Improbable reality: war in Europe
The distance from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, to Sofia, Bulgaria, is 800 miles, which is the same distance, approximately, from here to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I’m telling you this for two reasons. Reason No. 1 is that Sofia was the home of Milko Kobahob. Milko was imprisoned by the Germans during World War II alongside an American I worked with at the Tribune-Review – the late, great Paul Teske.
The second reason is that Bulgaria may be on Vladimir Putin’s hit list, after he finishes with Ukraine. Russia forces entered Ukraine last week. Putin’s goal, it would appear, is to turn Ukraine, a former Soviet state, into a part of the Russia confederation or to make it a Russian vassal state.
Either way, Putin wants to put an end to the possibility that Ukraine might one day join NATO, the West’s military alliance created in 1949 to block possible Soviet ambitions in central and western Europe.
In short, Putin wants to extract Ukraine from the clutches of the West and the United States and democratic ascendency.
More about Paul and Milko in a minute. First, let’s tackle Putin.
I’ll be the first to confess: I’m far from an expert on the man. There are real experts who say the Russia Federation president is increasingly irrational and inscrutable – Winston Churchill’s definition of Soviet intentions at the dawn of the Cold War comes to mind: “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
This much is clear: Putin, in his own words, views the very existence of a sovereign Ukraine as an affront to Russia and Russian history.
In speeches and statements over the years, Putin has reiterated his belief that Ukraine “is an inalienable part of [Russian] history, culture and spiritual space.”
Never mind that Kyiv preceded Moscow by centuries, and that following World War II, Ukraine declared its national independence; it was forced back into the Soviet embrace by force of arms.
It is widely credited that Putin believes in his heart of hearts what he says about Ukraine. What’s maybe more dangerous to the United States and our military partners in NATO is what Putin is demanding in regard to the 14 Eastern European countries that have joined NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Beginning in 1999 with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, Russia has been steadily surrounded by NATO member states. Bulgaria joined the alliance in 2004 along with Russia’s immediate neighbors Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
As part of its insistence on new European security arrangements, the Putin government has demanded a rollback of NATO to its Soviet-era parameters. This means, apparently, not the only the extraction of foreign troops, weapons, and other military hardware from Bulgaria and the 13 other nations in the Russian crosshairs, but their expulsion from the alliance itself.
NATO, with the United States in the lead, has firmly turned aside these demands. But what happens if Putin, emboldened by success in Ukraine, moves on, for instance, to the Baltic states or to Bulgaria and its neighbor Romania? NATO might not respond, which would mean the effective end of collective security in Europe. More likely it would invoke NATO Article 5: an attack on one is an attack on all. And where might that lead? It must always be remembered: both the United States and Russia bristle with nuclear weapons.
The world is smaller now than it was in 1949, and, as we learned again in the past week, no less dangerous and uncertain. The photographs of Ukrainians huddling in their cities and villages against the Russian onslaught are reminders that modernity cannot easily ward off (Putin’s) irrational obsessions, especially if the obsessed commands an army and powerful weapons.
As for Paul Teske and Milko Kobahob: Teske, from Jeannette, and Kobahob became friends in a German POW camp in Macedonia, near Greece, in 1944. When Paul, a U.S. Army Air Force B-24 navigator, escaped the camp, he asked Milko to write his wife in Jeannette.
In a letter to Paul in 1946, Milko explained that he eventually did so, without ever knowing if she received the letter. He never heard from her.
In a startling (to us at least) admission, Milko wrote, “We had such a good time, and I often think of our friendship and playing cards in the candlelight” at the prisoner of war camp. “I met twice or thrice our friend, the handsome officer Constantinoff [after the war]. He is playing as a balletist in the National Operahaus. He was a good fellow, right? And what about the life in Pennsylvania? … How is your wife and baby?” Are you still a reporter?
The remainder of the letter is about politics and international affairs, including a reference to President Truman and the emerging U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union. Milko was not on board. He said he hoped the U.S. would do more to help impoverished and war weary Bulgarians.
Milko told his friend Paul that he hoped for “peace and friendship with our brother the Russian [people] and all democratic nations in the world…. I am optimistic.”
These many years later, in this moment of history, it’s hard to share Milko’s optimism that all may yet be well.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.