Coming in February: Understanding Ukraine’s Struggle for Freedom

The surprising and inspiring resistance by Ukraine to Russia’s 2022 invasion is the subject of this riveting documentary series.

 

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Small children often take things that don’t belong to them. It’s easy enough to understand why. They simply don’t know not to reach for what excites their interest. Somewhere around ages three to five, according to child development experts, the little sticky-fingered humans begin to learn about property. As they get older, taking becomes stealing, since not knowing any better isn’t an option. Some, however, just don’t care.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is such an individual. Even if one extends the most charitable view of Putin’s unabashed invasion of Ukraine, by any legitimate measure, there was no justification for the euphemistically titled “special military operation” launched on February 24, 2022. 

 

 

Coming February 7 to MagellanTV!

 

That explanation merely explains why Putin, who effectively began the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014 by invading and then annexing Crimea, thinks the 2022 invasion was a good idea. According to Putin, the invasion of Ukraine was part restoration and part defense against the West. Ukraine, Putin declared, “is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.” 

 

One might call foul on the fact that this so-called reunification and defense cost the annihilation of hundreds of thousands of lives. That’s of little concern to anyone whose geopolitical outlook is propped up by enablers and others unwilling or unable to resist.

 

And so it has been left largely to the Ukrainians themselves to defend their national sovereignty. The details of that effort are the subject of a nine-episode documentary series, Ukraine: Struggle for Freedom. Covering roughly the first year of the war, each episode focuses on a specific period of the unprovoked invasion. While most likely appealing to military history and geopolitical buffs, the documentary series is still an interesting, accessible, and fairly comprehensive account of developments over that first year.

 

(Source: Ukraine: Struggle for Freedom)

 

The first episode details the build-up before the invasion through April 2022. The second episode focuses on May, when it was becoming clear that Putin’s expectation of steamrolling through Ukraine was a colossal miscalculation. Episodes three through five cover the summer battles, while episodes six through eight follow events from the early fall through the bridge bombing that damaged Russia’s supply route through occupied Crimea.

 

Viewers like me who have limited knowledge of military strategy, tactics, and armaments will appreciate the filmmakers' informative and panoramic presentation. In the episode I studied, for example, an animated satellite map explained the strategic significance of specific battles. 

 

February 2025 marks the beginning of yet another year of the war. While it’s unclear how it will finally end, the coming months will be crucial to Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign nation.

 

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Mia Wood is a philosophy professor at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California. She is also a MagellanTV staff writer interested in the intersection of philosophy and everything else. Among her relevant publications are essays in Mr. Robot and Philosophy: Beyond Good and Evil Corp (Open Court, 2017), Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown (Open Court, 2018), Dave Chappelle and Philosophy: When Keeping it Wrong Gets Real (Open Court, 2021), and Indiana Jones and Philosophy: Why Did It Have to be Socrates? (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023).

 

Title Image: Ukrainian tank fires on enemy forces in eastern Ukraine, May 2016 (Source: Ukraine Ministry of Defense, via Wikimedia Commons)