"Make Portland resist again" by a Ukrainian writer I love who knows what a war zone, and authorianism, look like

[Amaryllis]

https://freedomline.substack.com/p/make-portland-resist-again?

If you know how to post the photos from the article, please do!

Make Portland Resist Again
Viktor Kravchuk
Sep 30, 2025

That liar in the White House has been saying Portland looks like a warzone.

“Like World War II. The place is burning down.”

Portland, Oregon. A city that is always remembered when we talk about a place that lives for the love of peace and for the respect of everyone who thinks differently or feels different in some way.

For all accounts, the city is calm. Communities are strong, and people take care of each other. There’s nothing more than the usual big city problems you would find anywhere in the world.

I always notice so many kind comments from Portland and Oregon whenever the subject is Ukraine, and many of my readers proudly tell me they are from there.

So this is also a personal matter to me, and here goes some observations from a real warzone.

For everyone in America, and especially for my friends in Portland.

This is the usual script of the authoritarians: exaggerate chaos, paint peaceful protest as violence. Calling your own people prisoners in their homes, then roll in soldiers to allegedly “save” them.

I know this script too well. Ukrainians have seen it for generations. Soldiers used as props to spread fear, propaganda machines working overtime to convince the world of some bullshit.

That’s never “protection.” That’s control.

That is an experiment of control that will be extended to many other places where the political environment resembles the one in Portland.

Portland isn’t random. It’s a city that stood for Ukraine when we needed voices, and this is certainly one more reason why this is probably also personal to that orange monster.

(I am trying to stay away from writing his name, sorry if it seems rude).

And now he sends two hundred troops to frighten and to train the military against their own citizens.

That is dystopian.

That is what authoritarianism looks like when it stops pretending.

I was born in the Soviet Union. I know what it means when leaders lie about your streets to justify force. When reality is turned upside down to make neighbors look like enemies.

Freedom is always taken like this, it starts with words and ends with boots.

That monster knows very well that Portland is a place of people who stand, and that he will find resistance at every single step.

That’s what matters: people standing anyway.

Friends from Portland, this is what Ukrainians feel every day. Propaganda telling us we don’t exist. Soldiers sent to scare us into staying small.

But fear doesn’t end the story. Someone shows up.

Then another.

Courage spreads.

Portland, you are not alone.

Ukraine is not only with you these days.

Ukraine is Portland.

This is the same fight. One line of freedom, stretched from our streets to yours.

No one will ever steal our right to be ourselves.

Our right to be happy.

Our right to live in a place where we respect each other.

—Viktor

[Irish_Dem]

1. Beautiful.