Crossing a Treacherous Line - in Ukraine and in the U.S.

A scholar who's studied authoritarianism around the globe reflects on the situation at home while traveling on a train near the war front in Ukraine.

By Timothy Snyder

I am on a night train from Kyiv, bound for Zaporizhzhia, a city in the southeast of Ukraine which is about twenty miles from the front.

Russian missiles take about thirty-five seconds to hit the city, and the take civilian lives. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region. In September of 2022 the Russian parliament proclaimed the annexation of the region as a whole.

That front is a line that runs through Zaporizhzhia region, and indeed across the east and south of Ukraine. My train rushes southeast, towards that line. Its passengers, civilians and soldiers alike, know what lies on the other side.

Why Ukraine fights. Given the nature of Russian occupation, Ukrainians are fighting not only for their lives, but for a certain idea of life in freedom.

In the parts of Ukraine controlled by Russia, anyone who showed any initiative or was elected to any position is killed or subjected to torture. Any expression of a political opinion or any gathering or anything that seems like opposition to Russian authorities will lead to a long prison sentence in awful conditions. Just having Ukrainian material on your phone is enough to be sent to prison.

Ukrainian citizens in the occupied zones have to accept Russian citizenship in order to have access to basic services, such as schools. Children are kidnapped and sent to Russian families for adoption. They will be raised to hate the land of their birth. Perhaps still worse, they will be raised in a country where the government lies about everything all the time, where the media lies about everything all the time, and this is thought to be normal.

These basic facts create a different kind of existence, on that side of the line.

The Ukraine side of the line. Ukraine is not a perfect country, and of course war itself makes people less free.

The number of killed and wounded, though far lower than on the Russian side, grows every day. Ukrainian men have to serve in the armed forces, whether they want to or not. Even in the unoccupied majority of Ukrainian territory, Russian missile and drone attacks are not only lethal but exhausting.

It is worse close to the front, as in Zaporizhzhia, where I arrive tomorrow morning, or Kharkiv, which I visited last September, because there is no time to take shelter from the missiles. But everywhere in the country nights are interrupted and people are at risk.

I spent part of last night in a bomb shelter in Kyiv, awakened by the siren right after I went to sleep. For me this is an irritation. But for Ukrainians, three years of sleep deprivation takes a toll. The train tonight departed right at the time of the curfew, when people have to go home. This, too, is a certain deprivation of freedom.

And, yet, on this, the Ukrainian side of the line, people lead completely different lives than under Russian occupation or in Russia.

Ukrainians say what they want, including about the war and about politics. Journalists cover the war and write about politics. There is fear, although less than you might think; but it is fear of bombs and missiles and violence from Russia, not of denunciations or oppression or of one’s own government.

I have the strange feeling, this week in Kyiv, that Ukrainians are living freer lives now than Americans. At a book store where I was talking to a Ukrainian philosopher about freedom, a young woman put her hand on my arm and said “sorry about the U.S.”

The Russian side of the line. There are lines that matter. If I made some sort of mistake, and somehow found myself on the Russian side of the line in the Zaporizhzhia region, I would probably disappear for good.

Russian authorities have made clear what they think of me, sanctioning me not once but twice. (And, to be clear, it is a terrible idea for any American to go to Russia now; you will just be kidnapped, and held for some possible exchange for a Russian criminal.) If I crossed that line, it is unlikely that I would come back.

Ukrainian trains are punctual, and they are pleasant. It is not that I am in any way uncomfortable, or afraid. Heading in the direction of a line just makes me thoughtful, as an American. As I get ready to go to sleep, I find myself thinking that Americans are also speeding towards a line

The line in the U.S. Americans back home are not entering a geographic Russia, of course, or a zone of Russian occupation; but we are hurtling towards having a Russian-type regime.

I don’t even have in mind the alignment with Russian interests, the fact that so many members or our new regime have financial and emotional connections with Russia, or the fact that quite a few of our policies look as though they were designed in the Kremlin. That is a very bad sign, of course.

But I have in mind something deeper: the transformation of our public and private lives.

As in Russia, we have let local newspapers and local media die. As in Russia, their place was taken by a few commercial operations. As in Russia, the media are owned by oligarchs, who then become close to government or submit to it (not all of the media in America, of course, are submitting, but far too many are).

As in Russia, our daily lives are flooded by such a rushing river of contradictory lies that we have trouble knowing where we are, let alone what we should do. As in Russia, a president supported by oligarchs and their media power is trying to humiliate the other branches of government.

The executive is seeking to marginalize the legislature — forever — by ruling without passing laws. The executive is seeking to marginalize the judiciary — forever — by ignoring court rulings. Those things, of course, have already happened in Russia.

The Russian government rejoices in such changes in the U.S., and has a hand in them. But the problem is not Russia. The problem is us.

It is as though we have boarded a train without thinking about the destination. The windows are shaded, and the conductors have purposes of their own, which have nothing to do with our dignity, rights, or humanity. I worry that we will not see that line approaching, that no one will get out, that no one will stop the train.

I am one American in a train at night in a foreign country at war, heading in the direction of the front, going to a city that is attacked by Russia.

But I know that I won’t be crossing any lines. It is nearing midnight, and aside from the sound of the wheels on the rails, all is calm. I know where this train will stop. I am traveling with people I know, visiting people I trust, aiming to do something that makes sense — helping to celebrate the opening of an underground school in Zaporizhzhia (Russia targets schools with missiles, and so they must go underground, in a literal sense).

As I close my tablet and go to sleep, I am safer than every single one of you reading this in the United States, and indeed safer than I would be in the United States. My train will stop in five hours. But America will keep hurtling.

Two cars down sleeps a Ukrainian soldier. Spare a thought for him and for the other Ukrainian soldiers on my train, on their way to the front. They are, in every sense of the word, holding a line, not only for themselves and their country, but for all of us.

But for their resistance, it would be a worse and more tyrannical world. They have been giving us a chance to stay on our side of the line for three years now, and at horrible cost. By comparison to what they have done for us, we have done very little for them.

Think about what lines you will cross and that you will not cross. They are not as obvious, perhaps, as a line on a map, or a line of trenches at the front. But we cannot pretend that they are not there. And if we cross them, we will no longer be ourselves.

Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale, who specializes in he history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Holocaust. His books include “On Freedom,” “On Tyranny,” and “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.” You can subscribe to his Substack letter here.

For those who wish to help Ukrainians in this perilous moment, he suggests Come Back Alive (Ukrainian NGO that supports soldiers on the battlefield and veterans); United 24 (the Ukrainian state platform for donations, with many excellent projects); RAZOM (an American NGO, tax-deductible for US citizens, which cooperates with Ukrainian NGOS to support civilians); and Documenting Ukraine (a project that helps to give Ukrainians a voice, also tax-deductible for Americans).

Image: Sunrise in Zaporizhzhia from the train window (Timothy Snyder photo).