Ukraine Under Siege

With no forewarning, I started to cry as I spoke with the White House operator. My message was to urge the President to provide defensive arms to outgunned Ukrainian soldiers and citizens under siege. And I had to add that the latest bloody battle in Debaltseve, and its subsequent capitulation to Russian-backed forces, is breaking the heart of this child of Ukrainian-born immigrants. Twice in the last five years I was in Ukraine: first to celebrate its successful Orange Revolution, and then to support the hard-won fight for democratic elections played out over months on the Maidan in Kiev. On both occasions the excitement of a free and self determined nation was infectious. My visits were marked by the heady enthusiasm of new lovers; in this case the lovers were the citizens of Ukraine and the freedom that democratic elections portended. Freedom is a stranger to Ukrainians. Communists, Nazis, Bolsheviks, Stalinists, you name them and they came to Ukraine seeking the natural resources, the fertile soil, the hard working laborers, and at times, taking the very bread out of the mouths of the farming peasants. So that is why the taste of the promise of democracy is so sweet to everyone living and struggling in this little known country. I cry when I think of how close the Ukrainians have come to realizing the dream of all its children and how brutally that dream is being crushed by Vladimir Putin's aggression. I cry when the world shrugs at the death and destruction wreaked by his forces, and the seeming endless fight still to come. Other wars and turmoil around the world seem to get the attention that Ukraine is begging for. There are bombing missions, arms shipped, advisors committed, in many other parts of this uneasy planet but the Ukrainians are in this alone. They poke at the bear as best they can, but the bear still comes and eats them alive.