Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of its western neighbor, the Ukraine, on February 24th. He said Russia could not feel safe because of the threat posed by the much smaller Ukraine.
The BBC puts the matter in context:
Many of President Putin’s arguments are false or irrational. He claimed his goal was to protect people (Russian sympathizers living in the Ukraine) subjected to bullying and genocide and aim for the “demilitarization and de-Nazification” of Ukraine.
There has been no genocide in Ukraine: it is a vibrant democracy, led by a president who is Jewish.
“How could I be a Nazi?” asked (Ukraine President) Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who likened Russia’s onslaught to Nazi Germany’s invasion in World War Two.
Ukraine’s chief rabbi and the Auschwitz Memorial have also rejected Mr Putin’s slur.
My own theory (which is hardly original): Putin hates and fears the Ukraine (once part of the old Soviet Union) because it has embraced democracy and Western values, and it’s been prospering.
The Ukraine makes Putin look bad because it stands in stark contrast to the dismal life of its Russian-controlled neighbors.
Kathryn Stoner, director at the Center on Democracy at Stanford University, writing in Politico, puts it this way:
For Putin, the example of a free, independent Ukraine on Russia’s border is too inspiring a model for his own people who might eventually demand something similar at home, and that would mean his ouster.
So for him, Ukrainian independence and democracy is an existential threat to his personalistic autocracy.
The Kremlin’s endgame, beyond ensuring the survival of Putin’s regime, is to create a multipolar world where autocratic Russia and rising China challenge Western liberal hegemony.
The goal is nothing short of the establishment of a new global order where might is right, and state sovereignty, individual rights and freedoms, and human rights are wrong.
As I write this, Russia is shelling Ukraine’s major cities. Over half a million people have fled their homes. The U.N. Human Rights Office reports 102 civilian deaths, including seven children, and more than 300 injured. The world needs to hold Putin and Russia accountable for their horrific, unprovoked aggression.
I stand with the Ukraine. I’m sure our most famous U.S. presidents would, too. Here are some quotes that seem very appropriate just now.
“Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.”
“Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.”
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
“The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.”
“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”
“When it comes to (depotism) I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”
“It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.”
