Saturday, May 24, 2025

Clarity on Support for Ukraine

 


photos: X.com @CaolanRob

Last night (May 24), Russia launched against several cities in Ukraine, including Kyiv, 14 ballistic missiles and 250 Shahed drones.  Ukraine shot down 6 missiles and 245 drones. The remaining missiles and drones did extensive damage and caused numerous injuries.  President Zelenskyy posted that "Rescue and emergency operations are ongoing at the sites of strikes and debris impacts — wherever they are needed. There were many fires and explosions in the city overnight. Once again, residential buildings..."


In an opinion piece in the Kyiv Post, Bohdan Cherniawski, Chief Operations Officer for the Ukrainian American Freedom Foundation, focuses on what is behind the perplexingly slow and seemingly grudging international support for Ukraine while it fights for its survival.


You can read the article here.

Cherniawski writes,

"Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a troubling pattern has emerged in Western public discourse. Some voices, across the political spectrum, aren’t waving Russian flags, but they’re also not standing with Ukraine. Instead, they are dressing up moral evasion in polished, academic language that subtly undermines Ukraine’s right to exist and defend itself. Let’s be clear: this is not neutrality. It is surrender dressed up as complexity. And it is dangerous."

Cherniawski addresses each of the arguments for limiting support to Ukraine, from NATO expansion, to lack of democracy, to corruption.  Cherniawski's conclusion is worth quoting here:

"Ukraine is not only defending territory. It is defending the right to exist as a sovereign, democratic state...It means speaking up, challenging false equivalencies, and supporting aid, security, and truth. Neutrality in the face of injustice is not strength. It is surrender. Saying “both sides” is not insight. It is abdication.

If you believe in democracy, the choice is clear. Aggression wrapped in polite language is still aggression. Cowardice cloaked in neutrality is still betrayal. Ukraine does not need analysis from afar. It needs clarity. It needs courage. It needs allies who understand that this is not just about borders, it is about the survival of a nation and the future of democracy itself..."


In a not-unrelated column, Janan Ganesh in his FT column, Citizen of Nowhere, titled A War too Well Remembered, makes a relevant point about drawing false historical parallels to the current situation in Ukraine.  He writes that parallels to the 1930s that are often made to the current Russian aggression toward Ukraine miss the point,

"The lesson of the 1930s is that people who suffer--economic pain, physical fear, national territorial loss--are liable to turn to extremists.  The lesson of today is that not suffering can induce them to do the same thing.  After too long a period of calm, boredom sets in.  The temptation to take risks with one's vote starts to grow.  Stability destabilises."

Part of the problem with the inadequate Western response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine that Cherniaswki identifies and Ganesh points out is that, arguably, Western voters, due to complacency, when picking national leaders are not appreciating the risk to their own economic and security well-being and to democracy as a whole, whether it is in the US, Hungary, or Romania, or elsewhere.  Although, until now, as Ganesh points out, the Western voter has little to complain about--their countries have not experienced economic depression or war on their territories in decades--they would do well to heed Cherniawski's warning.  Lack of clear thinking and moral judgment could be catastrophic.


No comments:

Post a Comment