Fear not, say the separatist leaders. More trucks, ammunition and mercenaries will be going the other way – coming into Ukraine from Russia to replenish the lost men and weapons when Ukraine’s military went on the attack to reclaim Donetsk’s International Airport. Also, on May 28, the Defense Department said that Ukrainian forces shot down an unmanned aircraft that was flying over a Ukraine-held checkpoint in eastern Ukraine – believed to be a Russian drone.
The bloodshed in Donetsk came only a day after terrorists disenfranchised most voters in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, home to nearly 15 percent of Ukraine’s 45 million people, in the May 25 election. Another 5 percent, of course, were disenfranchised in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which Russia currently occupies.
And still the West equivocates about blaming Russia and imposing harsh sanctions, with the United States and Europe still offering mostly mushy rhetoric and actions in response to the Kremlin’s ongoing war against Ukraine. To the great tragedy of the free world, there is not a single Western leader who sees Ukraine’s tragedy as a call to action and as a great opportunity to rid the world of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s toxic rule, giving former Soviet republics and Russia’s 143 million people a chance to finally live free. Putin will play a destructive role in the world for as long as he is in power.
Appallingly, the West invited Putin to the June 6 commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, the Allied invasion that opened a decisive second front in crushing Nazi Germany. Russian sacrifices in defeating Hitler should always be honored, but Putin had nothing to do with those heroic deeds. He stands more on the side of fascism today than against it.
We’ll keep saying this until it happens: France must cancel its $1.2 billion contract to sell two Mistral warships to Russia. Europe must stop buying so much gas and oil from Russia. Great Britain must stop being the money launderer for Russian oligarchs.
The United States must, as President-elect Petro Poroshenko has requested, start supplying Ukraine with weapons and technology – the means to defend itself against the Russian invasion in the east. “We are ready to fight for independence, and we should build up the armed forces of Ukraine,” Poroshenko told Jackson Diehl, the Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor. We agree.
As Kyiv Post contributor Halya Coynash writes: “Whether or not Russia plans to annex any part of mainland Ukraine, or only to destabilize the country in order to maintain greater control, its actions are those of an aggressor. Its ambitions can only be fueled by continued failure to translate European Union assurances of ‘serious consequences’ into anything more than words.”
The West’s unwillingness to sacrifice or to stand up to Russia’s aggression and defend liberty, freedom and international law is is already one of the most shameful episodes of this young century.
