Glory To Ukraine
The Ukrainians fight not only for their country, but for democracy itself
“What will bring the end of the war? We used to say ‘peace’. Now we say ‘victory.’”
The Ukrainian people are fighting a war they did not choose against an enemy they do not want. The Ukrainians should be free to decide whether or not they want to join with Russia, join with NATO, join with the European Union, or be a neutral nation all to themselves. Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin, did not believe in giving them such a choice. He invaded the country to make it his permanent colony and started a war which has led to the deaths of 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers, 40,000 Ukrainian civilians, 50,000 Russian soldiers, and has caused the fastest growing refugee crisis since World War II. Putin’s invasion should be remembered as one of the great crimes of the 21st century, but this crisis did not start on February of 2022.
The roots of the current crisis date back to the Euromaidan Uprising of 2013 and Revolution for Dignity in 2014. In 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich had planned to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union, which would bring Ukraine away from Russian influence and closer to the EU. Russia threatened trade sanctions against Ukraine, which caused Yanukovich to back out of the deal. In response, 100,000 Ukrainians protested in Independence Square, and were met with fierce police brutality. The ensuing violence led to the deaths of 100 people and the injuries of 2,500. Not long afterwards, the police abandoned Yanukovich and he fled the country. While Putin condemned Yanukovich’s ouster as part of a US-backed “coup”, it should be noted that the Ukrainian Parliament overwhelmingly voted to remove him from office.
Russia responded to this loss of influence by illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula on March 18, 2014. Putin had been planning to invade Crimea since late February, well before the supposed referendum in which a majority of Crimeans allegedly voted to join with Russia. By February 27th, Russian forces were already slipping into Crimea. Not only was this referendum illegal under the Ukrainian constitution, but it only allowed voters to choose options which led to separation from Ukraine. These were circumstances under which this “referendum” was held. When pro-Russian separatist movements erupted in Ukraine’s Donbass region, the Russian military quickly took control of the situation, replacing Ukrainian-born leaders with their own. This is the true start of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Ukraine’s comedian-turned-president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has given Putin many opportunities to turn back from his invasion of Ukraine. In 2019, he proposed a peace agreement to end the war in the Donbass, whereby free and fair elections would be held in those regions over their future status. This was an attempt to revive the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements, which called for ceasefires, negotiations, fair elections in the Donbass, restoration of Ukraine’s border, and the removal of all foreign troops. Russia, however, refused to acknowledge the involvement of its troops in the Donbass. Shortly after the 2022 invasion, Ukraine and Russia attempted peace talks in Belarus, but the talks faltered due to Russia’s demands that Ukraine be demilitarized and its illegal sovereignty over Crimea be seen as legitimate. The burden for peace is in Russia’s corner. Putin started this war and he alone has the power to end it.
Today, Zelenskyy represents not only the best of Ukraine, but the best of democracy. He has steadfastly stood by his people when they were most under attack. When US offered to help Zelenskyy evacuate Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, he simply replied, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” To prove that he was no coward, he shot a defiant video in Kyiv with himself and his aides, saying, “We’re all here. Our military is here. Citizens in society are here. We’re all here defending our independence, our country, and it will stay this way.” Zelenskyy even made an appeal to the Russian people after a failed diplomatic call with Putin:
“The war will deprive [security] guarantees from everybody — nobody will have guarantees of security anymore. Who will suffer the most from it? The people. Who doesn’t want it the most? The people! Who can stop it? The people. But are there those people among you? I am sure.”
Putin has many excuses for his criminal invasion, but the two major ones are “NATO expansion” and the “denazification” of Ukraine. Many on the right and the left have found these excuses persuasive, but upon closer scrutiny they don’t hold much water.
NATO is a security alliance developed in 1949 to prevent a Soviet invasion of Europe during the Cold War. During that period, it served as a genuine deterrent, but some have questioned its usefulness after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Russia has long complained of NATO’s eastward expansion into Europe, which edges ever nearer to its borders. Putin has not only complained that NATO expansion was a threat to Russian security, but has also falsely claimed that NATO troops were in Ukraine. As of this writing, NATO has no troops in Ukraine. And yet, if Ukraine had been a NATO member, this whole invasion would never have occurred.
In what way is NATO a threat to Russia? Russia has 5,889 nuclear weapons, the most of any country in the world. It also has the largest army in Europe. In 1997, NATO signed the Founding Act with Russia, where they agreed that no nuclear weapons would be placed in any new NATO member states, and that combat forces would not be permanently placed in the territory of the new members. In 2002, NATO and Russia forged an agreement to combat mutual terrorist threats. NATO only ceased cooperation with Russia after their invasion of Crimea in 2014. And even then, NATO had no more than 1,600 troops rotating between the three Baltic states on Russia’s border. Russia also only shared a measly 6% of its border with NATO states at the time of the 2022 invasion. Now that has changed. This year saw Finland join NATO, with Sweden’s application still under consideration. These nations only applied to join as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And yet for all his purported fears of NATO expansion, Putin reacted to the news dismissively, saying, “They can join whatever they want.”
To those who believe that NATO “provoked” the invasion, I ask you: Where is the history of NATO aggression against Russia? Has NATO ever invaded Russian territory? Did NATO stop Putin from invading Georgia in 2008? Did NATO stop Putin’s annexation of Crimea and the Donbass in 2014? Did NATO stop Putin from aiding Assad’s butchery in Syria in 2015? Did NATO stop Putin from poisoning Russian dissidents abroad, like Sergei Skripal or Alexander Litvinenko? If NATO is threat to Putin, it’s been a rather weak one so far.
Putin’s second excuse is that Ukraine is filled with Nazis and needs to be denazified. This claim is complicated by the fact that Ukraine has a Jewish president. Ukrainian Jews have also disputed this characterization, noting that Anti-Semitism was far worse under Soviet rule. While the far-right do exist in Ukraine, they only won 2.15% of the vote in a 2019 parliamentary election and gained no seats. It is true that Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, founded in 2014, was started by the far-right nationalist Andriy Blietsky, but as libertarian columnist Cathy Young noted, “Azov’s discipline and combat readiness made a strong impression and drew large numbers of volunteers who either didn’t know about the ultra-right ideology or dismissed it as irrelevant.” A 2015 report from USA Today found that only 10% to 20% of Azov members were Nazis, which while awful, is not even half of the brigade. Vyacheslav Lykhachov of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties has said that most of Azov’s far-right were purged by the new leadership in 2017.
While Ukraine, like any country, has its problems with the far-right, the claim that its government and military are running rampant with Nazis is a nasty smear. For all his talk of “denazification”, Putin himself has used far-right groups to wage war in Ukraine, from the Wagner Group (named for Anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner) to the Russian Imperial Movement (which trains Neo-Nazis and white supremacists). In 2022, Russia launched a missile strike on Babyn Yar, a Holocaust memorial site commemorating the massacre of 33,771 Jews. The strike led to the murder of five civilians. Is this denazification?
In any case, Putin has made it clear what his invasion is really all about. In 2021, he gave a speech in which he ahistorically claimed that Russia and Ukraine have always been one nation, and that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” In keeping with this belief, a state-run news website penned an editorial shortly after the invasion, praising Putin for restoring Russia’s historical borders. Any commentary on why this war has happened must put Putin’s imperial ambitions into the spotlight.
Shall we recount the litany of war crimes committed against the Ukrainians? The Bucha Massacre which killed 458 people? The Siege of Maripoul which killed 25,000? The destruction of the Kahkova Dam which killed 41, caused a massive flood in which 17,000 had to be evacuated, and caused Ukraine’s worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl? The Olenkiva prison massacre of 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war? The systemic sexual violence of gang rape, castration, and forced nudity against young and old, male and female? The beheadings of Ukrainian soldiers? The kidnapping of 16,226 Ukrainian children for re-education? The littering of the soil with land mines?
Against this onslaught of terror, Ukraine has bravely resisted against the predictions of those who said they would quickly fold. When people are fighting for their home, their way of life, they’ll give it everything they have. Who can forget the courage of Roman Hrybov, who when surrounded by Russian warships on Snake Island, told his enemies to go fuck themselves. The Ukrainians have taken on one of the strongest militaries in the world and thanks to help from Europe and the US, they are winning. Ukraine has so far reclaimed 50% of its nation back from Russia, and soon, I hope to see them reclaim it all.
It has also been encouraging to see Russians resisting the Putin regime in solidarity with Ukraine. 15,000 Russians have been arrested in anti-war demonstrations against Putin. 80 Russian marines in Crimea refused to fight against Ukraine. 300 Russian soldiers from South Ossetia also refused. Thousands of Russians have also signed petitions against the war. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for constant protests and condemned Putin as insane. While newscaster Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted a Russian news broadcast to shout “Stop the War!”
This invasion has also revealed the moral limitations of many political ideologues. Of those who value the negative peace of stability over the positive peace of justice. The far-right and the far-left have found common cause in apologizing for Russia’s brutality, depriving the Ukrainians of agency, and of asking Ukraine to make “peace” at any price.
On the right we have outrage columnist Tucker Carlson, who described Zelenskyy as “rat-like”, has said “Ukraine is not a democracy”, and has dismissed it as little more than a “client state.” U.S. Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for the U.S. to cease all aid to Ukraine and for America to withdraw from NATO. Catholic theocrat Sorhab Ahmari, tweeted “No more NATO expansion” in response to Russia’s invasion and implied that Ukraine had no right to be free of Russian influence. When Zelenskyy asked for more military aid from the U.S., Donald Trump Jr called him “an ungrateful international welfare queen.” Newsweek’s Josh Hammer accused Zelenskyy of abusing his Jewish heritage for selfish reasons, because he “married a non-Jew, baptized his children, and routinely fails to support Israel at the UN.” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh called him a “grifting leech.” Professor Jordan Peterson called NATO a threat to Russian security and claimed that Putin primarily invaded to stop Western degeneracy.
On the left, we have lauded intellectual and staunch U.S. foreign policy critic, Noam Chomsky, who claimed NATO that provoked the invasion and praised Russia for fighting more humanely in Ukraine than the U.S. did in Iraq. Code Pink, an “anti-war” group, has opposed giving arms to Ukrainian self-defense and has accused NATO of exacerbating the war. “Civil liberties” activist, Glenn Greenwald, has decried the US “drowning” Ukraine in arms, and has promoted the conspiracy that Ukraine has biological weapons. “Anti-war” writer Chris Hedges devoted a whole editorial to condemning the U.S. for the invasion, with Putin reduced to a passive, if not invisible actor. Journalist for The Nation, Aaron Mate, has slandered Ukraine as “Nazi-infused” and has called NATO “the world’s most dangerous cult.” Grayzone columnist Max Blumenthal referred to the arming of Ukraine as a “Ponzi scheme.” The leftist groups Stop the War and the Democratic Socialists of America both blamed NATO for setting the stage for Putin’s invasion. Longtime Israel critic, Norman Finkelstein, went farther than most, saying that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine.
A common theme in these attacks on Ukrainian self-defense are the empty calls for “negotiations”, as if that hasn’t already been tried. As if Putin, who waged this war to rebuild the Soviet empire, is sincerely ready to make concessions. As if Russia didn’t fire missiles at Odessa only hours after a 2022 grain deal with Ukraine. As if Russia didn’t strike Mariupol in the middle of ceasefire evacuations. As if Russia didn’t violate its own Christmas ceasefire to kill two Ukrainian civilians.
These critics speak as if the powerful don’t abuse the language of “diplomacy” to get away with crimes. Bashar Al-Assad is a prime example. In 2013, he negotiated with the US to supposedly dispose of his chemical weapons. How did that turn out? Shall we go back to the eve of World War II, when Hitler negotiated with Neville Chamberlain after the invasion of Czechoslovakia? How did that turn out? By all means, let negotiations be on the table, but it cannot happen in a vacuum, not without some pressure. As Martin Luther King Jr once said, the powerful do not relinquish their power voluntarily. They must face pressure and if need be, defeat. As historian of Eastern Europe, Timothy Snyder, has argued,
“I believe that a victory by Ukraine is the only way by which this war can come to an end. A Russian victory will lead to further Russian aggression. A Ukrainian capitulation will lead to the continuation of policies of atrocity on Ukrainian soil. The one way I believe that this war could actually end is with a Ukrainian victory, that is with sufficient Ukrainian success on the field of battle that Russia believes that is in its interest to negotiate.”
This invasion has been a clarifying moment. We see those on the right who will defend owning AR-15s on the basis of resisting potential government tyranny, and yet are scathing towards Ukrainians who fight such tyranny today. We see those on the left who proclaim themselves as “anti-fascist” and “anti-imperialist”, and yet are more upset with the resistance to the Russian invasion than with those who started it.
The Revolutionary War was a war for justice, because the colonists could not abide the oppression of the British Empire. That status quo was not peace. The Civil War was a war for justice, because the republic could not abide the inhumanity of slavery. That status quo was not peace. The Second World War was a war for justice, because democracy could not abide the voracious threat of fascism. That status quo was not peace. Likewise, the Ukrainians cannot abide the boot of Russian imperialism. Not the peace of Mariupol and Bucha. Theirs is also a fight for justice.
Should the Palestinians accept a peace deal where they permanently occupied? Should the Uyghurs accept a peace where they are forced to abandon their culture? Should the Tibetans accept a peace where they can never freely worship? Were the Tienanmen Square protestors wrong to resist the “peace” of Beijing? Were African-Americans wrong to resist the “peace” of Jim Crow? Were Syrians wrong to resist the “peace” of Assad? True peace comes with justice. You cannot have one without the other.
This invasion also highlights a major issue facing the human species: nuclear weapons. It has long been argued that nukes keep us safe, but this only works so long as the people using them are rational, which Putin is not. Putin thought he could wage this war with impunity because of his nuclear arsenal. He has repeatedly threatened their use in an attempt to blackmail Ukraine into submission. This shows that the “safety” provided by nukes has always, in part, been an illusion.
So long as nuclear weapons exist, humankind will never be safe from self-annihilation. As soon as this conflict is over, we should plan for global denuclearization, and we should start with the destruction of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. After Putin’s threats, that nation should never be permitted to have them again.
Some say that continuing to support Ukraine could risk escalating into World War III and nuclear holocaust. I would argue the opposite. That not stopping Putin’s aggression here will make the world less safe, tyrants more emboldened, and open warfare between the nuclear powers more likely. If Putin is not stopped here, then what’s to stop him from taking more lands? What’s to stop Xi Jinping from using nuclear blackmail to invade Taiwan? What’s to stop anyone?
If we are to stand against fascism, imperialism, and colonialism, then we must stand against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The fight for Ukraine is the fight for global democracy. Victory there strengthens that cause. Defeat there weakens it. Tyranny must lose. Freedom must win.
Slava Ukraini. Glory to the heroes.
