In Solidarity With Ukraine and Defense of Democracy

I am sitting in front of my computer at home in Frederick tonight scared and disheartened by the horror that may be about to envelop the beautiful city of Kyiv and its three million plus people, including dear family members. The sheer insanity and malevolence of what may be about to happen feels impossible to absorb. I pray Biden’s presumed laying down the law tomorrow on the phone to Putin on the sweep of planned sanctions that effectively shut down Russia’s oil and gas exports and cut it off from the international banking system may still deter Putin from moving forward with a merciless invasion that would likely kill and wound tens of thousands and traumatize tens of millions.

The purpose of such a murderous display of armed might is clear enough; to blot out the aspirations of Ukrainians to run their own lives and live according to their own lights. Putin apparently fears that Ukrainian self-determination and democracy threatens his own survival as Emperor of all the Russias, and he may be right in that calculation. Clearly Putin and his coterie of ruthless KGB siloviki (tough guys) and avaricious oligarchs aren’t collectively worth the life of even one Ukrainian soldier (and we’ve already lost close to 15,000 of them since the takeover of Crimea and Donbass since 2014). And yet the dictator and his minions are now in a position to cause devastating damage to many more lives and to the threaten the very survival of a sovereign state.

What stays with me vividly tonight are memories of my visit with Tanya to Maidan Square in Kyiv in the spring of 2014, when we had the chance to talk to many of the young people who had risked their own lives and saw many dear friends killed a few weeks earlier in a successful effort to overthrow a venal Russian puppet as dictator of Ukraine and seize control of their own destinies. To have the chance to speak with them and experience their quiet courage, human dignity and advocacy explanation that there are certain ideas and dreams that are worth risking everything for--that experience was one of the privileges of my life. I am sickened to think that their lives are again being put on the line by a brutal and deeply banal dictator for whom 22 years of absolute power is not enough, but who is ready willing to destroy untold thousands more lives—including many of his own soldiers--to ensure he stays in control till the end of his life.

Tonight, it is the people of Ukraine who are confronted with the existential evil of totalitarianism on steroids; but in reality all of us are facing the same peril to human freedom emanating from the loose coalition of nationalist dictatorships and would-be dictators from Mar A Lago and Washington to Ottawa, Budapest, Rio da Janeiro, Jerusalem, Paris, London, Taipei, Mumbai and on and on. Today, human freedom is truly imperiled everywhere and this is the moment for believers in human freedom to join hands and fight in its defense with fortitude for the sake of our children and children’s children. I am a lifelong pacifist and anti-Cold Warrior but feel in my old bones that if we allow Putin to successfully invade and absorb Ukraine, democracy will be on life-support worldwide. We must stand with Ukraine.

3David Miley, George Zilberman and 1 other

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