War and Destruction With Remus Cernea
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/22
*Further original, internal sources are at the bottom of the article.*
*Video interview embedded at the top of the article.*
*The interview conducted December 1, 2023.*
Remus Cernea is a humanist philosopher and former member of the Romanian Parliament (2012-2016) with a green progressive agenda. He also served as an advisor to the Prime Minister (2012) on environmental issues. He held the position of Executive Director of the first secular humanist NGO in Romania, Solidarity for Freedom of Conscience (2003-2008). He was the founder and first President of the Romanian Humanist Association (2008-2012). Since June 2022, he has been working as a war correspondent in Ukraine for Newsweek Romania. In 2004-2005, Remus Cernea successfully halted the construction of the giant Orthodox Cathedral in a historic park in Bucharest (Carol Park). During his time as a member of parliament, he advocated for various humanist causes, such as introducing Ethics into the curriculum, stop using the public funding for the construction of giant cathedrals, ending religious indoctrination in schools, allocating more funds for scientific research, legally recognizing civil partnerships, ceasing the use of religious symbols in electoral campaigns, and repealing the “blasphemy law,” among others. He also achieved significant accomplishments, including the liberation of animals in circuses and the strengthening of laws for the protection of domestic violence victims. Here we talk about the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Interview audiovisual content, click this sentence.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, today, we are here with Remus Cernea. What are we looking at behind us, right now?
Remus Cernea: It is a residential building hit by a Russian missile. Many people died here. There are flags for Ukraine, for UK, for Japan. This means that citizens from these three countries died here. A lot of children died here. Let me tell you, this residential building has nothing to do with anything military. It was revenge of the Russian army because the Russian army didn’t have any new successes on the front against the Ukrainian army in the last, let’s say, 6 months, 8 months, since Bakhmut, maybe. So, the Russians are killing civilians, just to show to Putin that they are doing something. The Russian army just killed civilians in Ukraine to show that they are doing something that they’re not staying like this. So, this is what we see. You see the destruction. It was a fire here, also. I spoke with some civilians last time when I have been here a few months ago. They told me how they felt minutes after the explosion. It was a huge tragedy. There are many, many Ukrainian cities where you can see places like this. Civilian buildings destroyed. Private houses, cathedrals, hotels, and so on, and administrative buildings, and so on, so, this is Putin’s war. We have to look at in the eyes. We have to watch this. We have to know what’s happening here in Ukraine. Of course, there is also the war in Israel between Israel and Hamas. In the same time, we still have this huge tragedy in Ukraine. We have to be aware about what is happening here in Ukraine. We are now in the city of Dnipro. But we have also been, in the last days, in Mykolaiv, in Odesa, then we will go to Kharkiv.
Jacobsen: What are some of the other things that you have noticed change since you have been to Dnipro?
Cernea: Not much, honestly, not much, let me say, this city is very well-developed. There are many tall buildings. It is a very modern city. You might feel like you are in Frankfurt or in Western cities or in Europe. It is a very developed city, very dynamic city. But it is far from the front. Now, it is far from the front. We wear these helmets because there is a danger, because we are very close and were closer to these buildings. So, there is a danger that anything can fall. That is why we wear a helmet. There are no bombardments here in Dnipro. But last night, there were air raid alarms. There is a permanent danger for the Ukrainian cities to be bombed with drones and missiles. There were 25 missiles last night, Russian missiles, that hit Ukraine. That were launched against Ukraine. Most of them were shutdown by the Ukrainian air defense. Also, there were two missiles that were sent by the Russian army to Ukraine. So, this is a day-by-day routine here in Ukraine. You can hear almost every day and almost every night the air raid alarms. From time to time, even some explosions, look what might happen anywhere in Ukraine, almost anywhere, almost all of the Ukrainian cities were hit, especially those who are in the central park and Eastern part of Ukraine.
Jacobsen: What was the instigation for you even becoming involved in this with Newsweek Romania?
Cernea: I am interested in war. I studied philosophy. I studied philosophy in the 90s. I read a lot of books about war, about peace. I was interested in this idea. What should we do in order to have a global peace, forever? There is a very nice, small book, short book, of Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, To Eternal Peace (To Perpetual Peace). There are some very good ideas that might lead us to historical moment when we will end all of the wars. Unfortunately, we still don’t follow those ideas. Those ideas, those principles, we follow them, for instance, in the European Union. The European Union is a project that, somehow, follows the ideas of Immanuel Kant, but, in other parts of the world, Kant is ignored.
Of course, there are also other philosophers who talk about this. And I was very impressed by the book of George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, when he describes his experience during the civil war in Spain in the 30s. Also, I had this experience when I was 15-years-old during the Romanian revolution in 1989 when I was on the streets very happy that the dictatorship (Nicolae) Ceaușescu fell in December of 1989. In those days, it was a kind of a civil war in Romania for a few days. Many people died, more than a 1,000 people died. I was somehow caught in an exchange of fire between the army, the forces who still defended the dictator Ceaușescu. I was sure that I would die. There were many minutes when I was sure I just waited for some bullets to kill me. Somehow, I survived. From that time, the fear of death almost disappeared. So, I was able to take some risks in life. In 1999, I’ve been in Belgrade during the war in Yugoslavia. That was also a tough experience for me. Now, after this war in Ukraine started, first, I was involved in helping the refugees, the Ukrainian refugees that came to Romania. Then I decided to come here. I have been here for about 6 months and a half.
Jacobsen: What city do you think has been most affected by this war that you have seen?
Cernea: Many of them, Kharkiv was very affected. Kherson, Kupiansk, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, maybe these cities were the most affected from the visit I java seen with my eyes. Many buildings like this destroyed, many, many buildings. But, unfortunately, there are many others. Of course, Mariupol, but I’ve never been there during this war, I have seen the footage, the photos, and the films. A lot of cities were destroyed. We do not have enough words to describe this huge tragedy. We do not have enough. But it is important to watch, important to see. It is important to be aware what is happening. It is important, maybe the most important thing is to help Ukraine, by donations. By… I don’t know. It is important to support Ukraine. By spreading information about the war, but from credible sources, not from Russian propaganda, of course. That’s why this is my mission here, to show to the Romanian audience and to show to the international audience what is happening here. This is my mission. This is a mission of an honest war journalist. Look what’s happening, look what’s happening, imagine that here, there are people in their homes. Just like that, in a second, they were killed. We can see some fridge, fridges. Because there are kitchens that were hit. That were cut in half. We can see here on the walls. There are still fridges and other things from the kitchen that remain here. Maybe, you will take some photos. You will put them inside the article. We have to be aware and to show to the world what is happening here. That is why we are here.
Jacobsen: Remus, thank you again.
Cernea: Thank you.
Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):
Humanist
Humanists International, Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United Nations (2024/01/08)
Personal
The Long Happenstance of Iceland and Copenhagen (2023/12/09)
Romanian
Remus Cernea on Independent War Correspondence in Ukraine (2023/08/25)
Zaporizhzhia Field Interview With Remus Cernea (2024/02/21)
War and Destruction With Remus Cernea (2024/02/22)
Ukrainian
Ms. Oleksandra Romantsova on Ukraine and Putin (2023/09/01)
Oleksandra Romantsova on Prigozhin and Amnesty International (2023/12/03)
Dr. Roman Nekoliak on International Human Rights and Ukraine (2023/12/23)
Sorina Kiev: Being a Restauranteur During Russo-Ukrainian War (2024/01/27)
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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