[The European Conservative] Where Have the Intellectuals Gone?

Fully one year on, intellectuals are yet to make a decisive appearance to alter the course of the conflict.

Last month, an unsettling development in the Ukraine war unfolded — as the defining events of most wars do — thousands of miles from the battlefield, this time in Paris. Bernard Henri-Lévy (“BHL” in short) is an intellectual notorious in France for his buttoned-down collarless shirts and his round-the-globe advocacy of non-French causes. On Wednesday, 22 February, BHL premiered his latest show, Slava Ukraini (“Glory to Ukraine!”), co-directed with French photographer Marc Roussel. The sequel to a documentary initially aired in mid-2022, this latest installment was filmed in the year’s latter semester, with BHL trading his customary bespoke suit for a helmet and a khaki bulletproof vest, as he is escorted by Ukrainian soldiers to various locales along the battlefront. The film starts in Kharkiv, follows in Kherson the day following the city’s liberation, and ends in Ochakiv, where a future Ukrainian final counteroffensive is rumored to start. With BHL’s usual Manichean over-excitement, the film is meant as a wake-up call for Western governments to match President Zelensky’s demands of military equipment — and for Western publics to back the move.

Continue reading the entire piece at The European Conservative here.