After a year of war, Ukrainians around the world fear support is fading
There’s plenty of things to be afraid of in this world of early 2023. Crime, railroad safety, earthquakes, the run-up to next year’s presidential election, the start of the new season of “American Idol.”
For supporters of Ukraine’s valiant defense against brutal Russian aggression, the fear is lack of support as the grinding war enters its second year Friday. The Chicago area’s native Ukrainians are afraid U.S. citizens and some politicians are tired of doling out billions in aid and armaments after the past 12 months.
Even some of those Ukrainian Americans also are weary of writing checks to relatives and relief agencies. Yet, they continue because the alternative is to bow to totalitarianism and the end of a sovereign Ukraine.
“At first, my checks were $3,000, and $2,000, and $1,000, and now I have to think if I can keep affording to write them,” said my acquaintance Rena, who lives in Lake Villa Township, of her backing of her former country. “But what else can we do?” Ironically, her first name traces its roots to the Greek word for “peace.”
Rena’s aging parents still live in Ukraine, in a town close to the Polish border. They have escaped much of the carnage that other regions of Ukraine have suffered from Russian rockets and bombs.
Still, they have endured shortages of needed medications and food deliveries. Think supply chains here get disrupted? Try delivering goods in a war zone.
Rena continues to write the checks and donates to a Ukrainian-aid society based in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. It has helped send supplies to the war-torn nation the past year and aids in settling Eastern European newcomers, including children, to America.
Like many of us, she grasps what’s at stake if Russia and crazed strongman Vladmir Putin take over Ukraine. Europeans understand the consequences of a Russian victory, as their leaders continue to ante up guns and money. Much of the world’s nations show solidarity with Ukraine, too.
Unlike a growing chorus of congressional Republicans who are voicing their worries over continued subsidies for Ukraine. Some of them attacked President Joe Biden’s risky surprise trip to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv the other day as they perceive Americans’ support for providing unlimited weaponry and economic assistance has started to fade.
Rena may know more about global diplomacy than some congressional
GOPsters. She notes if Ukraine falls, the dominoes of other former Soviet states are next in line, including some in the orbit of the European Union and near NATO nations, where thousands of U.S. troops currently are stationed.
“Watch Moldova,” she advised, “it’s next.” That was just days before officials in the small, but strategic Eastern European nation, warned that Russia aims to topple their pro-Western government. Moldova, a former Soviet Socialist republic abutting Ukraine and NATOally Romania, has its own pro-Russian contingent in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
British historian A.J.P. Taylor, known for his treatise “The Origins of the Second World War,” noted that, “Wars, when they come, are always different from the war that is expected. Victory goes to the side that has made fewest mistakes, not to the one that has guessed right.”
At the outset of the bloody invasion, everybody guessed Russian military might would subdue Ukraine within days. Putin and his withering numbers of generals certainly guessed that scenario.
After a year, outgunned and defiant Ukrainians, exhausted and spent from months of Russian rockets, drones and artillery shells aimed at troops and civilians, continue to battle what was thought to be one of the world’s premier military forces. Which is why Biden was in Ukraine this week marking the first anniversary of the ongoing war, to the chagrin of his Republican critics.
According to Associated Press, the president called the Russian invasion “a brutal and unjust war.” “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
To ensure Ukraine continues to stand, Biden promised an additional $500 million in U.S. assistance — on top of the more than $50 billion already provided — for armaments, anti-tank missiles, air surveillance radars and other aid. “I thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about U.S. support for Ukraine in the war,” the AP quoted Biden of his mission to Ukraine.
We have seen how American blood and treasure has been wasted in other global misadventures. We should be willing to use our treasure, as Ukrainian Americans are doing, to help Ukraine stave off the Russian juggernaut a second year instead of spilling treasured American blood.
Supporting Ukraine is in the world’s best interest. Now is not the time to cut and run.