Hans de Borst, father of one of the victims of the terrorist attack that brought down Flight MH17, wrote an impassioned letter to Putin about his horrible loss. There is a part in the letter that is very telling:
But suddenly she is not here anymore! She has been shot out of the sky, in an unknown country, where there is a war going on!
Borst’s country is a lot smaller than Ukraine but he doesn’t see anything wrong with dismissing it as “unknown.” Ukrainians are so dedicated to the idea of becoming part of the EU, to being finally considered as real Europeans. That is a fool’s errand, though. Once you are on the margins, there is no getting out of that role. Just ask Spain, a country which paid very dearly for its obsession with finally joining Europe.
The center needs the margins to exist because without them it will stop being central. Russians understood this very well and decided not to be the “unknown country” or the margins. So they are now trying to organize a new group where they will be the center.
Here is a response to Borst’s letter from Alexandra Kovaleva, a Ukrainian.
Clarissa's Blog 
That letter, my god. I think giving political lessons to a grieving father is extremely obnoxious. Alexandra Kovaleva is an asshole for doing this.
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After Eric died, the most hurtful reaction I got from people was when they would dismiss me with, “Oh, of course, you are grieving now, so I won’t engage with you.” I felt that it was their way of trying to exercise power over me using my vulnerable state. The good thing is that I don’t personally know any people like that. Both times this happened was here on the blog.
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Your analogy doesn’t hold here. It’s not like Kovelava was engaging him with talk about weather. She was lecturing a grieving father about the political choices his country has made, which led to this (and other disasters). What the fuck?
This is not ‘engaging’. It’s plain harassment. What do you think of confronting someone whose daughter died on 9-11, a couple of days after it happened, and lecturing him about america’s foreign policy in the middle east and the resultant blowback?
It’s vile and disgusting.
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He signaled that he wants to talk about politics. When I was in the hospital, I fixated on some stupid article from NYTimes and it helped me to get angry with it since there was one other place to direct my anger. Of course, initiating such a discussion with a grieving person would be just wrong. But responding, I don’t know, it might not be a horrible idea. I remember in the first week at home a friend came over to sit with me and talked to me about politics. I was so grateful because I couldn’t take any more silent compassionate stares I was getting from everybody else.
Obviously I’m projecting. This might not be the best subject for me to discuss because it is too close.
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