Passing Along A Word That Deaf Ears Will Never Hear

Since my website has essentially become a repository of judgments and reflections that almost no one currently alive on this planet will ever read, let alone care about, why not open it up today for the words of another man in a similar situation, though one whose voice speaks with considerably more practical urgency than mine? His pleas will fall on ears at least as deaf as those I used to imagine I could reach, and for the same reason: He is speaking the words one speaks to men, as though he were speaking to men; as though he were almost able to convince himself, as he wrote the thoughts below, that readers with souls imbued with a modicum of ordinary human nature and basic decency would be his audience. Most satisfyingly, however, though also most gut-wrenchingly, it becomes apparent near the end of his polemic that he understands perfectly well that he is not speaking to men, or at least not to the ones he is addressing, but rather to the cosmos, or to any gods capable of hearing his thoughts and bringing some sense of ultimate meaning and justice to the horrors he is ostensibly declaring to this transient era’s deaf (or dead) souls.

For these are the words written by a Ukrainian doctor, addressed, hypothetically, to Donald Trump and those seventy million slavish true believers, in the Russian colony which used to be called The United States of America, who have sold their lives and their futures to their devotion to the dumbest, most amoral, and most pettily ego-driven deformity ever to occupy the presidency — and I choose the word “occupy” carefully, since Trump’s presidency represents nothing less than the Kremlin’s occupation of the highest seat of American power. America now belongs to Vladimir Putin more surely than does Crimea, the difference being that men are still fighting and dying to liberate Crimea, whereas the seventy million serfs who within memory used to be identifiable as Americans have simply ceased to fight or even to care that they have forsaken their country, its founding documents, and its defining aspirations, so lost are they in their love for an idiot celebrity who sells them cheap slogans which have no content, but serve only as shiny baubles to distract the utterly unthinking from the daily incineration of all their nation’s great principles and history.

Enough said. I found the following letter, in its English translation, posted by Garry Kasparov on X, and I reproduce it here, as he did, as a means of helping to spread the word — or to be more precise, to amplify the word enough that it might reach its true, proper audience beyond this moment, and bring some measure of peace or wisdom to this Ukrainian doctor, because he will certainly get no satisfaction from his nominal earthly addressees, who are as deaf as ears can be to the sounds of genuine humanity, which are the sounds he is desperately attempting to record.

[Kasparov’s introduction to the doctor’s letter in his social media post:] Amplifying this translation of a powerful open letter to Trump from a Ukrainian doctor, on several Ukrainian FB pages. I believe it was first posted in late February.

Ukrainian doctor’s appeal to Trump

You want to talk about “peace agreements,” Mr. Trump? Then listen to me, a doctor who puts the torn bodies of children on the operating table every day! Who cuts off fragments from their brains with a scalpel, who wipes blood from the eyes of mothers who have lost everything! Are you talking about “giving up territories”? I will show you the territories: these are pieces of muscle on the asphalt near Mariupol. These are baby strollers crushed by tanks in Bucha. These are burned-out school classrooms in Chernihiv, where children managed to write “HELP” in chalk on the blackboards before they were killed.

Do you dare to accuse us?

Are we to blame for the fact that Russian executioners rape women in basements? For killing prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head? For spreading cluster bombs along civilian evacuation corridors? Your logic is the logic of a rapist: “It’s your own fault that you didn’t submit.” Do you want us to “not lose land”? So why don’t you say this to Putin, who slaughtered entire villages in the Kherson region? Why don’t you threaten him, and not us – those who defend themselves with old machine guns against his army?

Your “negotiations” are a spit in the face of thousands of my colleagues who died under shelling of hospitals. Do you know what it’s like to work in a basement without light, without antibiotics, without morphine, when a child dies in your arms from pain? Have you ever heard a person scream when their leg is amputated without anesthesia? Is this your “small loss of land”? Is this what you are kicking us out of the negotiating table for?!

You call Putin a “genius”? Then genius is the ability to burn people in their homes. This is a scorched earth tactic, when only corpses and mines remain after the occupiers.

Do you admire his “smartness”? He is smart as a plague rat: he knows how to escape responsibility, hide behind civilians, shoot with nuclear threats. And you, like a child playing with fire, want to make him a world leader.

Your plan is not peace. It is euthanasia for Ukraine. You propose to lift sanctions? That is, give Russia money for new tanks. Western technology for their kamikaze drones. Do you want to return them to the G7? As if they don’t bomb gas stations so that we freeze in winter. They don’t steal Ukrainian children. They don’t destroy our museums, churches, theaters – everything that makes us a people.

You ask why we don’t make concessions? Because every one of your “deals” stinks of corpses. Do you want us to give up even more territories? So that millions of Ukrainians live under Russian machine guns? So that my fellow doctors hide in bomb shelters again when Putin breaks this “deal” too?

You say: “The war could have been stopped without casualties.” Lie. It didn’t start in 2022. It started when Russia seized Crimea, when the world was silent. When the first bodies with tied hands disappeared in Donbas. Do you think that if we surrender now, it will end? No. Putin will come later. And then you will justify him again: “Oh, he’s just restoring the empire, he’s a genius!”.

And what will you say to the families of the 15-year-old girl who was shot by the Russians on her bicycle? That her death is a “small loss of land”? Will you tell her mother that she “doesn’t deserve a seat at the table”? That her daughter died because Ukraine “didn’t agree”?

We are not asking you to fight for us. We asked for weapons – you gave them too late. We asked for sanctions – you relaxed them. But now you want to become an accomplice in genocide. Because when you lift sanctions, when you recognize the occupation – you give Russia a license to kill. Every dollar that Putin receives will become a bullet in the body of my patient. Every compromise you make is a new corpse. I am a doctor. I swear to save lives. And you, Mr. Trump, swear to take them away. Don’t you want to hear our voice? Then listen to our sirens. Our cries. Our curses. Do you want to be friends with Russia? Then be friends. But know this: history will not forgive you for this. Every child killed by Russian weapons, every raped woman, every burned doctor is your joint responsibility with Putin.

We will not be your “victims of politics”. We are a nation that survives despite your cynical indifference. And when you celebrate your deal with the dictator, remember: we are already building new hospitals in the destroyed territories. And in each of them there will be a poster: Death to fascism. Shame on the traitors.