Three Years On, the Underdog, Ukraine, Stands
Today marks three years since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. I remember that morning very well. Among my community, there was a stupor about the realization that Russia invaded Ukraine.
….Russia invaded Ukraine….
That’s how we sat with it- in stupor.
Among the expat community, children’s classes were cancelled. Our minds were somewhere else.
Russians had been amassing on the border for weeks. We just couldn’t believe they would actually go ahead with it.
Two days before the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky didn’t believe it either. Western allies told him otherwise, showing him satellite photos. An estimated 190,000 troops had amassed at the north, east, and south of the country.
That Thursday, Russians rolled in and headed for the capital, Kyiv.
This was never about protecting Russians in eastern Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed. We know because Russians bombed the hell out of Russian cities and villages in eastern and southern Ukraine.
This was about capturing a country and restoring Russian imperialism.
The Americans offered Zelensky, his family and aides an escape out of the country. Zelensky refused.
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky told the US, according to the Ukrainian embassy.
He shared a video of him and his cabinet ministers in Kyiv. His message- we’re here, and we’re going to fight.
“I am here. We are not putting down arms. We will be defending our country, because our weapon is truth, and our truth is that this is our land, our country, our children, and we will defend all of this,” he said.
If ever there was an underdog, a David and Goliath fight, Ukraine is it.
Russia encompasses 11 time zones. Ukraine, one. As Russia captured Ukraine’s sovereign land in the east, they imposed their language… and time zone.
Russians bombed huge swaths of civilian infrastructure, most notably apartment buildings. Russians stalled on working with the International Red Cross to establish escape corridors for civilians, so-called “green corridors.” Images of charred remains of cars and people who tried to escape brought terror.
In the city of Mariupol, about 1,000 civilians gathered in the basement of the Mariupol Theatre in fear of their lives, using theater costumes for bedding.
“ДЕТИ,” they wrote in Russian in huge white block letters that were visible from an airplane.
“Children.”
The Russians bombed it, leaving a gaping hole where the basement used to be.
The numbers weren’t on Ukraine’s side. This is what they looked like before the invasion.
Zelensky tap danced, to the ridicule of some, for more weapons. He got Soviet-era stock piles from Europe. While Zelensky pleaded, more civilians and soldiers died. The Russians bombed shopping malls, schools, hospitals, theaters, churches and placed landmines on farmland to stifle food production.
Ukrainian farmers put on flak jackets and helmets, welded sheaths of metal to their tractors to protect themselves, and kept working. Ukraine feeds millions of people in Third World countries, and if they want to keep their sovereignty, they need that income.
President Trump recently called Zelensky a dictator. He made no mention of Putin, who has been in power for 25 years, holds sham elections, ruthlessly eliminates his opposition, bans free speech, and is holding thousands of people political prisoners, the most famous of which was Alexei Navalny, a healthy 47-year old who died in a gulag last year in Siberia.
The International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. His so-called commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, has an arrest warrant for kidnapping about 20,000 children from the territory of Ukraine and “russifying” them in Russia.
But, people believe what they want to believe. Recently, the focal point that has emerged is missing an election by 11 months. Ukrainian law does not allow elections under martial law, and martial law has been extended by… the parliament.
That’s right. Fourteen times, in 90 day increments, Ukraine’s parliament has extended martial law. The next extension review is scheduled for May 9, 2025.
Over the weekend, Zelensky said he would step down if his country was guaranteed security.
It’s hard sometimes to understand someone totally unlike themselves.
For Trump, who cancelled a visit to an American military cemetery near Paris in 2018 because he didn’t want his hair disheveled by the rain, it’s hard to understand why anyone would give up power, much less risk their life, for their country.
It’s easier to understand someone that thinks in their sphere, and for Americans, thinking like Putin should be a terrifying thought.
