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One year ago, I wrote a column on the first anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I noted with admiration how the fierce determination of the Ukrainian people had stopped Russia’s advance in its tracks. I wrote about how Ukraine had utilized the military material the West — once seeing the backbone that Ukraine’s armed forces was displaying on the battlefield — rushed to that besieged nation.
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I further predicted that if the West gave Ukraine modern fighter jets (F-16s and the like), sufficient numbers of Abrams tanks and artillery, and continued supplying the ammunition and spare parts required to press an advance, that Ukraine could defeat Russia by the end of 2024. Little of that has occurred.
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Never did I think that a craven and Trump-intoxicated U.S. Republican party would lift the dagger of Brutus and thrust it between the shoulders of the heroic soldiers and airmen and women of Ukraine.
The party of Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower lies prostrate at the feet of a man a jury found liable for the sexual assault of a woman. A man whose corporation was found guilty of tax fraud. Trump lifted his finger and the U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives kissed his ring and refused to allow a vote on a military aid package that literally could save Ukraine’s hope to evict a merciless and evil foe before year’s end.
Imagine if, in March of 1941, Franklin Roosevelt had denied Churchill and Great Britain the 50 naval destroyers it gave that country, and refused to allow the Lend-Lease Act to pass Congress at a time when America was not yet at war? Hitler would have owned the North Atlantic and no ships would have made it to Britain without the protection of those destroyers. Great Britain would have literally been starved into submission by Nazi U-boats.
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As a result of a paralyzed Republican party, and because of the military aid strangulation of Trump’s congressional pals, Ukraine has had to withdraw from the strategically important town of Avdiivka. Nevertheless, the stubborn and determined Ukrainians fight on. Russia has been so depleted by its colossal losses (400,000 killed in action so far) that it is recruiting mercenaries in Nepal.
But for the enduring and increased military aid from Ukraine’s European and Scandinavian friends and neighbours, the nation would fall. They, unlike the MAGA congressional members, know full well that should Ukraine fall to Putin’s hegemonic plans, the Baltic nations and Poland are next.
Repeatedly during the past 20 years, Putin has made clear both in his writing and speeches that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe and that Russia can only be great again if it absorbs the once captive nations it dominated.
Putin kills both those internally and any externally who dare to try to thwart his will.
Putin is both evil and cunning. He is not crazy. He is determined to crush freedom in eastern Europe.
Ukraine is on the brink, and America has gone missing.
Marc Chikinda is a former university dean and the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants who came to Calgary more than 100 years ago.
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