conflict has also brought to light the partisan nature of Western media, which flaunts its so-called objectivity and hypes its impartiality, now ever so consumed by selective amnesia of the United States and its allies’ bombardment of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, so much so that they cannot but betray their racist proclivities. This racial bias is also evident in European governments’ policies towards Ukrainian refugees compared with their attitude and policies towards other refugees whose skin colour happens to be a few shades darker than theirs.